6 Top Ways To Clean Up Your MacBook

Anyone who uses their MacBook daily will know that cleaning it up regularly is essential. And no – we don’t just mean wiping the screen and clearing breadcrumbs out of the keyboard (although that should definitely be a regular activity too). We are talking about a digital clean up, which can help create more storage space, improve the speed and overall optimise your laptop. You can either do this manually or dedicated apps can do it for you. Here are the top 6 ways to clean up your MacBook.

1. Clear Out Duplicate Files

You may not realise it, but you likely have quite a few duplicate files on your MacBook – they usually end up sitting in different folders and so their existence is not so obvious. It’s always a good idea to spend some time clearing out any duplicates, as they are using up your storage and cluttering up your laptop unnecessarily.

2. Reduce The Clutter

Speaking of clutter in your laptop, all of us are guilty of holding on to files for way longer than necessary. These are usually located on your desktop or in the downloads folder. Make sure you regularly go through them and delete all of the old files that you don’t need anymore.

3. Uninstall Unused Apps

Just like with regular files, your MacBook may have installed applications that you haven’t used for years and forgotten about. In fact, apps are worse in terms of taking up more of your storage. Some of them may have come pre-installed when you first purchased your laptop and went unnoticed. When uninstalling unused apps, make sure you delete all related files and back-ups too!

4. Clean Out Cache

Your MacBook stores a lot of data called cache, which takes up storage and slows your laptop down. There are different types of cache, such as browser, user, and system. Clearing all of these up regularly will therefore be an easy way to empty some storage space and optimise your MacBook. Again, this can be done manually, however, using dedicated cache cleaner apps may be a preferable and much quicker way.

5. Disable Unnecessary Startup Apps

If your MacBook tends to be really slow when you first turn it on and takes a while to get normal, this is likely caused by a high number of startup apps. This means that your laptop is trying to boot up multiple applications as well as log you into each – all at once. Therefore, make sure that only the apps you use regularly are launching at the time of turning on your MacBook.

6. Empty the Bin

It can be easy to forget that, even though you delete a certain file, it is not fully gone just yet. After doing a big clean up of your MacBook, make sure you remember to also empty your Trash Bin, which otherwise stores all of your deleted files. If you haven’t done it in a while, chances are, there are thousands of files in your Bin seamlessly clogging up your storage space.