Free up Space on Your Computer

Free up Space on Your Computer

About

The storage of your drive will slowly fill up as you use your computer and accumulate apps and files over time. This article will show the different ways you can free up space on your computer. 

Instructions

Windows

1. View Total Storage Space

To view how much storage space you have available you can open up file explorer and look at devices and drives under "This PC" or you can go to storage settings like you did earlier to find Storage Sense. 

2. Use Disk Cleanup Utility

First you will want to run a Windows Utility called Disk Cleanup. This utility searches for unused files that you can delete without worry such as files in the recycling bin or your downloads.  
  1. Click the Windows Start button and start typing "disk cleanup."
  2. Click Disk Cleanup and then select the Storage Drive you want to clean. Sometimes this is automatic. 
  3. If you have Admin credentials or an Admin account, click "Clean up system files." Move to step 5 if not. 
  4. Enter in Admin credentials and proceed. 
  5. Once it finishes running, select everything, click "Ok" and finally click "Delete Files."

3. Use Storage Sense

Storage Sense is a tool that will do part of what Disk Cleanup Utility does, only on an automated basis. You can turn it on and configure it to run on a regular interval or simply when your disk space gets low.
  1. Click the Windows Start button and start typing "storage settings."
  2. Then locate the on/off switch and turn it to On.
  3. Next click on "Configure Storage Sense or run it now."
  4. Adjust the settings to your liking. If you tend to forget to empty your recycling bin this is a great way to ensure you won't ever need to.
  5. Once finished, click "Clean now" at the very bottom. 

4. Make OneDrive Files Online Only   

Users have the ability with OneDrive to store files locally in addition to the cloud, in the cloud only, and in the cloud only until you work on the file - at which point OneDrive will download the file to your local machine. Storing files in the cloud only can save a lot of space on your computer, so it's good to see what you're currently doing and maybe make some changes to how some folders are being stored. We recommend going through this article to better understand OneDrive and what you can do with OneDrive to free up space on your computer. 

5. Uninstall Unused Apps

Over time as people use their computers they accumulate more and more apps, but rarely do they ever uninstall apps they no longer use. Checking for unused apps is a great practice when looking to free up space on a computer. There are many apps on a computer you do not want to get rid of, so only delete apps that you recognize as an app you used in the past and no longer need. To uninstall some apps you will need Admin credentials, but not for everything. 

Don't Uninstall these apps: Any Solarwinds, N-Able, Take Control, SentinelOne, Microsoft, Google, or Adobe apps. 
  1. Click the Windows Start button and start typing "control panel."
  2. Find Programs and click on "Uninstall a program."
  3. Now go through one at a time clicking unused apps and then clicking Uninstall.

Mac

1. Use Finder

  1. Open Finder
  2. In the top left with Finder selected click on View > Show View Options
  3. Organize your current view by File Size by clicking that tab
  4. Navigate throughout the computer by file size to view where storage space is being used up

To create this article we referenced two Microsoft articles. If you'd like to know more you can check those articles out right here and also here.

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