HOW TO SCAN YOUR MAC FOR HUGE FILES

01 START SCANNING A DRIVE OR FOLDER

In GrandPerspective, go to File > Scan Folder and select a folder for the app to scan. This can be at any level on your Mac, but it makes more sense to scan widely rather than select something speci c, such as your Downloads folder. Therefore, either scan your user folder, or select the top level of your Mac’s internal drive. Click ‘Scan’ and GrandPerspective will get on with its search. The app has to trawl through every le and folder within the one you selected, so this process can take a while, especially on older Macs. You can still use your Mac in the meantime, and you can cancel the scan if it’s slowing things down too much.

02 INSPECT THE SCAN RESULTS

When the scan is complete, your drive’s contents are represented by a bunch of rectangles. This is all very abstract, but there is logic to it. The larger rectangles represent bigger les, and items within the same folders are shown within a larger containing rectangle. For example, your Downloads and Documents folders will be found within one speci c area of the representation of your Mac’s drive, rather than the various les within them being spread randomly about the graphic. Select an item and you’ll see its size and lename in the status bar at the bottom of the window, and its parent folder will also be highlighted.

03 GET MORE INFORMATION

Narrow the window and click Drawer to access further information. Info gives you an overview of your scan, and Focus tells you more about the selected item, including dates when it was created, modi ed, and last accessed. Use the toolbar buttons to change your view and focus. The + and – buttons zoom in and out of the folder or folders that contain your selection, and the two Focus buttons broaden or narrow your selection. For example, you can select an item in Downloads, and as a comparison use Focus to check the size of the entire folder. (If a containing folder is small, so too will be any le within, even if it takes up most of that folder.)

04 FIND, DELETE AND FILTER FILES

You can delete items directly from GrandPerspective by selecting them and clicking Delete, but only if ‘Enable deletion of’ in the app’s preferences is set to something other than ‘Nothing’. Be very careful regarding what you remove – only delete les or folders where you know their function and that you won’t need again (or have a copy stashed somewhere). Large apps (OS X and iOS) you no longer use, for example. You can alternatively Ctrl-click to reveal or open the item in Finder. Should you want to narrow subsequent searches to speci c le types, explore GrandPerspective > Filters; set up rules and then use File > Filtered Scan.