Guides
Free up disk space on your Mac
Clear, practical guides - the manual steps and the fast way. Everything TidyBar removes goes to the Trash, so it's always recoverable.
How to free up disk space on a Mac (2026)
“Your disk is almost full” always shows up at the worst time. Here's where the space actually goes on a modern Mac, how to reclaim it safely by hand, and how to do it in seconds.
Read guide→How to delete node_modules safely (and reclaim 10s of GB)
If you write code on a Mac, the single biggest disk hog is almost never your files - it's the build artifacts scattered across old projects. node_modules alone can be hundreds of MB each, times dozens of repos. Here's how to clear them without breaking anything.
Read guide→How to uninstall Mac apps completely (with leftovers)
On macOS, deleting an app is only half the job. Apps scatter support files across your Library that stay behind and keep using space - sometimes hundreds of megabytes per app. Here's how to remove all of it.
Read guide→What is “purgeable” space on a Mac - and how to reclaim it
macOS often reports a chunk of "purgeable" space - storage it says it can free automatically "when needed." That's cold comfort when you need the space now. Here's what it actually is and how to reclaim it.
Read guide→What is “System Data” storage on a Mac (and how to shrink it)
Open System Settings → General → Storage and you'll often see a huge grey “System Data” bar (it used to be called “Other”). It's vague on purpose. Here's what's really in it and how to bring it down.
Read guide→How to clear Xcode DerivedData (and reclaim gigabytes)
If you build with Xcode, DerivedData is quietly one of the biggest space hogs on your Mac. It caches build products, indexes and intermediates for every project, and it almost never cleans up after itself.
Read guide→“Your startup disk is almost full” - how to fix it on a Mac
The “Your startup disk is almost full” warning means your Mac's boot drive is nearly out of space, which can slow things down and block updates. Here's how to fix it fast, biggest wins first.
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