DETOX YO UR MAC

QUICK TECHNIQUES FOR CLEARING OUT THE CLUTTER

Cleaning. Decluttering.

Tidying. In the real world, these things can be a hassle, but you at least have the advantage of knowing when to do them. (Hint: If you can’t get into a room for the piles of boxes and other rubbish, or can draw in the dust atop your surfaces, it’s time.) In the world of computing, however, clutter can be largely invisible.

Over the years, digital cruft builds up as you install new apps, moving your Mac further away from its pristine factory-fresh state. And as you gradually fill its drive with new documents, only Finder’s status bar, assuming you have it turned on, provides any real indication of the current state of play regarding available storage. But, sooner or later, you’ll get a dreaded warning that your Mac’s running low on free space.

We’ve all been there — although most of us never get as bad as one Mac|Life writer, who discovered one time that there wasn’t enough room on his Mac to even take a single screenshot. And sometimes there are other reasons why you may need to clean up your Mac — for example, when you have a system clash that’s hard to pin down, making your Mac behave in a strange manner.

The idea behind this feature is to outline different ways you can declutter a Mac: finding and removing documents and apps you no longer need; shifting data to the cloud; and a “start from scratch” approach when things have already gone horribly wrong. And because you’re probably using an iPhone or iPad too, we’ll also spend a little time explaining how you can keep those devices in tip-top condition.

After all, we should be far from the days when you have room only for that single snap left at an all-important event. That was understandable in a world of film, but not so much when devices start out with many gigabytes of storage.