How best to delete unnecessary files?

[donl1150]

I have a MacBook Pro 13”. M1, 2020 model running Sequoia 15.7.7. It has a 1TB drive with 278 GB free.


I know there is a lot of junk files & duplicate files I am sure. How do I go about cleaning & deleting those files?

 

[markphil1424]

I use CleanMyMac app regularly.

 

[kitKAC]

Hyperspace (for the duplicate files).

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/hyperspace-reclaim-disk-space/id6739505345?mt=12

 

[benholt]

For an M1 13" the quickest wins are usually visual — GrandPerspective (free) or DaisyDisk show you instantly where the big files live, which is almost always video downloads, old Photos library imports, or iOS device backups buried in ~/Library/Application Support. macOS Settings → General → Storage → "Manage" also surfaces app-by-app totals and has an "Optimize" toggle that ships iCloud-eligible files off-device automatically. Hyperspace is the right call for duplicates specifically because it uses APFS clones — it dedupes without actually deleting anything, so you can run it without worrying about losing files. I'd avoid CleanMyMac for daily use on that machine though; its background agent sits resident in RAM permanently, which costs more than it recovers on a drive that's already 25% free.

 

[benwiggy]

I know there is a lot of junk files & duplicate files I am sure. How do I go about cleaning & deleting those files?

How do you know..? 🙂 Are you talking about your own documents, or system and application support files?

There are apps which can check your user folder for duplicate files -- even duplicate photos; and you might want to use one of those to scan your home folder. You'll find a bunch in the Mac App Store.

However, generally, unless you're running out of space and your user Library or root Library is using huge swathes of disk, I would advise not trying to recover every last Kilobyte of files that whose purpose you are unsure of.

I definitely wouldn't use any "cleaner" apps, as they have a sketchy track record, and can delete the wrong thing just as easily as you can.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I know there is a lot of junk files & duplicate files I am sure. How do I go about cleaning & deleting those files?"

Pretty much the same as you added them.
That is, one or two or three at a time.
Unless you're SURE that you can select bigger bunches and be rid of them that way.

But...
BEFORE you begin this project, I suggest you create a cloned backup onto an external drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (both are FREE to download and use for 30 days, this will cost you nothing). That way, if you find that you tossed something that shouldn't have been trashed, you can "get it back" easily and quickly.

(on a cloned backup, the file will be exactly where it was on the source drive. So... if you "know where it is" on the source, you know where it's at on the backup, as well)

 

[steve09090]

Funnily enough yesterday I cleaned my MacBook Air M1 for an M5 Pro I’m getting today.

I used DaisyDisk a bit to get rid of some useless files and a general initial sweep.

I leveraged Gemini to get rid of excess files including old caches, legacy apps (screen shot your applications folder and let Gemini help you identify what you don’t need) as I had some apps that I never used, and some that were not even supported any more. Obviously double check AI results.

I had some apps that were 2017! I never deleted them because I didn’t know there use. Gemini helped me identify junk.

I also use AppCleaner, that is a very light App. It gets rid of junk files attached to Apps when you delete one. When you delete an app there are often library files that get stuck behind, not big, but very windows to do that.

Then I reorganised my downloads folder, documents folder into a clear and clean structure. I moved files into One Drive, backup drives etc. I always struggle to think of folder names, so using Gemini which leverages the best or most commons practices others use to help me with ideas here.

I never used Apple Photos (Lightroom person) but I got rid of 30GB by moving all of the originals and keeping the structure of the files. Then i trashed the Photos folder. It can be rebuilt whenever I’m ready.

I think I ended up getting rid of about 80-100GB, but I have a super tidy system now, and a clean Time Machine for the Macbook Pro rebuild. It took about 1 1/2 hours for everything plus a fresh Time Machine.

 

[adnbek]

i use this:

dupeGuru

dupeGuru is a cross-platform (Linux, OS X, Windows) GUI tool to find duplicate files in a system. It’s written mostly in Python 3 and has the peculiarity of using multiple GUI toolkits, all using the same core Python code. On OS X, the UI layer is written in Objective-C and uses Cocoa. On Linux...

dupeguru.voltaicideas.net

Works great!