How to check how much space is on mac

Table of Contents Show

Check space on macOS Monterey (or earlier) using About this Mac panel
Check space on macOS Ventura using System Settings
Check storage space on Mac using Finder
Check Mac hard drive space using Disk Utility
How to find what is taking up so much space on Mac
How to manage space on Mac
Podcast: How to check disk space usage on Mac

Data storage on your Mac is important—it determines how many apps, documents, photos, and videos your computer can hold locally. If you run into the upper limit, your Mac might not perform as well as you might hope. Here’s how to check the size of your Mac’s internal storage.

First, click the “Apple” logo in the upper-left corner of your screen and select “About This Mac” from the menu.

In the window that appears, click the “Storage” button. (In some earlier versions of macOS, this button may appear as a tab.)

When the “Storage” display loads, you’ll see a list of your internal drives and each drive’s capacity. In our example, this MacBook Pro includes just a single drive with “500 GB of Flash Storage.”

You’ll also see how much free disk space you have available on each drive, listed just beneath each drive name.

RELATED: How to Check Free Disk Space on a Mac

If you want more details on your internal storage, click the “Overview” button, then click “System Report.”

In the “System Information” window, click “Storage,” in the sidebar, and you’ll see detailed information on all of your drives. You’ll see the size of your Mac’s internal storage listed under “Capacity.”

In this example, the drive’s exact capacity is 494.38 GB, which is less than the “500 GB of Internal Flash Storage” we saw earlier. That’s because “500 GB” is the unformulated drive size. Once formatted by macOS, the drive has 494.38 GB of space available for use.

When you’re done, close the System Information window.

If what you found in your search was underwhelming, it’s possible to increase the size of internal storage on some MacBooks and desktop Macs by installing a new larger SSD or hard disk. Or if you’re just tight on storage space, it’s possible to free up space on your internal drive. Good luck!

RELATED: Can You Upgrade the Hard Drive or SSD In Your Mac?

Check space on macOS Monterey (or earlier) using About this Mac panel

Click on the Apple icon in the Menu bar.
Select About This Mac.
Switch to the Storage tab.
Here you will find information about the disk space on your Mac occupied by different types of files. Also, in this window, you can check the available space on your Mac hard drive.

Check space on macOS Ventura using System Settings

Open System Settings.
Click General in the sidebar.
Click Storage in the right panel.
You will see the barchart of what’s taking space on your disk.

Check storage space on Mac using Finder

Another easy way to see information about Mac disk space is to use Finder.

Launch Finder.
Go to the Finder’s Preferences.
Switch to the Sidebar tab and make your Hard disks visible.

Then right-click on your Macintosh HD and select Get Info. In the General section, you will find all information about your Mac disk: volume capacity, the used space, and available storage space.

Check Mac hard drive space using Disk Utility

You can also check the hard drive space on your Mac with the help of default Apple application Disk Utility.

Launch Disk Utility. You can find it in the Applications folder or in the Launchpad.
Select your Macintosh HD and view all the information about it.

How to find what is taking up so much space on Mac

If you want to go deeper into your Mac disk space, use MacCleaner Pro and find out the disk space-consumers, what files are in the Other category and finally free up disk space.

Launch MacCleaner Pro.
In the Overview section, you will find a more detailed bar with information about your Mac hard drive.
Then we recommend going to the Analyze disk usage section and launch a professional tool Disk Space Analyzer to analyze your disk space usage and get a detailed diagram of your Mac hard drive space distribution. Disk Space Analyzer displays even hidden files and folders that the standard Apple storage window never shows. Also, with Disk Space Analyzer you can analyze any external storage, including cloud-based ones.
So launch Disk Space Analyzer and select your Macintosh HD. Click to start scanning it.
Within a short time (depending on the volume of your hard drive), you will get a detailed diagram visualization of what is occupying space on your Mac disk.

You can go even deeper. Click on each section of the diagram to discover what is inside each folder or subfolder.
Another useful option is to look at the list of Biggest Files on the right. Take a look at them and drop the unneeded biggest items to the special list for further removal.

How to manage space on Mac

Apple provides built-in recommendations to manage disk space on a Mac. Here is how to use them:

Go to the Menu Bar and click the Apple icon. Select About This Mac.
Go to the Storage tab and click on Manage…
Here you will find some simple tips that can help you to recover some disk space.

Apple recommends taking a look at applications and documents and removing the biggest ones or saving space on the Mac hard drive by keeping your files in iCloud. However, these tips are not the only solution. We also recommend using MacCleaner Pro, which allows you to find and clean up all the useless stuff on your computer, such as cache, logs, mail downloads, extensions, duplicates, and other unwanted files.

A few more words about checking storage with MacCleaner PRO

MacCleaner Pro is a professional tool that analyzes disk space usage on your Mac and allows you to clean up your disk from unneeded items. This is an all-in-one solution, that allows you to clean up and speed up your Mac:

✓ Remove junk files (cache, logs, language files, and other system files)
✓ Remove unneeded user files
✓ Uninstall unused applications
✓ Remove service files of apps
✓ Remove unneeded extensions and startup programs
✓ Find and remove duplicate files, duplicate folders, and similar copies of photos
✓ Optimize disk space
✓ Free up inactive memory
✓ Find hidden files and manage them

This article is based on our expertise in cleaning and optimizing Mac hard drive. We’ve been working 10+ years in developing special disk utilities for making a Mac work smoothly. We regularly explore the latest updates of macOS and update our apps and our articles according to system changes. If you have any questions related to this guide, contact us by email.