What can I delete in 10.5 to free up space on my hard drive that I don't need? I have a 1.5 GHZ Powerbook with an 80 Gig Hard Drive and I'm down to around 25 free available Gigs left, any ideas? Not much Video on here at all. What all can i delete to free up space? I don't need Garageband for example. Much Thanks. Gravitas
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What in Leopard Can I Delete to Free Up Space?
- Thread starter kukheart
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What upgrade method did you choose to install Leopard?
Disk Inventory X can help you figure out what's taking up the most space.
Disk Inventory X can help you figure out what's taking up the most space.
I know this thread is older than dirt, but it still shows up in relevant Google searches, and there is more pertinent info I'd like to see here.
Your Mac has three Library folders, or more if you have more users. There is one at
/Library
That is right at the main, or root, level of your hard drive. Another is at
/System/Library
The third is within your home folder, named whatever your account is named. It would be represented like this
~/Library
And you would find it at
/Users/(your user name)/Library
There are a few things you can delete if you know what they are for, but if you have any doubt, leave it well alone.
/Library/Application Support
Contains a few folders which could be slimmed down or emptied, provided you do not plan to use the associated application. I personally remove the application associated with the support files I delete, mostly so I don't try to open that application later. The Application Support folders for Garage Band and iDVD together take up nearly 2GB, and many people never use either one of these applications. If you have used these, but plan not to anymore, you probably have some media in your Music and Movies folders on your Mac that you could get rid of.
/System/Library/Speech/Voices
Contains all the cool voices Mac OS X can speak to you using. Very few users take advantage of, or even have a need for this feature. The voice called Alex is almost 700MB! He sounds great, but 700MB of free space might sound better.
/System/Library/Compositions
Contains items that take up about 50MB and are not used much, but they are fun. They are the effects in Photo Booth and when you take profile pictures for Address Book.
/Library/Dictionaries
Contains two Japanese dictionaries, and one Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionaries you are likely not to need, and take up about 200MB. You could go further and remove the Dictionary application and the English dictionaries and save another 100MB.
/System/Library/Screen Savers
Contains about 38MB of cool screen savers you don't really need.
And the only other thing I would touch in there personally would be the caches at both
/Library/Caches
and
/System/Library/Caches
Log out and back in, or reboot before emptying the trash when clearing out the caches. This isn't likely to save a huge amount of space, but there is a chance it will make your computer run a little faster, after the reboot that is.
Also, with all these files to be removed, it's best to remove the files within the folders I listed, rather than the whole folders, but it really shouldn't batter much either way.
I don't think there is much else you'd want to get rid of, unless you're on a single-purpose machine.
It's also important to note that a Mac can run quite well until you've nearly stuffed it. The OS actually partitions a little bit of swap space on the hard drive of any Mac, so unless the system doesn't have enough room to write caches (you can find those folders and see how big they are - trivial really) You probably won't see a drop in performance from lack of space.
Delete wisely, and ALWAYS back up. Good luck all
Spike
AppZapper, AppCleaner, CleanApp, TrashMe, and similar apps do not do a thorough job of removing all files/folders related to deleted apps. I tested several of these, using Skype as the app to be removed. Of 17 items to be removed:
AppZapper missed 13 items
AppCleaner missed 11 items
AppDelete missed 8 items
Hazel missed 9 items
I also tested AppTrap, CleanMyMac and a few others, but don't recall how many items they missed. All left files/folders behind. In most cases, they remove .plist files and a few others, but leave behind much larger files and folders. (you will find a discussion of these tests in the thread linked below)AppCleaner missed 11 items
AppDelete missed 8 items
Hazel missed 9 items
One app that I would not recommend, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere, is CleanMyMac. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much
The only effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion: