What do you use to decrapify and declutter the hard drive space on your macs

By Moopie Curran, 26 April, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi,
I'm wondering what people use to decrapify and declutter their mac's hard drives? Is there a service, or an app that can do this? I know as time goes by, you get a lot of cache and data that builds up. So I'm looking for any solutions?
Thanks

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Comments

By Ollie on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 17:42

On the defragging side, you don't. Apple macs don't use that sort of storage, I'm not sure if windows does any more either. Anyway, you don't need to worry about it.

For decluttering, I use Clean My Mac X, which can help you track down big files, old files and helps you uninstall apps completely, IE, getting rid of the little support files that are hidden away. it's paid, but if you want a clean up, it's good.

The final and really brutal way to clean your system is a fresh install. Back everything important up and reinstall. I do this about once a year and it helps shake out any persistant issues... Except voiceover... Voiceover is always crap.

By Siobhan on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 17:42

Clean my Mac is a great and pretty accessible app. Wish they didn't use the table format but them's the breaks I guess.

By Brad on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 17:42

I just thought you'd like to know.

They might get rid of it, I dunno, but it's been there for so long that I'm not sure if they'll remove it unless something drastic happpens.

By Maldalain on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 17:42

The app is superb and it has lots of utilities. Accessibility is great

By Ollie on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 17:42

Thanks Brad. Feels like a rather outdated file system if they leave great swaths of empty space between data. Maybe it doesn't apply on SDD or the effect are negligable. I remember it being an issue in the 90s where drives were soooo slow.

By Igna Triay on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

I recommend clean my mac as well... Its great. I've been using it since clean my mac 3 and its never let me down, mac still works as good as when I first got it back in 2018.

By Ollie on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

I should say, and it is rare of me to be pro mac, though this isn't accessibility related so, there you go... I'm not 100 % sure clean my mac is needed if you keep a fairly tidy ship. It's useful digging out old files but most of what it does you can do yourself. I think mac is built in such a way that it is pretty well self optimised. Saying that, I do use it to find big files and uninstall things I'd like to completely remove, including the config files etc. What I"m saying is, it's not really needed for your mac to continue running well, especially if you're on a post 2020 mac with apple silicon.

By Siobhan on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

That is a completely inaccessable app. I installed it just fine, to hear "Onyx not responding" over and over and over... I uninstalled it along with a few other apps. Kinda wish Clean my Mac would sort of remind you once in awhile, dude, check the apps you have. ;)

By Moopie Curran on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

I wish onyx would work, because it has that glorious feature that apple took away, the ability to reboot your computer on a schedule. Now you have to go to the stupid terminal to do it, to adjust the schedule. It's extremely dumb that apple took that UI in the energy saver preferences away. I would adjust my reboot times quite frequently, based on my schedule, so I wouldn't be working on something, and have to reboot, it would already be rebooted when I got on the computer. Anyway, I was happy when I saw onyx had this feature as a UI, but I get the same thing, onyx not responding, blah, blah, blah.

By Bruce Harrell on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

Don't forget First Aid inside the utilities folder inside the apps folder. It's good for those who have a spinning hd as opposed to an ssd.

By Brian on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

A shame you guys are having problems with Onyx. I'm wondering if that is a Sonoma thing? From my own experiences, Onyx works great all the way up to and including Ventura. 🤷‍♂️

By Tyler on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

The first time you open Onyx, it will request a variety of system permissions, which you must grant for the app to function. This dialog does not appear to be accessible with VoiceOver, resulting in the "Onyx not responding" message. If you can't see the screen, you can use something like Seeing AI or sighted assistance to view what permissions are being requested, quit Onyx and grant the requests in System Settings > Privacy & Security, restart the Mac, and try running Onyx again.

Also, when Onyx is performing a task, like verifying your disk or deleting files, VoiceOver will announce that the app is not responding. This is normal and should resolve when the task is complete.

HTH

By Brad on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

They're quite fast and you can defrag your drive if you need to.

By Brian on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

I had forgotten about the permissions thing. If I remember correctly, you can press something like VO plus F2 to pull up a menu that will show all your available windows open, including system windows. Usually, the permission requests will show up here. Those are typically accessible, but then again, One never knows with Sonoma.

HTH

By Siobhan on Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 17:42

Gotta love Irish temper right? I still never got the VOCR app installed supposedly it's easier. I'll just wait for the soon to be released disc image lol. i swear I normally am not this techno weird but, a lot's going on so I didn't give it much of a chance.

By Brian on Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 17:42

I adore your Irish temper.

Never change. 😇