David A. Cox: Hey, folks. Today, I'm going to teach you how to clean your Mac in order
to free up space and make it run more efficiently. That's coming up next on Tech Talk America.
Hello everyone and welcome to the class. We have a lot to go over today. But before we
do, I recommend that you start by backing up your Mac using Time Machine and there are
two reasons why this is a really good idea. If you are one of those people who infrequently
backs-up your Mac, you should know that Time Machine has the ability to keep backup files
on your local hard drive, which it will not remove until you connect your backup drive
to your Mac. So by simply allowing Time Machine to do its thing that will automatically off-load
those local backup files thus freeing up more space. It's, of course, also a good idea to
do this just in case you accidentally delete anything that you need to get back. Of all
of the tricks that I'm about to teach you, none of these will improve your Mac's performance
if your hard drive is failing. So if you don't see any improvement, it might be time to book
an appointment at The Genius Bar - tell them David sent you - or consider upgrading to
a newer model. I can tell you right now, I am loving my new 16-inch MacBook Pro. One
last thing before we begin, I encourage you to get out a piece of paper and write down
how much free space you currently have on your Mac. That way when you're done watching
this video, you'll be able to look back and see how much space you ended up getting back.
And if you're willing to play along, I would love it if you'd let me know what that number
is down below in the comment section. Now, if you don't know how much free space you
currently have on your Mac, let me show you how to find out that number. All you need
to do is open a new finder window and then open the applications folder, now on your
keyboard, you just need to press the command key and the forward-slash key, and you should
see this little bar appear here at the bottom of your Finder window, which will reveal how
much free space you currently have. Oh, goody, metaphor time. You know how that little gas
light comes on when your car is low on fuel, but even then you can still go a little bit
further before it comes to a screeching halt. Well, in the case of your Mac, that first
warning light is when you only have 20% of your hard drive free. The next and much more
critical number that you absolutely want to avoid is when you have less than double the
amount of your computer's memory available in hard disk space. So, for example, if your
Mac came with 16 gigabytes of RAM, make sure you never have less than 32 gigabytes of hard
disk space. The symptoms of an overly stuffed hard drive can include slowness, applications
crashing, constipation, and diarrhea. Sorry, I've been watching way too many drug commercials
lately. You'll also constantly get what is officially known as the spinning wait cursor,
but more commonly known as the spinning beach ball of death. So if that describes what you're
experiencing with your Mac, I encourage you to watch the entire video. Notice that little
subtle hint there. Let's now begin to locate and delete a bunch of those junky files that
you probably didn't even realize were taking up space. And we're going to start by tackling
the applications folder. And while Apple does make it relatively easy to delete apps that
you bought from the app store, they don't make it quite as easy to delete apps that
you downloaded from the web. So to assist you with this cleaning process, I'm going
to recommend one of my favorite free apps and yes, you heard that last part correctly.
The name of this app is called AppCleaner and I have a link for you to that app down
below in the video description. Just download the version that corresponds with your Mac's
operating system and when you do you'll find it initially appear in your downloads folder
but what I would recommend you do is move it to the Applications folder because as you're
about to see it's really handy. And free. Did I mention that part? It's free. When you
open AppCleaner, you can either drag and drop items from your applications folder into AppCleaner
in order to remove them or if you like and this is my preference, you can switch it here
into list mode, which will show you all of the apps that are on your Mac. Now, all you
need to do is select the ones that you want to remove and AppCleaner will go and find
all of those hidden library files that are associated with that app, and it will delete
them. There are two key things that I want you to look for in this list, which include
apps that have a strike through them which basically means it's what we call a legacy
app, and it won't run on your computer's current operating system. And therefore you can delete
it. Another thing to be on the lookout for are installation files from older operating
systems. So, for example, if your Mac is running Mac OS Catalina and you see that you have
in the applications folder the installer for Mac OS Mojave or even High Sierra, you can
safely remove those two. At this point, there are a few other locations that we're going
to inspect for junkie files. So at this point, let's now go and open up the pictures folder
and while I'm sure a lot of you are going to see that you have an item in this folder
called photos library, what we're looking for here is something called iPhoto library.
Long story short - in the beginning, there was iPhoto and then there was Photos and then
everyone who had previously used iPhoto had to migrate their library into what became
the Photos library. When this changeover took place, a lot of people out there forgot that
they still had their old iPhoto library, which means you essentially have a duplicate of
all of your photos from before that changeover date. So, therefore, you can safely delete
it. I realize many of you may be worried about losing old photos in this process. So let
me quickly show you a simple test that you can run to help ease those fears. When you're
in this folder, I want you to change your view to list view then we're going to secondary
click in this space in order to reveal a few extra sorting options. And just for the time
being, I want you to add in date created and date last accessed. Here's why. I will bet
that the majority of you out there who still have an iPhoto library on your Mac is going
to end up discovering that the date that your iPhoto library was last opened is the same
date that your photos library was created which would confirm that it was migrated successfully
and can now be deleted. While we're talking about photos, I now want to address the subject
of duplicate photos. There are a lot of apps out there that claim to remove duplicates
and from my experience, some work better than others. But personally, my favorite these
days is an app called PowerPhotos. You can't get it in the App Store, but I do have a link
for you down below in the video description and I was even able to get you guys a little
discount code. So if you use the code TechTalk10, you'll save 10%. Now, PowerPhotos has two
key features both of which it does very well. It's great at removing duplicate photos but
it also has the ability to merge multiple photo libraries into one and I'm going to
be making a dedicated video about PowerPhotos, hopefully, next week. The one thing I did
want to mention is that you need to understand there are different ways that you can end
up getting duplicate photos. And so what I would recommend you do is if you do decide
to get this app, try running it several times with different search criteria. And like I
said, I'll dive deeper into this when I come out with my tutorial, hopefully, next week.
