15 Tips on How to Fix “Startup Disk is Almost Full” Error
I recently bought a brand new macbook air and I have had it about 6 months and got a warning last night saying disk space was low. I went to 'about this mac' and checked and I have 85gb of apps! Moreover, if you have a lack of free storage space, most likely your Mac will start running slow. You should have at least 15% of a free space on the startup disk to run your Mac properly. That’s why you should speed up your Mac, or at least avoid getting the annoying message that Mac Startup Disk is full.
Although the latest models of Apple computers are equipped with terabyte hard drives, sooner or later, users find that their Startup Disk is almost full. Even a little iTunes or iPhoto library can take up almost 64 or 128 gigabytes of disk space. Over time, after the gradual filling of the disk, the message “Your startup disk is almost full” starts to pop up on your Mac screen. This means that your Mac storage space is already occupied and you need to clean up your Mac.
Unfortunately, the unwelcome message about low free disk space may appear at the most inopportune moment, for example, when you urgently need to record a movie before a trip or create a backup copy of your iPhone. Moreover, if you have a lack of free storage space, most likely your Mac will start running slow. You should have at least 15% of a free space on the startup disk to run your Mac properly. That’s why you should speed up your Mac, or at least avoid getting the annoying message that Mac Startup Disk is full.
In this article, we will cover some easy tips on how to clean up your Mac as well as figure out what is the Startup disk, when does the message appear and how can you discover what’s taking up your disk space.
Contents
What is a Startup Disk on macOS?
The startup disk is the partition of the volume, where the macOS is installed and where the users’ files and apps are usually stored.
By default, the Startup Disk is the disk named Macintosh HD when the computer is turned on for the first time. The name of the disk can be changed, but it would still be the Startup Disk.
What to do when “Startup Disk Full” message appears?
The message saying your startup disk is almost full is likely to appear when you have too many files on your Mac and there is a lack of free disk space.
When your Startup Disk is almost full, your Mac’s performance slows down. In order to complete operations, the macOS requires space to store temporary system files and, when there is poor free space, the Mac runs too slow or crashes.
So the first thing you should do is to analyze your disk usage and start to free up space on Mac. If the message “Startup Disk Full” appears in the most inappropriate moment and you do not have much time to explore your disk usage, we recommend that you use MacCleaner Pro.
MacCleaner Pro is a bundle of professional utilities, which will help you to quickly see your disk usage and clean up your disk from junk files so that to stop the annoying message to disturb you. MacCleaner Pro will show you the size of duplicate files, unused apps, large and unused files, and such junk files, like caches, logs, leftovers and so on.
How to find what is taking up space on my Startup Disk?
You can view your storage usage by selecting About This Mac in the Apple menu and switching to the Storage section.
There are six general categories of data stored on your Startup Disk. The larger the bar, the larger the space taken up by those types of files: Photos, Apps, Movies, Audios, Backups, Documents, Other.
As the “Startup Disk Full” message appears on your screen due to lack of free disk space, the first thing recommended is to clean up your Macintosh HD of unneeded files.
As soon as you know what’s taking up your disk space, you can review your folders and find out the unneeded files for removal.
Movies, Pictures or Backups usually take up the most space. But it often happens that the biggest space eaters are the “Other” files, including caches, logs, cookies, archives, disk images, plugins, extensions and so on. You can find and remove unneeded files manually or use special software tools for a quick and easy cleanup.
Check Your Trash
It may sound elementary, but we frequently delete files and forget to empty the Trash. The files in the Trash still occupy your disk space, so it is recommended that you empty the Trash folder at least once a week.
To delete files from the Trash folder permanently, make a right click on the Trash in the dock panel and select Empty Trash. Another way to complete this task is to open the Trash and click the Empty button in the top right corner.
Delete Downloads
How many times have you downloaded files from web browsers, messengers, torrents, mail? When you download files from the Internet, by default, they are saved in the Downloads folder, which can easily be found at this location:
/Macintosh HD/Users/Current User/Downloads
According to statistic, the average user accumulates 0.5 GB per week in the Downloads folder.
All of the files in the Downloads folder usually stay unorganized and may take up several Gigabytes of free space. Also, you probably have needed these files only once, for example, the installation files (disk images). Thus, more than half the files in the Downloads are not needed and should be deleted.
