What are some good ways to free up disk space on OS X >= Yosemite?

Solution 1:

So, it this is not a direct answer to your question because it is kind of a work around.

I totally agree with not having / wanting to spend more than you initially should have, but I think we need to start changing our mindset a bit. PC's and MAC's alike are coming with less internal storage options and somewhat force you to rely on the cloud and / or external storage.

So with that out of the way, this my workflow - I have a 128GB MBA, so I am in a similar position as you.

I bought am external USB3.0 drive that I carry with me all the time. On that drive I have my photo library and all the big stuff. I figure if I am doing anything that requires a substantial amount of work in my photos or iTunes, I will be sitting down and plugging in a drive is no biggy.

On my internal drive - I simply just have the apps and I only have the apps I use 70%+ of the day on my MBA drive - the rest lives on my external drive.

I also use Xcode and the latest beta takes up 7.5GB+ so that is a good chunk gone already, versus the Xcode 6 version which is 5.5GB so those 2 already take up over 10% of the drive.

So what I do is every 6 months I re-install my mac. Once when the new OS is out and once in the middle of the summer. All my data lives in the cloud like dropbox and I do not use my documents or pictures folder - they are pointing to my folders inside my dropbox folder - so all my data is save.

This way every 6 months, my temporary data is removed and I know it is, because my internal SSD is cleaned off. This process takes about a day, but it is saving me a lot of frustration.

I can appreciate not everyone can adjust their workflow around this, so to let you know I am an iOS developer and a teacher at a tertiary polytechnic so my data is super important.

Notes I store in Evernote and my files in Dropbox, iCloud I use as well, but not very much.

I hope this gives you an idea of how to help you manage this issue. It is a real pain to start of with, but if you treat your MBA purely as a data independent shell, than it may help your thinking about it a bit.

Hope it works for you :-)

Solution 2:

More Suggestive answer supporting with everyone's answer as our main purpose is to delete unnecessary file and folder for iOS developer:

1. DeviceSupport - You can keep the simualator which log's you may need in future. It's actually symbolicate crash logs for different device/iOS.

2. Delete this folder after every few days interval

   ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

3. All your targets are kept in archived form in Archives folder. Before you decide to delete contents of this folder, here is a warning - if you want to be able to debug deployed versions of your App, you shouldn’t delete the archives

   ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives

4. iOS Device Support folder creates a subfolder with the device version as identifier when you attach the device. Most of the time it’s just old stuff. Keep the latest version and rest of them can be deleted (if you don’t have an app that runs on 5.1.1, there’s no reason to keep the 5.1.1 directory/directories).

   ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport

5. Core Simulator folder is familiar for many Xcode users. It’s simulator’s territory; thats where it stores app data. It’s obvious that you can toss the older version simulator folder/folders if you no longer support your apps for those versions. And, it’s safer to use ‘Reset content and Settings’ option from menu to delete all of your app data in a Simulator.

   ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator

6. Caches are always safe to delete since they will be recreated as necessary. This isn’t a directory, it’s a file of kind Xcode Project. Delete away!

   ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode

7. Additionally, Apple iOS device automatically syncs specific files and settings to your Mac every time they are connected to your Mac machine. To be on safer side, it’s wise to use Devices pane of iTunes preferences to delete older backups; you should be retaining your most recent back-ups off course.

   ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

i got back about 40GB! For more help go to: http://ajithrnayak.com/post/95441624221/xcode-users-can-free-up-space-on-your-mac

Solution 3:

Instead of obsessing about eking out every last wasted megabyte, (I used to be this way,) you can replace the internal SSD with one of larger size, (up to 1TB @ $500,) and retain the smaller one in an external enclosure to connect with USB. Depending on the model of MBA and your budget, this can be an attractive and fear-easing decision, leaving you with plenty of space to use (up.)

OWC has installation kits, containing the upgraded SSD, a screwdriver kit, enclosure and video instructions. I've done it myself on my own MBA, and we've updated several early MBA 11's w/64GB SSDs at my school to extend their lifetimes.

Disclosure: satisfied customer; no financial ties to Macsales.com or Other World Computing.

Solution 4:

One other thing you can do to free up space is remove GarageBand and all of its sound loops and content. Of course, this will make it impossible to use GarageBand, and if you have used any of that content with other programs, like iMovie, it will be gone from them as well.

But if you don't care about this content, removing it can free several gigabytes of storage.

Instructions can be found here...