There are two more things that we need to discuss here in photos. But before we do,
I want to take a very quick moment just to mention if you need help with organizing your
photos, that is the number one thing that people hire me to help them with. So if you'd
ever like to take a private lesson with me, you can hire me right through my website at
techtalkamerica.com/privatelessons. Okay, so while we're here in photos, let's now go
into media types, and from here, let's pull up videos. Now, in this list, I would recommend
that you seek out the longest videos since those will take up the most space then when
you're done clearing those out as well as your duplicate photos, by the way, you can
also check out the screenshots category since that tends to collect a lot of junk too, I
would like to remind you that Photos has its own trash can and that does not empty for
30 to 40 days. So if you want to speed up that process, don't forget to go into recently
deleted and then click where it says delete all. There is actually one more setting that
we're going to go over here in Photos but we're going to actually come back to that
in a little bit. The next location that we're going to look at is the movies folder and
this especially applies to any of you who have used iMovie and what we're specifically
looking for here is a file called iMovie library. And the reason why we need to be careful of
this file is because anytime you're using iMovie and you go to import footage into a
project, iMovie will actually copy that footage into this file. To prove it to you, if I secondary
click on this file and go into show package contents, you'll notice that I can see the
leftover files from the demo I made for my iMovie tutorial. So here's my recommendation,
provided that you have finished your video and it's exported and you have the final cut,
you might want to consider either deleting your iMovie library or just move it to an
external hard drive. Another location that we're going to be looking at is the Downloads
folder. And once again, I recommend you change the view preferences to list view. There are
three things that we're going to be looking for in this folder. Of course, we're going
to be looking for large files so you might want to consider sorting this folder by file
size. And then we're also going to be looking for files that end with .dmg or .zip. DMG
files are used to install the software but once that software is installed you don't
need them anymore. Zip files are basically a suitcase of files that can contain anything,
but in my experience, it's usually photos. So if you do find any photos in the downloads
folder what I would recommend you do is just drag and drop all of them into the photos
app. Now, your Mac does have some ability to weed out duplicates. But again, this is
where PowerPhotos really shines. The next location we're going to inspect is the music
folder and in here, we're going to be looking for a folder called iTunes and inside of that,
we're going to be looking for a folder called iTunes media and finally look for a folder
called mobile applications. These are old backup files of apps that probably ran on
your old iPhone. Probably, many iPhones ago. You can delete them. For the next location,
we're going to go to the Apple icon at the top left of your Mac. Then we're going to
click on where it says, About this Mac, then click on the storage tab and manage. Now when
you click this button, you're going to get a pop-up window and what I would recommend
you do is just let this window sit here for a couple of minutes because it's going to
take some time to calculate everything. What we're looking for in this list is something
called iOS files. So here's the deal. Back before most people backed up their phones
using iCloud, the traditional way was to always plug your phone into your computer. So if
you since switched your backup preferences, you no longer need those back-up files and
they're probably pretty old too. If you're unsure what your preferences are, let's go
over how to check. On your iPhone, just go into settings then tap on where it has your
name at the top, then tap on iCloud and then scroll down to back up. Now to be clear, my
recommendation is to absolutely use this feature. By turning this feature on, any time your
phone is both receiving power and also connected to Wi-Fi, it's going to automatically back
up to iCloud. That way if your phone is ever lost or if you break it, you can just buy
a new one sign in with your iCloud information and everything comes back. One more thing
I can tell you from a lot of experience is that these files do not typically delete quickly.
So have the expectation that you'll click on one of them, then click Delete, wait a
minute for it to say, "Are you sure you want to delete it?" Hit delete and then wait for
it to actually clear. Don't know why it just takes it a while. If we go back to the previous
screen real quick, one of the things that I have always found to be very frustrating
about this explanation is that while it does show you, generally speaking, how much everything
takes up, it doesn't show you where it is and I bring this up because if you're looking
at this window here and it just looks completely wrong. Like if it says that you have a hundred
gigabytes of other data, it can be really frustrating to try to find where those files
actually live. And that is the reason why I am a giant fan of DaisyDisk. This app makes
it super simple to find those hidden bloated files so that you can easily deal with them.
