On the right side of the main window is the folder structure of the Mac, and on the left is a pie chart showing a percentage breakdown of disk space used. Recycle Bin - if the Trash hasn’t been emptied, the files put into it will still be taking up hard disk space!ĭisk Usage - On MacOS, it is often a bit of a struggle to find out what is consuming hard disk space, and that is where this tool becomes useful. Mildly useful, but a lot of what is stored probably has been irrelevant for a significant amount of time Unless you are dealing with a very specific crashing problem, these files can be safely deletedĬached Files - These are files that are temporarily stored supposedly in order to help speed up processes next time they are run. Log files - If programs crash, they create log files so that computer technicians can identify why the crash happened. Junk Cleaner - Running Junk Cleaner cleverly identifies system files that aren’t needed: There is no point keeping duplicates of the same files - it takes up hard disk space, and can cause confusion remembering which file is the most up to date one Typically these are documents or image files copied and pasted to an easy to access folder, or files that have been downloaded from the web, opened, then saved in another location.

Where a Mac is so easy to use, and applications run so seamlessly, it is sometimes surprising to delve a bit deeper into hard disk usage and find that there is a lot of junk being stored that seems to have no adverse effect on using the Mac, hard disk housekeeping is important to get on top of sooner rather than later, and PCProtect makes it really with the Disk Cleaner.Ĭlicking Disk Cleaner in the PCProtect sidebar, reveals four specific disk cleaning functions:ĭuplicates - Clicking and running a duplicate scan will identify any identical files stored on the computer. Hard Disks fill up with all kinds of data over time.

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