How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac

How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac 4,5/5 7660 votes

We explain how to show hidden files on your Mac, including how to view the Library folder in Finder. How find a Mac's hidden files and Library folder. Is also tucked out. Jan 12, 2020  With either the desktop or a Finder window as the frontmost application, hold down the option key and select the Go menu. The Library folder will be listed as one of the items in the Go menu. Select Library and a Finder window will open showing the contents of the Library folder. Knowing what you’re going through, in this article, we show you how to quickly clean up your iTunes media folder with the least amount of stress. Locate Your iTunes Media Folder on PC/Mac. Your iTunes library is organized into two library files and a media folder. Here’s how you can locate the media folder.

  1. Show Library Folder Mac Os
  2. How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac 10
  3. How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac Os
  4. Mac Library Folder
  5. Mac User Library Folder Missing

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. This is an overview of available storage space on your Mac, as well as the space used by different categories of files:

Is there a way to clean up the /Library folder of a user? My folder is about 32 GB! How can I clean up my user Library folder? Ask Question Asked 7 years, 7 months ago. Remove useless files from a Mac. What Lion maintenance utility should I use?

Jul 31, 2016  You can delete the folder to free up the space. Open Finder, click the Go menu, and select Go to Folder. Plug /Library/Mail/V2 into the box and press Enter. Right-click or Control-click the folder with the name of your email account and select Move to Trash. You can then empty your trash to free up all those gigabytes. Apr 30, 2019  Move the iMovie library to external drive. If you’re still struggling to find disk space, you may like to move the iMovie library onto an external drive. That way you can do what you like with the app without impacting your Mac storage. Connect your external drive and format as MacOS Extended (Journaled) if necessary.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. (The Manage button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.)

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.


Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Show Library Folder Mac Os

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

  • Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  • Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  • Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

  • Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

So, your music collection is a mess. It’s grown from a toddling collection of your best songs to a mammoth network of playlists filled with songs that you don’t even remember. If this is you, I feel your pain. I really do.

Organizing your iTunes media folder can be quite a hassle. It takes much time and is especially vexing if you have to deal with deleting duplicates and songs that you don’t really like. And we’ve not even got into dealing with your installer cache, cookies, logs, junk files, old backups and other useless files.

Knowing what you’re going through, in this article, we show you how to quickly clean up your iTunes media folder with the least amount of stress.

How to clean mac computer

Locate Your iTunes Media Folder on PC/Mac

Your iTunes library is organized into two library files and a media folder. Here’s how you can locate the media folder.

Ordinarily, your iTunes media folder is in your iTunes folder. This is the default location. The folder will be titled as follows:

  • Mac: Finder > username > music
  • Windows 7 or later: Usersusernamemusic
  • Windows XP: Documents and SettingsusernameMy DocumentsMy music

If the folder is not in the default location, you can find it by using the following steps:

Step 1: Open iTunes.

Step 2:On Mac: From the menu bar at the top of your computer screen, click on iTunes > Preferences.
On Windows: From the menu bar at the top of your iTunes window, click on Edit > Preferences.

Step 3: Click the Advanced tab.

Step 4: There will be a box under “iTunes Media folder location”. That’s where your iTunes media folder is.

Now that you’ve found your iTunes media folder, here’s how you can clean it quickly and easily.

How to Clean up iTunes Media Folder - 3 Ways

You don’t have to use any application or internet tool to clean up your iTunes media folder. If you want to, you can do this clean up manually.

1 One-Stop Solution to Clean iTunes Media Folder Automatically

Instead of manually searching media folder on your PC and deciding which files to delete, you'd better consider iMyFone TunesFix, an advanced iTunes cleaner. It is the one-stop shop for cleaning iTunes media, used software updates, old backups and other useless files to keep iTunes clean and run at optimum.

Key Features:

  • Automatically remove media files from iTunes library and iTunes media folder with ease.
  • Release huge iTunes storage space by simply deleting used iTunes/iOS software updates and useless backups (including backups made by both iTunes and 3rd-party programs).
  • Tune up iTunes performance by 1 click to clear all useless files, including cookies, cache, logs, junk files, etc.
  • Let you handle every issue you have with iTunes with minimal stress.

You can quickly and easily clean up your iTunes media folder with iMyFone TunesFix through the following easy steps:

Step 1: Open iMyFone TunesFix on your PC. It will do auto-detection of your iTune. If your iTunes is fragmentary, it gives you option to fix it. If your iTunes works perfect, you will see the home interface.

Step 2: There will be 7 options. Select “Quick Clean” mode and your iTunes will get scanned.
Note: If you want to clean useless backups which are hidden and occuping much space, click on “Deep Clean”.

Step 3: TunesFix will show you the scanning result of iTunes media files, iOS backups, software update files and other data. Only tick the files you want to clean and click “Clean” button to start cleaning.

It cleans fast and only takes a few minutes or even a few seconds. You'll know how much space has been saved after cleaning.

2 How to Manually Clean iTunes Media Folder

Since you can locate your iTunes media folder, you can manually delete some unwanted files from the folder. However, to clean all your iTunes data at one place, you need to consolidate files first:

  • On iTunes, go to “File > Library > Organize Library” and check “Consolidate files” and hit “OK” to save the settings.

After that, get into the iTunes media folder and you may see different folders there, such as Books, Music, Movies, Podcasts, Homw Videos, Audiobooks, Tones, Podcasts, Downloads, etc. For example, the Books folder stores everything in your iTunes Books library. So do other folders.

Get into the specific iTunes media folder and delete the unwanted or duplicate files.

How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac 10

3 Manually Clean iTunes Media Folder from iTunes

Or you can directly clean up iTunes media folder by deleting unwanted files from iTunes library.

Step 1: Open iTunes. How to get to mac library yosemite.

Step 2: Go to the specific library where stores the unwanted files, like music library.

Step 3: Select the unwanted songs there and right click on it. Choose “Delete from library”.

How To Clean Out Library Folder Mac Os

Step 4: Click on “Delete Song” and tap on “Move to Recycle Bin”. It will delete the song from iTunes library and iTunes media folder.
Note: If you choose “Keep File”, it will delete the music from library and keep it in iTunes media folder.

Mac Library Folder

Don’t waste your time manually deleting those files. Get the one-stop show to your iTunes health. Get iMyFone iMyFone TunesFix.

Mac User Library Folder Missing

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