How to find and delete large files on your Mac

A "your disk is almost full" warning is annoying, and it rarely tells you what to do. The good news: space is usually eaten by a handful of big things, such as old videos, installers, and forgotten downloads. Find those, and you can often get back many gigabytes in a few minutes.

This guide shows you how to do it by hand first. After that, you will see how to ask Key to do the searching for you.

Step 1: See what is using your space

Start with the overview your Mac already has. It shows where the space has gone, before you delete anything.

1. Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner and choose System Settings.
2. Click General in the sidebar. You may need to scroll the sidebar to see it.
3. Click Storage.

The path is System Settings › General › Storage. Wait a moment while the bar fills in. You will see your space split into groups, and the biggest groups are the ones worth looking at first.

On this same screen, Apple offers a few built-in helpers:

• Store in iCloud keeps your Desktop and Documents folders, photos, videos and messages in iCloud, and keeps only recently opened files on your Mac when space is needed.
• Optimize Storage removes Apple TV shows you have already watched and clears older email attachments when space runs low.
• Empty Trash automatically erases items that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

These are worth a look, but they will not touch a huge video you saved and forgot about. For that, you need to hunt for big files yourself.

Step 2: Find large files with Finder

Finder can search by size. This is the quickest way to list the biggest files in one place.

1. Open a Finder window and click the folder you want to check, for example Downloads, Documents or your home folder.
2. Press Command + F to start a search.
3. Under the search box, click the small + button to add a rule.
4. In the first menu, choose File Size. If you do not see it, choose Other and pick it from the list.
5. Set the next menu to is greater than, type a number such as 500, and set the unit to MB.
6. Click the Size column heading at the top of the results to put the biggest files first. If you do not see a Size column, switch to list view with Command + 2.

Start with 500 MB. If the list is too long, raise it to 1 GB. If it is too short, lower it.

Where big files usually hide

• Downloads. Old installers (.dmg files), zip files and movies pile up here. Our guide on cleaning up your Downloads folder can help.
• Movies and screen recordings. A few minutes of video can take up more room than thousands of documents.
• Old phone or device backups and disk images.
• The Trash itself. Items in the Trash still use space until you empty it.

Step 3: Delete what you do not need

Before you remove anything, check that you know what it is. If a file is in a folder named after an app, or you do not recognize it, leave it alone. System files and app files are not worth the risk.

1. Click a file once, then press Space to preview it. This tells you whether you still want it.
2. Select the files you are sure about. Hold Command while clicking to pick several.
3. Press Command + Delete to move them to the Trash.
4. Open the Trash from the Dock and look over what is there. If you moved something by mistake, drag it back out.
5. When you are happy, choose Empty in the top-right corner of the Trash window.

Your space is only freed once the Trash is emptied. Emptying the Trash is permanent, so take a moment to look first.

Ask Key to find the big files for you

If clicking through Finder is not how you want to spend your afternoon, you can ask Key instead. Key is a free assistant for Windows and Mac. It works on any Mac with macOS 11 Big Sur or newer, on Intel and Apple Silicon. You can speak to it or type to it, and both give the same result.

Say or type something short, such as "What's taking up space on my Mac?" or "Find my biggest files." Half a sentence is enough. Key works out what you meant, does it in the real app, and checks the result before it tells you.

KeyChat

Find my biggest files and move the old installers to the Trash

looked through Downloads and Documents for large filesfound three old installers and asked which to removemoved the ones you chose to the Trash

I found three old installers in Downloads and moved the two you picked to the Trash, so you can still put them back.

Checked: the two files are in the Trash and no longer in Downloads.

A few things are worth knowing:

• Key never deletes for good. Anything it removes goes to the Trash. There is no permanent delete in the program at all, so you can still take a file back out.
• You can watch it work. A small panel shows what it is doing, and you can stop it at any point.
• It asks when it is unsure. If two things match what you asked for, it asks which one you meant.

Because Key finds files by what is inside them as well as by name, it can also help when you only remember what a file was about. Our guide on finding a file by what is inside it shows how.

One thing stays with you: emptying the Trash. Key moves things there, and you decide when to empty it.

Keep the space free

• Turn on Empty Trash automatically in System Settings › General › Storage, so the Trash does not quietly fill up.
• Check Downloads once a month and clear out installers after you have used them.
• Move big videos you want to keep to an external drive.

If your Mac still feels full after all this, go back to the Storage screen and see which group is largest. That tells you where to look next.

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