Our favorite Mac cleanup tips
Spring comes with its own rituals. Here at Macworld, we like to throw open the windows, beat the dust out of the rugs, and straighten up our Mac desktops. Don’t stop at cleaning your home this season—these tips from our editors will help you keep your Mac fresh and organized, too.
1. Tidy up your desktop
Last year I discovered Light Pillar’s wonderful app Desktop Tidy ($5; ). This handy utility cleans up your Mac’s desktop, keeping it free of clutter. It stores all desktop files and folders in a hidden Shadow Desktop, which you can access from the menu bar or in the Finder. That way, every file I download, each screenshot I capture, and every image I drag and drop to my desktop is stored and filed in an easy-to-reach location. The utility quietly works its magic at scheduled intervals—as often as every minute or as infrequently as every seven days. It even organizes desktop items by file type, which makes finding and renaming files easy.—Leah Yamshon
2. Delete unnecessary disk images
For most people, the Downloads folder is a dumping ground where files pile up in forgotten heaps. Go to the Downloads folder in the Finder and type disk image into the search box. Select Disk Image under the Kinds header. Now, delete all of those downloaded DMG files that are just taking up space!—Jason Snell
Find all those leftover disk images in your Downloads folder and clean them out.
3. Empty out space-hogging Mail Downloads
As part of my job, I get quite a few attachments via email—PDFs, ePub ebooks, Word documents, images, you name it. Most of the time I save those files to my desktop or my Downloads folder, but on occasion I make the mistake of double-clicking a file. When you do that, the document saves itself to your Mail Downloads folder, hidden away in your Library file. Double-click enough files, and that folder can balloon in size. That’s why I make sure to check it and empty it every year or so.
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