How to see what's taking up space on your Mac

A practical guide from the makers of Clear Storage — Disk Visualizer

Your Mac says the disk is nearly full, but the built-in storage bar mostly tells you what you already know: there are documents and apps. The real question — which specific folders and files grew — needs better tools. Here's the full workflow, from what macOS gives you to what a visualizer adds.

Step 1: Read the built-in storage overview

Open System Settings → General → Storage. The colored bar breaks storage into categories — Applications, Documents, Photos, and the famously vague System Data, which lumps together caches, logs, temp files and everything that fits nowhere else. This view is good for one thing: telling you the scale of the problem. It is bad at telling you where the bytes actually live.

Step 2: Understand why categories aren't enough

Categories hide structure. "Documents: 300 GB" doesn't say that 68 GB is old installers in Downloads, 20 GB is duplicate files, and 40 GB is Xcode build caches. To act, you need a folder-level and file-level picture.

Step 3: Visualize the disk

In Clear Storage — Disk Visualizer, run a scan across your Photos library and the folders you choose, then open the visualizer. Four views answer different questions:

• Ring chart: the overall split at a glance — how much is used, available and cleaned.
• Treemap: rectangles sized by disk usage, so the biggest folders are literally the biggest boxes.
• Bar chart: categories ranked, good for comparing screenshots vs downloads vs large files.
• Activity heatmap: when your storage grew, which often reveals what caused it.

Below the visualizer, scan results group the cleanable material by category — similar photos, screenshots, downloads, large files, identical names — each with a size total and a review list.

Step 4: Act on the biggest boxes first

Storage cleanup follows a power law: two or three categories usually hold most of the reclaimable space. Sort by size, open the biggest category, review the list, and remove only what you recognize. A menu bar icon then keeps current usage visible so you notice growth before the next crisis.