Shape Shuffle Mac OS

What is the Mac swapfile? Is it important? Can you delete it? We’ll walk you through this mysterious Mac file and what you can do about it.

If you’ve even run out of disk space on your Mac, you’ve probably sat and taken some time to look and see what’s eating up all this space (pro tip: it’s easy to forget how many files you move to the Mac Trash folder; the first thing you should do when you run out of space is right-click on the Trash icon on the dock and select Empty Trash).

Maximum OS: iPod shuffle OS 1.1.5 iTunes Versions: iTunes 4.7.1 and later. Mac OS Required: OS X 10.2.8 or 10.3.4 or later (10.3.6 or later recommended for use with low-power USB ports). Swimbuds MP3 has been in development for as long as Swimbuds Bluetooth headphones (two years), and there are some evident similarities between the two devices. They were both created to exist in a wraparound design that contained all necessary working parts in the headphones. Flexible ear hooks and an adjustable around-the-back cord fit any neck size and ear shape.

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You might have run across something called swap, or a swapfile. It can be difficult to understand just what these files are, and whether you can manage to do without them, especially since they seem to just sit there and take up space; sometimes they take up quite a lot of space indeed.

What is the Mac swapfile?

Before we delve into what the swapfile is, we have to talk about swapping in the context of how your computer works. When you run a program on your Mac, it gets loaded into your memory (RAM). You have a much smaller amount of RAM than you do storage on your SSD.

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Occasionally, if you’re doing something that requires a lot of memory, you’ll come up against some of the limits that come with having limited RAM. Enter paging. Paging is what we call using your storage drive as memory. It’s all done automatically by your computer, so you never tend to notice when it happens. While the terms originally meant something different, these days paging and swapping are largely synonymous.

When you write something to your disk, it isn’t always written in contiguous stretches of storage; instead it might be written in a number of places, wherever your Mac (PCs do this, too) finds an open spot.

In order for swapping to work, your Mac usually needs one of those contiguous stretches, which can be difficult to find on a drive as it increasingly fills up with data. To mitigate this, OS X will generate a number of these swapfiles so that it can write (or page, or swap) to them whenever it needs them.

You can find them by navigating to an arcane folder deep within the bowels of your Mac. Just click on an open part of your desktop and mouse up to the bar at the top of your screen. Click on Go, and in the drop-down menu, click on Go to Folder.

A box will appear with an address bar in it; you’ll want to copy and paste the following location into it: /private/var/vm/ and hit enter. Finder will pop up with a new window listing the swapfiles your Mac currently has active.

How many files appear depend on a number of factors: how much and how often the Mac has needed to swap to your storage drive (which itself will depend on how much memory you have and how many programs you use that may have memory leaks). For reference, the above swapfiles were generated on a Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM; it’s gone around ten days since it was last rebooted.

Can you delete Mac swapfiles?

Yes, you can delete them. You can even tell your Mac to never swap again. But you shouldn’t. Even on systems that have a lot of memory, your Mac might find a need to swap to its storage space instead of use its primary memory, or RAM.

If you delete your swapfiles, you might cause your system to crash, as it’s possible that your Mac is using one of them right as you delete it. The same goes for whether you should disable the ability for your Mac to use swapfiles in the first place – the best result is that you won’t notice a difference, and it’s more likely to make your Mac increasingly unstable.

If you really need to free up some space taken up by your Mac’s swapfiles, there’s an easy and simple fix: just reboot your Mac. Shut it down and restart it, and then check your swapfile directory again – they should either be gone or substantially reduced in size.

Chances are good that on a new Mac you’re unlikely to run into issues where your swap is seriously impacting how much free space you have. Should you keep running into an issue, however, take a look at the apps you run on a regular basis, and try playing around with them one at a time. You might find that one app has a memory leak, and by rebooting after use or finding an alternative app, you can avoid the big swapfile issue altogether!

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Optimized Storage helps you save storage space space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand:

  • When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically.
  • Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it.
  • Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

Shape Shuffle Mac Os X

If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below.

Manage storage on your Mac

The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.

Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button to save space by automatically removing watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from Apple and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.

Your Mac will also save space by keeping only recent email attachments on this Mac when storage space is needed. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.


Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina or later, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
  • If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina or later, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  • In you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features described in this article, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

  • Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.