Get more space on your Mac's disk by cleaning the junk with Disk PLUS

Some MacBooks are supplied with very small solid state drives that are quickly filled with photos, videos and music. Use this utility to free up space before it runs out and becomes a problem.

SSD's offer superb performance compared to old mechanical disk drives, but they have a small storage capacity. Some MacBooks have just a 128 GB drive and even if you opt for a larger 256 GB model, the storage is quickly filled if you are a keen photographer or store music or videos on it. You can very easily run out of storage.

If you are struggling for space, Disk PLUS can help by clearing out old files, caches and junk. The amount of space recovered varies and it depends how much junk is on the drive, but it could be as much as a couple of gigabytes. It can help to keep your Mac running.

It was $5.99 but is currently (Apr '18) free in the Mac App Store. I don't know if it will be permanently free, so grab it while you can.

Set search parameters

Disk PLUS starts with a form that enables you to set the search parameters. It can find files and applications that are larger than a certain size or older than a certain date. Using these controls you can focus on big old files and apps that you may no longer need. The Scan button starts the search.

Junk file categories

The scan results look like this and there are two sections. At the top is Safe To Delete and at the bottom is Review And Delete. The green switches can be used to enable or disable a category, such as Trash.

Click the blue i icons and a description of the item is displayed. This is useful if you are not sure what exactly it is. The magnifying glass icon opens a Finder window to show the files and folders to be deleted.

The lower half of the window contains items that are disabled by default. The idea is that you click the icon just before the blue i and review the items to delete. Click the icon next to Unused Files for example, and a window like this opens.

Categories of files are displayed on tabs and the files in each category are listed when selected. You can see the filename and the location, view files with the eye icon and open a Finder window using magnifying glass icon on the right. The ON/OFF switches to choose whether to delete an item.

Nothing in the Review and Delete section is selected by default. You must add files yourself.

The reason for this is that the app cannot tell whether a big old file is valuable or note. A video might be very old and very big, but it could be very valuable to you, such as a wedding, holiday or other event. It is up to you to decide whether to keep or delete these files. Disk PLUS just lists them.

Summing up

I don't like disk cleanup tools that do not show exactly what is to be deleted or ones that assume any file that is big and old is safe to delete. I worry that they might delete something I want.

Disk PLUS seems to take a cautious approach and only automatically selects files that are safe to delete. You can free to explore the other files found and manually add select the for deletion.

This was a useful app for $5.99 and it is even better now that it is free. There are a lot of disk cleanup tools in the Mac App Store, but this is one of my favourites. Try it.

App: Disk PLUS (Mac App Store)
Price: Free (normally $5.99)
By: SolutionShare
Size: 6.6 MB
macOS: 10.10 or later
Verdict: An old utility now free, but it still works well.