How to Check Your Mac's Hard Drive Space

There are many reasons why you might want to check how much hard drive space you have available on your Mac, including whether you have sufficient space for an OS software update, or for a large download. There are a few ways to check this, so read on to find out more, and choose the one that best suits your needs.

1. Using the Finder

The simplest way to find out how much free disc space you have available is through Mac’s Finder app. And there are two ways to achieve this.

1.1. Click on the hard drive image* on your Desktop (*if you can’t see your hard drive on your desktop, in Finder go to the top menu and click on ‘Finder’ > ‘Preferences’ then click on ‘General’ and check that the ‘Hard disks’ box is ticked). The press the spacebar on your keyboard – et voilà!

1.2. Alternatively, you can turn on Finder’s Status Bar to see an overview of your free disk space at all times. In Finder, open a new Finder window (‘File’ > ‘New Finder Window’). Then click on ‘View’ and select ‘Show Status Bar’. An additional line will appear at the bottom of the Finder window showing the number of items in the disk or folder selected, as well as how much space is available.

2. Get Info

Click on either the hard drive image on your desktop or in a Finder window sidebar (if it doesn’t appear, see * above). Then in the top menu bar, click on ‘File’ > ‘Get Info’ (or shortcut ⌘ I). This opens a window that shows the capacity, available and used space, permissions, etc.

3. About This Mac

All versions of Mac OS X include an ‘About This Mac’ section, which can be found under the Apple menu (Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen > About This Mac).

Depending on your OS version, you then either need to click on ‘Storage’, or ‘More Info’ > ‘General’ > ‘About’ then scroll down to the ‘Storage’ section. Clicking on the ‘Storage Settings’ button will then show you which files are taking up space on your drive.

4. Disk Utility App

The final option we will outline today is viewing your free disk space via the Disk Utility app. This is also useful for checking out the available space on any partitioned drives, as well as any external drives you might be using, such as an external hard drive or a USB stick.

Open Disk Utility either from your Applications folder (‘Applications’ > ‘Utilities’ > ‘Disk Utility.app’), or by searching for ‘Disk Utility’ in Spotlight, then click on the drive or partition to see the used / available capacity.

Of course, if you find that you are running out of space on your Mac and would like to discuss options for either upgrading your hard drive or your Mac, please contact us for a free no-obligation quote.