If you’ve owned an Apple Mac for a few years, you may have noticed it’s starting to slow down and not performing to the efficiency that it once did. This is normal for most laptops as the hardware gets used daily, but there are a few things that you can do to look after it and keep it running to the best of its ability. One of these things is to free up space, by cleaning your desktop, deleting unused apps, deleting duplicate files, and deleting mail attachments. Not only will this help increase the lifespan of your laptop but you’ll notice a difference in the speed it operates and how efficient it is when loading applications. Below we look into four ways to free up space on an old Mac.
Delete Unused Applications
When was the last time you took a look through the applications that you have downloaded on your Apple Mac? If you take a look through now, you may be surprised at how many you have downloaded over the years. The more apps that you have downloaded, the more storage space that they will take up. This can lead to your Apple Mac slowing down and not functioning as well as it should. You may find that a lot of the applications aren’t being used anymore, as they were useful in the past but you don’t require them now. By deleting these, you will free up your disk, allowing more space for new applications.
Cleaning your desktop
A lot of us are guilty of installing applications to our Apple Mac and then saving them to our desktop. Over the years, this builds up until there isn’t any more space for you to add another app. Although this may seem easy, it is actually a bad habit and can slow your mac down substantially when loading. The reason for this is before your Apple Mac can be fully loaded, it needs to read those applications and load them in. The more apps you have, the more time it requires to load them. Go through each one and see if you need it, or whether it can be uninstalled or moved off your desktop. You’ll also benefit from freeing up space on your Mac.
Delete your mail attachments and junk emails
Every email you receive takes up storage space on your Mac. The amount of storage space is then increased depending on how big the attachments are and how many are attached. Load up your emails and order them by size. Any emails that have large attachments on them that you no longer require, delete them as this is taking up unnecessary space. After doing this, go through your junk mail as chances are you do not need these emails and they are also taking up storage space on your Apple Mac.
Delete old iOS backups
Backing up your iPhone, iPad, and Mac files is important in case something is to, unfortunately, happen to those devices. The more frequent you are at backing them up, the more files you will have stored on your computer. If you don’t delete old backups that are no longer required due to new backups, this can take up a substantial amount of space on your old mac. Review the number of backups on your Old Mac and check that you do not have more than you need. Never delete a backup unless you are sure you no longer need it.
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