Defeating Goliath: Finding and Deleting Large Files on a Mac

Many of these lost files are rather large, too, but thankfully it’s pretty easy to get rid of these large files, either via a DIY method or by putting your trust in a Mac optimization tool.

The DIY method

Finding large files on Mac starts by going to Finder and selecting – you’ve guessed it – “Find”. Click on “Kind” and from the drop down menu select File Size. Once you have checked that box and hit “OK”, another drop down menu will appear asking for the size attribute you’d like to search for, which you should change from “equals” to “is greater than”. At this point you should enter in a number and change the selection from KB to MB or GB, which will immediately cause the make to Mac display all files that satisfy the conditions that have been set, allowing you to deal with those large files that occupy valuable storage space.

Another way of locating large files is to open the Apple Menu (the Apple sign in the top left corner), click on “About This Mac” and select “Storage”. Usually this command shows the current state of the hard disk, but if you click on “Manage” then “Reduce Clutter” and finally “Review Files”, then you’ll be able to select from a number of tabs (Applications, Documents, iTunes, Photos, Trash etc.) and discover how much space the individual files and apps occupy. If you’d like to delete any of them, simply click the X button on that app.

Using an optimizer

The problem with the above method is that not only do you need to locate these large files on your own, but you’ll also have to separately deal with other, invisible elements that are not too big on their own but are still cumulatively disk space hogs, such as caches and localization files.

To get rid of those as well it is highly recommended that you use an advanced Mac optimization tool that was intended for this very purpose: locating and mercilessly destroying unwanted items from your Mac. Most of these optimizers enhance your memory and remove cache files, logs, Trash items, CPU and space-hogging apps. Others – including CleanMyMac and even the not-so-advanced Advanced Mac Cleaner – are equipped with large file managers: with a click of a button they can search through every single file and folder on your computer, highlighting the ones deemed too large and letting you decide what should be kept and what should be wiped.