Mojave is the fifteenth installment of the Mac OS series released by Apple. It was first released on September 24th 2018. It was the successor to that of the macOS High Sierra. The main things that Mojave brought along with its release was the introduction of some of the apps of the mobile iOS system to the desktop operating system. When it comes to the storage on Mojave OS you might have noticed a section in the breakdown called ‘Other Storage’ which can take up a majority of the storage. Today we are going to tell you how to clear other storage on Mac OS Mojave giving your system more available storage that can be allocated to more important items. This other storage can consist of a diverse range of miscellaneous types of files so it is key to know where to look for these to delete them.

How to Check the Other Storage on Mac

First things first you’re going to want to have a look at your storage breakdown to see just how much storage is being taken up by the other storage. To do this firstly click ‘Finder’ which you will be able to find on your dock of applications. Next go to the top left of the screen and click the Apple Menu logo. At the top of the drop down list you’ll see the option ‘About This Mac’. You’ll nee to go ahead and select that.

When the new window has opened you’ll see different tabs within this window. The third one along is ‘Storage’ and that’s the one we’re going to select. Now it will show you the breakdown in storage for both the hard disk drive and an external storage device if you have one selected. If you hover your cursor over the colored sections on this break down it will show you how much storage is being taken up by things such as Movies, Apps, Photos, Backups and most importantly, Other.

How to Clear Other Storage on macOS Mojave

It is vital that you keep on top of your storage when it comes to responsibly managing it and clearly unneeded storage. It may not seem the most important task, however as your disk starts to fill up and you have less and less storage free, this ultimately means that you Mac will start to progressively run slower and slower which can be inconvenient and frustrating. We are going to run through the steps of how to clear other storage on macOS Mojave.

1. Clean Cache on Mac

Firstly we are going to want to clear the cache on Mac OS Mojave. Simply put your cache is a type of memory that is stored temporary to make access to frequently used applications such as CPU applications or browsers also have a cache reserve for quick access to frequently accessed website. To delete the cache on Mojave, open “Finder”, click “Go” and select “Go to folder”, you’ll want to go to “~/Library/Cache” and delete the contents of these folders but NOT the folders themselves.

Next to delete the DNS cache, to do this open up terminal and type the following:

dscacheutil -flushcache
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Press enter and the commands will run and clear your DNS cache.

There are a few different folders you’ll want to delete the contents of in order to clear the amount of storage that ‘Other’ is taking up. There are:

~/Documents/Logs
~/Library/Logs
~/Library/Screen Savers
/Library/Caches (without ~)
~/Users/User/Library/Application Support/
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Browse to each of these folders through your Finder and delete the contents of each but NOT the folders themselves as they need to be kept to store items in future.

2. Remove Downloaded Files on Mac

Next is to delete any unneeded files from your Downloads folder on your Mac OS. To do this firstly go to your finder and go to users and then select your users and find the ‘Downloads’ folder. In here select and delete any files that you no longer need.

Then empty your trash and this will have feed the space up for future downloads. Make sure that you definitely don’t need these downloads before emptying them from the trash however as then they will be permanently removed. If you don’t want them taking space on your disk but would rather move them to external storage device click ‘Show in Finder’ and drag the files over to the external storage, this means you’ll still have the files but they won’t actively be taking up disk space .

3. Remove old iOS Files

The fourth step in resolving this issue involves deleting any old iOS backups you may not need anymore. These surprisingly can take up a lot of storage so if there’s no need for them to be there we need to get them deleted. To see how much storage they are taking up as before go to Finder > Apple Menu and select About This Mac. Now to the storage tab, you’ll be able to see a colour coded chunk comprised solely of iOS files.

Next click the Manage button and select iOS files from the menu on the left to see the backups you have there. For the ones you no longer need firstly click to highlight them and then press delete to confirm the deletion of this file. Alternatively if you want to move them to an external storage device instead click ‘Show in Finder’ and then drag them onto the external disk.

4. Use Third-Party App: Clean My Mac

This is an application that monitors and scans your Mac OS Mojave system and recommends data that can be deleted. Firstly to get a scan underway lick the scan button for it to start looking for cache, unused apps, attachments, temporary memory and much more that can be deleted and is of no essential need to the every day running of the system. This application also has a malware scanner that will also scan for any files that may be deemed as malicious or any viruses. To make the application even more user friendly there is a personal assistant that helps you out during scans offering suggestions as to what junk you might want to consider deleting next.

If all of these steps are followed correctly you will have cleared all the other storage and other files that weren’t needed anymore. Not only does this free up space to be used by future applications and downloads but you’ll also see an improvement in the performance and speed of your Mac OS system as the disk has more memory to work with now. This complete guide on how to delete other storage on Mac OS Mojave is designed to be as user friendly as possibly taking you through the process step-by-step. Also be sure to never delete the folders themselves but rather the contents of the folders as it is essential these folders exist for future items to be saved into.