Maintaining sufficient disk free space is a long-running challenge that became more difficult when SSDs—typically possessing smaller storage allocations—arrived. Fortunately, storage management tools ease the strain.

Apple's recently released macOS Sierra operating system includes new storage optimization features that simplify managing and freeing disk space. You can access these file management and storage tools by clicking the menu bar's Apple icon, selecting About This Mac, and clicking the Storage tab to access the Manage button. The Manage button opens the new disk management utilities (Figure A).

Figure A

Clicking the Optimize button within the Optimize Storage section prompts the system to remove previously viewed iTunes movies and television programs and retain only recently received email attachments. A resulting pop-up window provides checkboxes for specifying whether iTunes movies and television shows should be removed and whether new email attachments should be automatically downloaded.

Within the Empty Trash Automatically section, users can opt to enable automatically deleting files located in the Trash that are more than 30 days old. Simply clicking the Turn On button enables the feature (although you'll still be prompted to confirm once more that you wish to activate the feature).

Apple also includes a Reduce Clutter option, which is triggered by clicking the Review Files button. The review option prompts the system to display large files the system believes are no longer required. On my MacBook Air, the review action identified a surprising number of files—28.69 GB in total—that could be removed. Collected within the recommendations were old virtual disk files, unneeded .dmg install files, and even an application I thought I'd already deleted and removed.

Users can review categories other than the Recommendations that initially display when the About This Mac's Storage tab's Manage button is clicked. Clicking Application within the left pane prompts the system to display installed applications in the right pane, from which programs can be highlighted and removed. The same is true for the Documents entry in the left pane, but instead of removing documents, applications, migrated photo libraries, and other unnecessary files appear.

A GarageBand entry is in the left pane. The tool displays how much disk space the program, instruments, and lessons are consuming on the disk.

The iCloud Drive left-pane option enables turning automatic Desktop and Documents folder files in iCloud, as described earlier, while the Mail option permits downloading only recent attachments. Photos and Trash enable administering files stored within those two elements.

Summary

All in all, macOS Sierra is making it easier for users to administer files, automatically move space-consuming files to iCloud, and maintain adequate free space on Macs. The days of requiring third-party disk management utilities to perform these tasks may well be approaching their end.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-maximize-disk-space-using-macos-sierras-new-storage-management-features/