Sorting the list of files by size, kind or date will help you to quickly find out what unneeded files you have and remove them.
Clear Cache
A cache file is a temporary data file created by apps, browsers and many other programs to help your Mac run faster. Note, when you remove cache files, they will be recreated the next time you run the application. Nevertheless, you may no longer be using some applications, while their leftovers still remain in the Cache folder and occupy tens of gigabytes of your disk memory. So, it’s a good idea to clear the cache from time to time.
Cache files are stored in the Library folders, which you can find in the following locations:
- /Library/Caches
- ~/Library/Caches
In /Library/Caches you will find temporary files created by the system. Usually, these files don’t occupy too much space. However, in the ~/Library/Caches folder, you will see a huge number of junk files, which are created when you run applications. As a result, this folder may increase substantially in size.
By default, the Library folder is hidden on macOS, as Apple. To open it, follow these steps:
- Open the Finder window.
- From Menu click Go → Go to Folder.
- In the dialog box type ~/Library/Cache and click Go.
Remove Logs
While the Library folder is open, you can also find another type of temporary file – Log files. They are stored in the Logs folder. Please make sure, before you remove the logs of the system, apps and mobile devices, that you no longer need them.
Remove Language Resources
Language Resources is the data stored by apps for different language localizations. Your system has 26 pre-installed dictionaries of 818 Mb. Apart from English, there are German, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Thai and other languages. Localizations are the most misjudged space eaters. If you don’t need iTunes translations for Vietnamese, you should delete these dictionaries, which are stored in the following directory:
/Macintosh HD/Users/Your User/Library/ Dictionaries
You can easily find out which files should be deleted by their name.
All previous steps can be easily done by the ClearDisk application. Simply press the Scan button, and the ClearDisk app will do all the work instead of you. It will find all junk files in just a few seconds: Downloads, Trash, Cache, Logs, Language Resources
Delete Old iPhone Backups
If you often sync your iPhone with iTunes, then the application creates dozens of backup copies on your device, and they often eat off a significant amount of gigabytes of disk space, as they include movies, music, and other large files. To find old backups, launch iTunes → Go to Menu Bar → iTunes → Preferences.
Here you will see a list of all the backups iTunes managed to make while working with your gadget. If you are sure that you do not need them, safely remove them. But make sure they are in iCloud!
Another way to find and remove iOS backups is to go to the following location:
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Delete Mail Downloads
If you use the standard macOS Mail application, when you view email attachments, the system saves them to a separate folder on your hard drive. In several months of working with the mail client, the folder’s size can grow up to several GB.
The easiest way to find this folder is to search via Spotlight. Just type “Mail Downloads” in the search field.
If this method didn’t work, then open the Finder → press Shift+Cmd+G key shortcut and in a search field enter:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail
Preview the files and save those which you need, or delete all the files at once.
Uninstall Unused Apps
Check your Applications folder. The number of all the installed applications may sometimes exceed 100; in fact, some may not be used regularly or not used anymore. These apps take up a lot of space on your Mac’s hard drive. So it’s time to uninstall such unused programs. But please note, moving an app to Trash just by dragging and dropping it to Trash is not enough. You need to remove the app’s cache and other service files, which are stored in the Library folder. We recommend that you read the instruction how to uninstall apps completely or use a free program App Cleaner & Uninstaller to remove apps correctly and completely.
Instead of manual searching for apps’ service files and wasting your time, App Cleaner & Uninstaller will automatically find all the service files of the apps and even the leftovers of already removed apps.
Remove Remains
Remains are the broken service files left after deleting the apps. Such broken service files are unnecessary and they just take up your disk memory, so you should find and remove them.
The apps’ leftovers are usually stored in the Library folder; however, they sometimes can be scattered in different locations all over your drive, littering your Mac. Searching for them manually seems to be an impracticable task. Fortunately, with the help of App Cleaner & Uninstaller, you can find and remove them with ease. The application finds and shows these files in the Remains section.
Move Big and Infrequently Used Files to External Drive
If you need to free up gigabytes of data, the best way to do it as quickly as possible is to check out your Movies folder. Video content is the biggest space eater as well as audio and photo files in the Music and Pictures folders.
Check also your disk for other files with large sizes. For this, go to File in the Menu Bar and select New Smart Folder.
