How to Free up Space on your Mac
If your Mac is annoyingly slow, consider freeing up memory. This slows down the system considerably. In the following, we will explain how you can empty the working memory with a few uncomplicated steps and a simple terminal command. If your Mac is slow, clearing RAM can help.
How to clear Cache memory on Mac
First, open the Activity Monitor . The easiest way to do this is via Spotlight search . Click the small magnifying glass in the top right , type ” Activity Monitor ” and double- click the first result .
In the Activity Monitor, go to the ” Storage ” tab at the top. Here you can see how much storage space is currently occupied. The best way to check if a particular program is using your RAM is to sort the list by the Memory column .
If a program occupies a particularly large amount of memory, it may be worth ending it. To do this, select it and click the “ X ” icon at the top. But note : unsaved changes to documents in this program will be lost.
If that didn’t bring the desired effect, you can clear the cache. This can also put a strain on the main memory. Leave the Activity Monitor window open and switch back to Spotlight search. There, this time, enter ” terminal “.
Now enter the command sudo purge in the terminal and confirm with the [ Enter ] key. You will then need to enter your admin password , which you normally use to log in to your Mac. Confirm again with [ Enter ]. If you now switch back to the activity monitor, memory should have been freed.
If clearing the cache didn’t do anything either, you can still restart your Mac. To do this, click on the apple symbol in the top left and select ” Restart… ” The restart will reset the main memory and programs should run more reliably again.
Quick Start Guide
From Spotlight search, open Activity Monitor .
From there, click on the Storage tab . The currently occupied memory is displayed here. Click on the ” Memory ” column so that the program using the most memory is displayed at the top.
Select a program that is using a lot of memory and click the ” X ” icon at the top to exit it.
If that doesn’t help, leave the Activity Monitor window open and use Spotlight search to launch Terminal .
Enter the command sudo purge there and confirm with [ Enter ].
You will then be prompted to enter your admin password . Then confirm this with [ Enter ].
Back in Activity Monitor, you should now see that less memory is being used.
If these steps didn’t work, restart your Mac . This resets the memory.