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Take Back Your Mac's Hard Drive: The Best Ways to Reclaim Disk Space

Jun 8, 2007

📄 Contents

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Find Large Files and Folders
Remove Language Translations
Remove Universal Code
Remove Unused Applications, Widgets, Preference Panes, and Screensavers
Clean Out the Application Support Folder(s)
Get Rid of Manuals and Read Me Files
Get Rid of Unused Printer Drivers
Search for iTunes and iPhoto Duplicates
Put iPhoto on a Diet
Delete iWeb Published Websites
Use Compressed Disk Images
Remove Cache Files

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Remove Unused Applications, Widgets, Preference Panes, and Screensavers

Removing unused applications can seem an obvious choice for reclaiming disk space. Some applications can take up incredible amounts of space. iWeb is one example, coming in at more than 300MB. If you have an external hard drive, you can place seldom-used applications on that so that you won’t have to reinstall them if you ever decide you need them.

While applications might seem an obvious choice, other Mac OS X add-ons might not. Things like third-party preference panes, screensavers, and even Dashboard widgets can take up a fair amount of space. This is particularly true if you habitually download and try out new widgets but later just remove them from the Dashboard without deleting them. The same can be said of preference panes and some screensavers. Removing unused preference panes can also increase system performance. You can find widgets, screensavers, and preference panes in the appropriately named folders in the Library folders in your home folder (for those only available to your user account) and at the root level of your hard drive (for those available to all users).

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