In the top right corner click the Plus button and, in the parameter fields, select File Size … is greater than, and set the needed file size, for example, 1GB or 500MB. Preview the biggest files and remove/move unused ones.
Even if you removed the biggest files, like videos or music, you may still have lots of other huge files you don’t suspect. We recommend that you analyze your disk space usage deeper and find out what’s taking up the most space on your disk. For this, you can use the Disk Expert app, which shows you the disk space usage in a sunburst diagram and allows you to easily operate the biggest files and folders.
Disk Expert is capable of scanning custom folders, identifying the biggest files and collecting files from various folders into unified “drop lists” for further movement to external hard drives.
Use Cloud-Based Data Storage Services
If you use the Dropbox service, you know that, even in a free version, the service provides 2 gigabytes of space. This means that you can move big files and folders from your hard drive to the cloud storage. Use the Selective synchronization option, which allows you to delete content sent to the cloud from the hard drive. To do this, go to the Preferences → Sync section and specify the desired folders to sync.
Except for Dropbox, there are dozens of other similar services you can use, such as Google Drive, iDrive, Microsoft SkyDrive and so on.
Delete Unnecessary Desktop Pictures and ScreenSavers
Most Mac users like good screensavers and do not limit themselves to the default collection. If you are a screensaver fan and have a big collection of them, don’t forget that they may eat up a sizeable memory on your disk. It is recommended that you remove unneeded screensavers. For this purpose, you can again use App Cleaner & Uninstaller Pro which finds all the screen savers and shows them in the Extensions section.
![Space Space](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124894816/851358076.png)
To find the desktop wallpapers, go to the following directory:
/Macintosh HD/Library/Desktop Pictures
It contains 52 images of 432.52 Mb. You are free to delete all redundant pictures.
Find and Remove Duplicate Files
You may have created copies of documents or downloaded some files twice, and then forgotten about it. Duplicate files take up useless disk space on your Mac. Searching for duplicates manually seems to be a long and hard process. The only thing you can do quite quickly is to find the duplicate media files (music and video) in the iTunes Library.
To find duplicate music and video files, follow these steps:
- Open iTunes.
- Click the File in the Menu.
- Select Library → Show Duplicate Items.
iTunes will show you a list of duplicates. Examine the list and remove the duplicates.
Unfortunately, for all other types of duplicate files, you will have to look through each folder individually. This could take hours. But don’t panic; there is a solution. We will now discuss another way to find duplicates. We are sure you will find this useful.
For other types of duplicate files, use a special application Duplicate File Finder, which will help you to find and remove duplicate files in less than 5 minutes.
Duplicate File Finder allows you to scan any folders and drives and find all duplicate files, including videos, music, pictures, documents, archives and other duplicate files. The application finds even Similar folders and can merge them so that you can easily organize your files and folders.
Restart Your Mac
Once you’ve cleaned up your hard drive, you should restart your Mac. A simply rebooting of the system can help to free up the disk space cluttered by temporary items and cache folders. It will also clean the virtual memory and sleep image files.
Clear Ram Memory on Your Mac
And, finally, it’s time to think about your RAM memory as well. This will not just create more space on your Mac but will help speed it up. This is especially important when your startup disk is almost full and your Mac’s speed is starting to lag. Memory Cleaner can work in the background and clear inactive RAM when the memory is filled up. The application is absolutely free and you can download it from our site.
Conclusion
Well, that seems to be all. So, using these tips you can delete up to 20 GB of data not really needed on the computer. Hope these tips help you to free up disk space on your Mac and fix the “Startup Disk is Full” error message. Just note that you can clean up your Mac manually, but this may take too much time. Also, you can use professional tools, which will help you to save time and do a quick efficient cleanup of your hard drive.
MacCleaner Pro
Bundle of Professional Tools to Clean Up Startup Disk
Owning a new Mac is a great feeling — it’s the fastest it’s ever going to be, there are no scratches or dings on the computer, and you have what seems like an unlimited amount of storage space. Fast forward a few months or years, and you may start finding that you’re running out of storage. For those of you with Macs that can be easily upgraded with a new internal drive from OWC, your solution may be to purchase and install a drive with more capacity. But what if you have something like an older MacBook Air with very limited storage — 64GB — that is much more difficult to upgrade? In this article, we’ll show some simple ways to free up storage space on your Mac.
