Select those you want to delete and choose Move to Bin/Trash. Alternatively sort by Kind to quickly locate all the Screenshots (which will be PNG files). Sort by Size and delete anything you don’t need that’s particularly large. Open the Finder again and choose the Desktop folder.

If you are anything like us your Desktop is a dumping ground.

Select and right-click on files you are sure you won’t need again and choose Move to Bin/Trash. Instead of ‘is’ choose ‘before’ and change the date to a year ago. You could set up a similar search to delete files you haven’t opened in the past year or longer.

(We found a number of Payloads files here, but we don’t recommend deleting them because they are part of the macOS Install Data and deleting them may stop your Mac performing optimally – if you do want to delete any of these files we recommend making a back up first!)

Now select anything that you don’t need that’s bigger than 100MB and chose Move to Bin/Trash. Change file size to MB and type 100 into the box besides that. Now in the next dropdown choose ‘is greater than’. Scroll down until you see ‘File Size’ and check the box next to it. Click on the drop down beside ‘Kind’ and choose ‘Other’. Now press Command-F to open a new Finder window.

Open the Finder and navigate to your Home folder (press Shift-command-H).

Click on your Downloads folder in the dock, open it in the Finder and select the contents, or any files you don’t need, right-click and choose Move to Bin/Trash.

There are lots of ideas below for freeing up disk space below, but if you are in a hurry and you don’t need a lot of space, or if you aren’t too bothered about making sure you don’t run out of space again, here are a few things you can do right now: Download free edition 2023 How to clear space on Mac quickly

How to manage mac hard drive space