Thinning out Lion

[JSMencer]

So what files can we delete to thin down Lion?

 

[joelovesapple]

Thinning out might risk messing everything up if you're not careful.

 

[Paulywauly]

You could delete any unnecessary apps, but if you try it you'll notice Lion usues alot less hard drive space than Snow Leopard so it might not be necessary

 

[maflynn]

Its probably safer to get a larger HD then trying to save a few megabytes and potentially cause stability problems.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Perhaps someone can confirm whether a custom install whereby you designate the install to skip all language packs aside from the ones you truly need and use is possible. That will "thin" out the install size as it has in the past. Whether this is possible is unknown as I'm not a developer, a person who obtained the OS through alternative channels, or able to publicly buy it.

 

[jschmitt]

Jessica -
As someone who does have access to the GM, this was one of the first things I was looking to do; Although there was a "Customize" option in the installer for the GM, I was unable to select it - and as a result found no direct way to remove language packs; In addition, one of my favorite tools under Leopard & SL [MonoLingual] did not seem to work properly under Lion.

I will however say, that I am impressed by the size footprint of Lion when a clean install is done. The footprint was about 5.75 GB for the default install; This number does not however include the size of the sleepimage that will be created by the installer. This sleepimage is related directly to the amount of RAM that your machine has. So for my 8GB MBP, the TOTAL footprint was ~ 9.75GB and for my 8GB 17in MBP, it is ~ 14GB.

John

 

[WiLLGT09]

This number does not however include the size of the sleepimage that will be created by the installer. This sleepimage is related directly to the amount of RAM that your machine has.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

This disables, what I feel is the unnecessary "safe sleep" mode. Your Mac will sleep almost instantly, PLUS you can then go delete that dumb sleepimage (in /private/var/vm folder) and you'll gain a significant amount of disk space back.

 

[roadbloc]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Lion smaller than Snow Leopard (which was smaller than Leopard) anyway? Why bother?

 

[Fishrrman]

"So what files can we delete to thin down Lion?"

I ran Monolingual on the Lion GM installation to delete ALL languages EXCEPT English, and it reported no less that 1gb "removed".

I then used Drive Genius to defrag my Lion boot partition.

Cleaned it up pretty well!

 

[markrox7]

TrashMe is by far the best app for deleting stuff. It allows you to choose an app to delete, and all its associated files will be deleted with it, saving you a few megabytes of space. It also lists "orphan files" which are files that TrashMe thinks are unnecessary and just take up space. I don't trust that part 100%, and so I look over those files before deleting them. Still a great, great, great free app

 

[jschmitt]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Lion smaller than Snow Leopard (which was smaller than Leopard) anyway? Why bother?

Folks who use SSD in their Macs are motivated to keep their installations as small as possible to maximize the space on these smaller drives; Every bit counts on an 80, 120 or 160GB SSD



John

 

[jschmitt]

"So what files can we delete to thin down Lion?"

I ran Monolingual on the Lion GM installation to delete ALL languages EXCEPT English, and it reported no less that 1gb "removed".

I then used Drive Genius to defrag my Lion boot partition.

Cleaned it up pretty well!

Looks like MonoLingual 1.4.5 cleaned up my problems with the GM of Lion; appears to be working and recovering space the way it used to under SL!

 

[Paulywauly]

You could also try a disc analyser (e.g. grand perspective/daisy disc) to see which files are taking up the most space etc

 

[JSMencer]

this is how my hard drive space looks

 

[JSMencer]

and on a 16gb ssd i only have 1.6gb left wheres the rest of the space

 

[davedude]

^ Wow 16GB is too small for a desktop OS IMO.

For me, Lion seems just as light as Snow Leopard...

On my 60GB SSD, I have 47GB available with Lion and about 4GB of Apps installed (CS5.5, iLife, iWork, a few odds and ends).

 

[Nuckinfuts]

this is how my hard drive space looks

See now this is where it would help you to understand your operating system before demanding that someone tell you how to thin it out. Apple hides the Unix directories to keep people like you from deleting them. The following screenshot depicts my root directory ("/" or "Macintosh HD")

 

[sajaki]

well i removed launchpad as it's pretty useless.

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Launchpad.app

 

[Patrick J]

Don't forget that Lion takes out an additional 800mb for the recovery partition.

 

[MacManiac76]

well i removed launchpad as it's pretty useless.

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Launchpad.app

And you saved a whopping 1.2 MB of space in doing so, way to go!

I'm willing to bet that it gets reinstalled when doing a point update for the OS.

 

[gentlefury]

Looks like MonoLingual 1.4.5 cleaned up my problems with the GM of Lion; appears to be working and recovering space the way it used to under SL!

I have a 256GB SSD with Bootcamp installed on half of it and still have 41GB left.

The best thing you can do is move your iPhoto and iTunes to another drive....that will save a LOT of space....especially if you have any iOS devices!