Volumes have been written about the possibility of recovering lost space on our devices. Everyone gives their own recommendations on according to the origin of the occupied space. Some recommendations include third-party apps, spatial fingerprint analyzers, and others are as specific as removing additional languages from the apps we use. There is one, but very simple and easy that can give us very satisfying results: pressing three keys.
Three keys that allow us discover gigabytes of junk files hidden in the Mac. Leftovers left behind by some apps, files we thought were deleted, and other things that we can easily move to the trash every time we see them. And that’s the key: make hidden files visible, then do some cleanup.
Blind eyes, files that don’t take up space (more or less)
When we talk about cleaning up our Mac, we are always talking about the files that we know are there. We can delete downloads from the corresponding folder or clean up Documents, but too many times the contained files are invisible. It is true that this is not a widespread practice —fortunately—, but some applications leave hidden files in various folders. One of them is Picasa, the photo editor that was so popular in its day. Other similar applications are Office, which saves temporary files and other content in a folder.
Looking at these files is as simple as opening a Finder window and press Command (⌘) + Shift (⇧) + Period (.) to make them appear. Hidden folders and files appear in a soft color, so we’ll quickly distinguish them.
Our main locations of interest will be the user’s Home folder, which we can access by pressing Command (⌘) + Shift (⇧) + H, as well as the Downloads, Desktop, and Documents folder. Depending on how we use our Mac and the applications we have installed, we can find more or fewer items to remove. Be careful, yes, to only delete content that we know we will no longer use or related to applications that we no longer use.
While it’s true that many app uninstaller apps, such as CleanMyMac, look for files left behind by apps, because those folders contain documents — so to speak — they don’t always get detected. Therefore, if we want to recover the maximum possible space on our Mac, it is a good idea that we take a look. Something that It will only take us 10 minutes and it may translate to more storage for our files at the same time as on a cleaner Mac.
In Applesphere | So I managed to free up more than 30 GB of space on my iPhone. I did not delete any files
