DaisyDisk: how I free up space on my Mac fast

DaisyDisk changed how I manage storage on my Mac.

I have used it for years, first on a MacBook Pro and now my Mac mini. It is a one-time purchase I made a while ago, and it still works great. It has a very high rating, an Apple Editor's Choice, and it is one of the top-rated utilities on the Mac. When my disk gets tight, it is the first thing I open.

The Mac's own storage screen never really tells you what is taking up the room. DaisyDisk does. It scans your drive and shows it as a picture, so the biggest files are the biggest things on the screen.

Here is the full walkthrough, the short version of everything below:

What you see when you scan

When you scan a drive, DaisyDisk draws it as a set of rings.

• The center is the whole drive.
• The outer rings are the folders and files inside, sized by how much space they take.
• Mouse over any piece and it tells you exactly what it is.

You do not have to go looking. The biggest space-wasters are simply the biggest pieces on the screen.

How I actually use it

The way I use it is simple: I open the biggest piece and go in.

The first time I scanned, it was eye-opening. My photo library alone was eating over 100GB, because I had synced every photo onto a small drive. I would never have spotted that in the normal storage screen.

From there, clearing space is quick:

• Click into the biggest piece to drill down.
• Right-click a file and show it in Finder, so you know what it is.
• Drag what you do not need into the collector at the bottom, then delete.
• Or move a big file out to an external or network drive, and the segment clears right away.

I found a single 13GB file this way and had it off the drive in seconds.

It scans more than your main drive

DaisyDisk does not stop at your built-in SSD.

• External drives, USB or Thunderbolt.
• Network storage. I scan my Synology NAS straight from the Mac mini.
• A single folder, when you just want to check one thing like Downloads.
• Cloud drives, including Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox.

Same picture, whatever the storage.

What it costs

It is a one-time purchase, which I love.

You can try it for free, then it is $9.99 once for a lifetime license, no subscription, on up to five of your Macs.

One thing it is not: a "cleaner" app with a magic button. macOS clears its own caches, and I would skip the one-click cleaners. DaisyDisk just shows you the truth and lets you decide what goes. That is why I trust it.

I am not paid to recommend it. I made the video and this post because it genuinely saves me money and frustration every time my disk fills up.

Pair it with AppCleaner

DaisyDisk finds what to remove, and AppCleaner removes it cleanly.

When the thing eating space is an app I no longer use, I do not just delete it. I remove it with AppCleaner so it leaves nothing behind.

Here is that post: how to fully uninstall a Mac app.