96 Macworld • January 2022HELP DESK
media, and may require
an upgrade from your
current iCloud storage
level. However, it can
be worth the trade-off
of hundreds to several
hundreds of pounds for a
larger-capacity drive on
the new Mac.- Use optimized storage
in macOS via the iCloud
preference pane in
Mojave and earlier or
the Apple ID preference
pane’s iCloud view
in Catalina and later. Selecting
Optimize Mac automatically offloads
files synced via iCloud Drive to your
iCloud storage as needed. - Get help from macOS in finding
items to delete. Choose Apple >
About This Mac > Storage and click
Manage, and macOS makes a number
of suggestions about how to reduce
drive consumption. You may find (as I
did) some large files you’d forgotten
about. On my laptop, I had a nearly 13
B Big Sur beta installer. - Use Spotlight to identify large files
and apps (fave.co/3q3bwhV) with a
Finder-based search. This can reveal
items that the Storage view in the
previous bullet point does not. - If there are items you want to
be sure you retain but don’t need
‘online’ – in other words, directly
and always connected to your Mac- transfer them to an inexpensive
external hard drive, but be sure you
have separate backups of that drive.
(Some online backup services will
only keep archives of attached drives
for about a month at their basic
service level without them being
attached. Either set a reminder to
attach and power them up monthly,
or pay an additional fee, as with
Backblaze [fave.co/3FHkd5S], for
longer-term storage.)
Once you’ve reduced occupied
space below the level needed to
transfer to a new Mac – being sure to
empty the Trash – you can perform
macOS offers insight into the files that fill your drive,
including forgotten ones – like a massive beta macOS
installer here.