I have links to both that app as well as my tutorial on DaisyDisk down below in the video
description. "Has he made a video on every topic?" Pretty much. When it comes to improving
your Mac's performance, there is a key setting that you may have accidentally turned on at
some point in time. And if you did will dramatically slow down every aspect of your Mac. So at
this point, let's go to the Apple icon at the top left, and now let's go into where
it says system preferences. From here, we're going to go into security and privacy, and
finally, we're going to click on where it says FileVault. Now, if on your screen, it
currently says turn off FileVault, that would be an indication that it is currently turned
on. If you're not familiar with this feature, FileVault is a way to encrypt everything on
your Mac. It's great for people who need that extra level of security but it does come at
a major cost of performance. Now, my recommendation, in general, is to not use FileVault. There
are a few exceptions to the rule which tend to include lawyers, doctors, government employees,
or anyone with a high-profile position. Please be aware that if you do currently have FileVault
turned on and then decide to turn it off, the decryption process can take several hours.
So you might want to consider doing this process overnight. There are two more iCloud settings
that I'd like to encourage you to use which will help free up a bit more space on your
Mac, so let's go back into system preferences and from here, we're going to click on where
it says Apple ID at the top right. Now, for those of you who are running an older operating
system, if you don't see Apple ID instead you're going to go to where it says iCloud.
The first option that we're going to want to turn on is at the bottom of this window
where it says optimize Mac storage. The other one you'll find here in options next to iCloud
drive and I would recommend that you turn on iCloud's ability to sync files from the
desktop and documents folder. By allowing iCloud to manage the files on your desktop
and documents folder, it will keep the files that you use the most frequently on your local
hard drive and then it will move the ones that you use less frequently over to the Cloud.
Now, you can still access those files just by either double-clicking on them or you can
secondary click and then select download. Just to clarify, if you see this icon right
here, that would indicate that that file is currently in the Cloud and you should know
that information of let's say you're going on a trip, where you're not going to have
Wi-Fi, you'd want to download that file before you go. The other feature that I encourage
you to utilize is in the photos app. So if we go back into that and then we go into preferences,
we're now going to click on the iCloud Tab and my recommendation is that you allow photos
to optimize your photos library. What this basically does is very similar, it offloads
the full resolution version of some of your photos, and then it will leave behind an optimized
version which is still perfect for viewing, emailing, or texting. If you ever need to
get back the full-resolution version, once again, all you need to do is secondary click
and select download. My advice is that if you are just turning on the optimized feature
for the first time, you should really consider leaving the photos app open for a while and
just let it sit so that it can start that optimization process in the background.Before
we wrap up this video, there are two apps that I want to recommend which will help keep
your Mac running efficiently. One of them is free, the other is paid. The first is Onyx.
This app is totally free and, of course, I have a link for you down below in the video
description. Shout out to Jeff Greenberg for turning me on to this one. Onyx has a ton
of different capabilities and while we don't have time to cover all of them today, I want
to just highlight a couple of them. If you open Onyx and then go to the Maintenance tab,
you'll notice that you can do things like check the file system structure which by the
way is a really good thing to do on your external hard drive which you are using to back up
with Time Machine. And speaking of Time Machine, you remember how I mentioned earlier in this
video that Time Machine has the ability to keep local backup files? Well, if you want
to delete those files, you can do so just by selecting this option. One little thing
to know about Onyx is that depending on which of these utilities you run, you may be forced
to restart your computer when you're done. The second app that I have to recommend is
Malwarebytes. And while they do technically have a free version, I strongly encourage
you to upgrade to the paid version. And here's the reason why - as I mentioned earlier, when
I'm not making these videos, I do a lot of private lessons with people who literally
live all over the globe. So I've got a pretty good perspective as far as seeing what issues
are trending. In the last few years, the amount of malware that I've had to remove from other
people's computers has gone through the roof and a lot of people think of malware as just
an inconvenience. But more and more, malware is leading to bigger problems like identity
theft. So at this point, I'm going to attempt to explain something that is actually very
complicated and I'm going to try to break it down so that everyone can understand it.
I want you to think of malware like a preventable disease that has a vaccine. It's a lot easier
and a lot less expensive in the long run to take preventative steps now rather than having
no protection and having to deal with the consequences. It's no secret that the group
most susceptible to scammers these days are seniors. And for that reason, I think Malwarebytes
is a great gift that younger people can give to their parents and grandparents. And I would
like to note that there is also a version of Malwarebytes now available for the iPhone
and that has some other features that are also really good like the ability to forward
scam text to a junk tab. It can block ads and AD trackers on Safari and it even has
call protection against known scammers and for full disclosure, this is not a sponsored
segment. I really do recommend these guys. I have an affiliate relationship with them
but that's because I've been recommending them for years. At this point, if you're following
along at home, I invite you to empty the trash can on your computer, open a new finder window,
and go check out how much space you got back. And don't forget to let me know in the comments
section what that number is. Oh, and one last thing, to see the actual total, you technically
need to restart your computer, which will allow certain cache files to clear out. So
you might want to consider bookmarking this video, command D, and then come back. Thank
you so much for watching everyone. If this video helped you be sure to hit that thumbs
up like button. Leave me a comment down below and if you haven't already done so, make sure
you subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you for watching everyone. This is David A.
Cox with Tech Talk America. Class dismissed.