How Much Storage Is Being Used?
The first thing you’ll want to do is find out how much storage is being used on your Mac, and for what purposes. One way to start looking is to click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab, and System Information displays how much storage each attached drive contains. Below, you see that I have a lot of space available on my 2 TB Fusion Drive, a 4 TB backup drive that’s about 2/3 full, and an install disk that’s wide open.
The first thing you’ll want to do is find out how much storage is being used on your Mac, and for what purposes. One way to start looking is to click the Apple menu, then select About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab, and System Information displays how much storage each attached drive contains. Below, you see that I have a lot of space available on my 2 TB Fusion Drive, a 4 TB backup drive that’s about 2/3 full, and an install disk that’s wide open.
While hovering your cursor above the various colors and shades listed under each drive capacity shows the type of files taking up space, you may find that some of the labels don’t make sense — for example, the red area on the Macintosh HD shows that I have 115.26 GB of iOS files. That sounds like something I may be able to get rid of, but I’ll need to know what they’re used for.
To get a better idea of how storage space is being used, click the Manage… button that’s located to the right of the drive icon. This initially shows a list of how much space is being used for various things and a set of recommendations like “Store in iCloud”, “Optimize Storage”, “Empty Trash Automatically”, and “Reduce Clutter”. While you can click those recommendation buttons to save some storage space, it’s more instructive to look at the list of apps or files in the left sidebar of this window to see what’s taking up an unusual amount of space.
(This view shows how much storage is used for specific purposes as seen in the left sidebar.)
As you can see in the screenshot above, iOS Files, Photos, Documents and Parallels VMs (virtual machines) take up the majority of the space on my iMac. Clicking each one of the listed items tells me what’s actually being stored. In the screenshot below, clicking on iOS Files shows that “device backups and software updates” are being stored. Sounds like a place where I might be able to clean up some files.
Likewise, clicking on Documents displayed a list of files that are stored in various places on my Mac. I was surprised to find a number of large disk image (.dmg) files in my Downloads folder, all of which were app installers that I could easily delete. Doing so cleared up about 2 GB of storage. That’s not much, but if my Mac had only 64 GB of storage like some of the original MacBook Airs, that 2 GB is significant.
iOS Files
Have you owned iOS devices for years? If you ever backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, or used iTunes to search for and install iOS apps, then your Mac is probably using a lot of space to hold old iOS backups and copies of all of your iOS apps.
Have you owned iOS devices for years? If you ever backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, or used iTunes to search for and install iOS apps, then your Mac is probably using a lot of space to hold old iOS backups and copies of all of your iOS apps.
Things have changed in the iOS world. Backups are best done using the iCloud Backup facility that’s easy to turn on in iOS by tapping launching Settings, then tapping Apple ID > iCloud, and finally scrolling down until you find iCloud Backup listed. Make sure it’s turned on, and your iPhone is backed up to iCloud each and every night over Wi-Fi.
Likewise, the iOS App Store is no longer available on your Mac in iTunes. Do you really need all of those app updates and backups on your Mac when they’re easily available with a tap on your iPhone or iPad? For me, it was easy to free up 115.26 GB of storage by deleting two iOS files (one for an iPhone named “Mesa Verde”, the other for an iPad named “Canyonlands”). To delete these files, simply move the cursor to the name of the iOS device and an “x” in a circle — indicating a delete button — appears. Click it, and you’re asked if you wish to remove the file as the removal cannot be undone. Click the “Remove” button that appears and the space is cleared immediately.
Photos
Your Photos Library contains all of the pictures you’ve taken and videos that you’ve synced with your Mac, so it can be huge. On Macs with limited storage, it may be impossible to store the full Photos Library! Fortunately, there’s a solution to this dilemma: iCloud Photo Library.
Your Photos Library contains all of the pictures you’ve taken and videos that you’ve synced with your Mac, so it can be huge. On Macs with limited storage, it may be impossible to store the full Photos Library! Fortunately, there’s a solution to this dilemma: iCloud Photo Library.
When you enable iCloud Photo Library in the Photos app by selecting Photos > Preferences > iCloud, then checking the iCloud Photo Library checkbox, your entire library is uploaded to iCloud (see screenshot below). This has several benefits: your precious photos and videos are backed up to the cloud, and those photos and videos are accessible from every Apple device you own and through iCloud.com.
