Smart file management

Use these simple steps to go through your files and organise things effectively

1 Use meaningful names

You’ve got 255 characters to play with when naming things, so give documents, images and everything else names that make it clear what they are: ‘Karen attacked by furious monkey’ is easier to identify and find than ‘IMG1698.png’.

2 Stick it in the cloud

If you have an iCloud subscription you can mirror Desktop and Documents Folders, deleting local copies to free up space. To do that, ≈-click and select Remove Download. A little icon appears to show that it’s now stored in the cloud.

3 Tag everything

Tags are brilliant things, and Finder makes them simple: by creating descriptive tags in Finder > Preferences > Tags and using them to classify your files, you’re making it easy to find related files by selecting the appropriate tag in the sidebar.

4 Clear out your downloads

When was the last time you got rid of all the cruft in your downloads folder? Ours is full of PDF documents, Calendar invitations, app installers and other rubbish that’s just sitting there taking up much-needed space. Zap it! Zap it all!

5 Sort the big stuff

Go to About This Mac > Storage and select Manage to the right of your main hard disk or SSD. This enables you to see what’s taking up space on your Mac. Click Documents > Large Files to see the really big things and delete unnecessary ones.

6 Batch rename

Finder makes it easy to select a group of files and rename them all at the same time. You can add, replace or reformat text and it can automatically number the files too, which is particularly handy for sequential things such as photos or screenshots.