My Photos Library holds 51,802 photos and 510 videos, yet I can view all of those photos on my iPhone or iPad if I wish — both devices with storage that’s much more limited than on my Mac. Fortunately, iCloud Photo Library only stores “thumbnails” — smaller, lower-resolution versions of the originals — on the devices to optimize storage space on all of my devices. When I wish to look at a full-resolution photo or see a 4K video I shot with my iPhone, it’s downloaded from iCloud to my devices in the best available resolution.
It’s possible to store your originals in full resolution on your Mac if you have enough space, but choosing to Optimize Mac Storage makes it possible to save a lot of space. That can be very important on laptops with limited storage.
iTunes
Have you ever purchased a movie, TV show or podcast to watch or listen to on your Mac? If so, you may be taking up a lot of storage with those files. Clicking iTunes on the list of storage requirements displays any movies, TV shows or podcasts that are taking up space, and once again they can be deleted by clicking the “x” in a circle delete button.
Have you ever purchased a movie, TV show or podcast to watch or listen to on your Mac? If so, you may be taking up a lot of storage with those files. Clicking iTunes on the list of storage requirements displays any movies, TV shows or podcasts that are taking up space, and once again they can be deleted by clicking the “x” in a circle delete button.
Documents
System Information provides three ways of looking at the documents stored on your Mac, all of which may point out files that can be deleted or archived to an external drive. Click on Documents, and you’ll see (screenshot below) that it lists Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.
System Information provides three ways of looking at the documents stored on your Mac, all of which may point out files that can be deleted or archived to an external drive. Click on Documents, and you’ll see (screenshot below) that it lists Large Files, Downloads, and File Browser.
(Listing Document files by size.)
Large Files is probably the most useful tab, as it can quickly point out single files that are taking up massive amounts of storage. For example, there’s one QuickTime movie at the top of my list that chews up a whopping 16.5 GB! There’s a reason for that: it’s a high-resolution virtual reality movie I shot.
The Downloads tab shows all items that are in your Downloads folder, and they’re listed by how long they’ve been in the folder. The list can also be sorted by kind (PNG image, PDF document and so on…), by the date the file was last accessed, and by size. My Downloads folder tends to accumulate PNG images and JPGs for screenshots, and I rarely delete them.
Sadly, System Information only allows one document at a time to be deleted, so if you find that you have hundreds of files to get rid of, open your Downloads folder, highlight all of the files you wish to delete, and then delete them all at once.
What About The System Folder?
The Mac System doesn’t take up as much space as it used to, but on occasion, users find that it has grown to the point that it’s taking up entirely too much storage. You may note when you have the System Information window open that it does not show a storage requirement for System — it often just displays the progress “spinning gear” icon. A better way to see what’s in the System folder is to use a third-party application like OmniDiskSweeper, which is free to download from The Omni Group.
The Mac System doesn’t take up as much space as it used to, but on occasion, users find that it has grown to the point that it’s taking up entirely too much storage. You may note when you have the System Information window open that it does not show a storage requirement for System — it often just displays the progress “spinning gear” icon. A better way to see what’s in the System folder is to use a third-party application like OmniDiskSweeper, which is free to download from The Omni Group.
(This 8.2 GB system folder is typical for a Mac running macOS 10.13 High Sierra.)
As you can see in the screenshot above from OmniDiskSweeper, the System folder isn’t taking up a lot of space — just 8.2 GB. If your System folder has grown to the point that it’s gigantic, then you probably want to take a look in there with this tool to see what’s chewing up storage.
Common issues that can cause your System Folder to swell include apps that are writing a lot of log files that are not being deleted, and beta versions of macOS that sometimes cause available space to be incorrectly reported. For the former issue, it’s a good idea to use a utility like the free OnyX to go through and delete log files on a regular schedule. The latter problem can be avoided by not installing beta software on your primary Mac — instead, use a test or virtual machine to try out the beta.
If you do encounter the “growing System File” issue, it may be time to re-install macOS. The best way to do this is to back up everything, then do a clean install. Once your files are restored from your backup, you have an operating system that is as clean as the one you’d get with a new Mac.