How To Clean Files From Mac

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Digital footprints, browsing history, and other online traces reveal a lot about our digital life and online activities. Therefore, to keep our virtual lifeguarded against hackers and online trackers, deleting these traces is important. But how can we delete them completely? After each browsing session, they are recreated.

Click 'Go' to view the folder that contains all of your Mac's cached files. Go back up to the toolbar at the top of the screen and click 'Edit,' then click 'Select All.' A file might be locked or you may not have permission to delete one or more files. This sort of glitch is annoying, but you can use the command line to provide an easy solution. Can My Files Be Retrieved Once I Delete Them. The short answer is yes. Data recovery technology.

We can delete them manually after each session. But I know to remember and following it will be stressful and time-consuming. Therefore, we have found an easy way to clear recent files, junk files, duplicates, and other data from your Mac.

Simplest and Easiest Way to Clear Recent files, folder, and documents from Mac

Understanding the importance of online identity and sensitive data, Systweak has designed a fantastic app. It's called TuneUpMyMac using it you can clear browser cache, app cache, system junk, digital footprints, and other unwanted data. You can download its free version by clicking here.


So, this was an easy and time-saving solution. But, some would want to do it manually. Worry not, we have something for everyone. For the DIY types, here are the manual ways to clear history on Mac.

How To Clear Recent Files, Folder, And Documents In Finder On Mac

Generally, to avoid digital data collection when browsing the web, people use private browsing mode. But again remembering it each time when you visit a site is not possible.

Accessing a site when using the web browser in normal mode, leaves a security gap, and anyone can see search history, cache, cookies, and other data.

Therefore, bridging this gap is very important. So, here we explain how to clear privacy exposing traces from any browser(s). This will help speed up the browser and boost Mac's performance.

In addition to this, we will also explain how to clear recent files in Finder on Mac.

How to Clear Recent Items on Mac

To clear history of recently viewed files, folders or documents on Mac follow the steps explained below:

1. Click Apple icon

2. From the menu select Recent Items > this will list down recently used documents and apps.

3. Scroll down and click Clear Menu.

4. This will clear all the items that you can see in the Recent Items list.

5. To confirm that the data is deleted click the Apple icon > Recent Items.

6. You'll now not see any items in the list. This means the list showing recent files, documents on Mac is now cleared.

Using Terminal command disable document history

If you want a permanent solution to this document history problem, you can use a Terminal command. Using it, you will be able to decide whether to hide or show recent items. To use, follow the steps below:

1. Head to Applications > Utilities

2. Click Terminal to open it

3. Here, enter the following command and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE killall Finder

This command will make Finder show all hidden files.

4. Now, to hide everything use, the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE killall Finder

This way you can show or hide recent files in Finder on Mac.

Alternatively, you can press CMD + SHIFT to show or hide files and then can clear recently opened document history.

Use whichever way you like and clear documents, background running apps, or any processes that might be taking up processing power.

Now, let's learn how to clear browsing data and cookies from the popular browsers on Mac.

How to clear Activity History in browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Chrome

If you use multiple browsers, there's nothing to worry about. You can quickly find and delete search history from each browser by following the steps explained below:

However, if you are short on time, you know you can use TuneMyMac to clean all privacy exposing traces in just a click.

Simply install TuneupMyMac and look for the Internet Privacysection in the left pane. Click on it and run a scan to find cookies and cache of each browser in one place. Make sure the browser is not running while you scan them for cache, cookies, search history, and other digital traces. Once you have the scan result, click Fix Now and you are all set.

Steps to clear cookies from Safari – Manually

1. Open Safari browser

2. Click Safari from the top menu > Clear History

3. Now to clean cache, cookies again click Safari from the top menu.

4. Select Preferences

5. Click Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data

6. This will open a pop-up window. Wait for it to show results and click Remove All > Done

That's all. You have successfully cleared cookies and other recent data from Safari.

Manual way to clear History from Firefox

1. Launch Firefox

How To Clean Files From Mac

2. Click Firefox from the top menu and select Preferences

3. This will open a new window, here click Privacy & Security option from the left pane. Scroll down and look for Cookies and Site Data section.

4. Click Clear Data

5. Select both options Cookies and Site Data and Cached Web Content > Clear

5. This will clear cache and cookies from Firefox. In addition to this to clear history under the History, tab clicks Clear History.

This will erase all browsing history from Firefox on your Mac.

Clearing Browsing Data, Cache, Cookies Manually on Chrome

1. Launch Chrome

How To Clean Files From Macbook Pro

2. Click 'Chrome' in the top toolbar > Clear Browsing Data.

3. You will now get a box to select which data you want to delete. Select the ones you want to delete and the timeline.

That's it all the search history and other data is now cleared.

Using these simple steps, you can clear cookies, search data, browser history manually from the browser. But this is just the small portion of the clutter your Mac has on it. Alongside browser data, there are large files, duplicates, temp files, logs, and other data that take valuable disk space and slows down Mac. Therefore, if you want to get rid of all this unwanted data, try TuneUpMyMac – one-click solution provider for all Mac-related problems.

Using this tool is pretty simple. To learn how to use TuneUpMyMac, follow the steps below:

1. Download and install TuneUpMyMac

2. Once installed, click One-Click Cleaning and scan your Mac for unnecessary files.

3. Wait for the scan to finish one done, click Clean Now to clear these traces

This will help boost Mac speed, clean Mac, and clear all files, folders, documents from history.

Isn't all this simple? You or anyone in your family with a click of a button can optimize Mac and clear recent files on Mac in Finder. We hope you find these steps helpful. Please share your experience with us in the comments box.

Junk files take up lot of space on Mac. Ofcourse not only are they useless, but also slow down your Mac. To make it worse, sometimes they can also cause errors and glitches,which is why it is important to clean junk files on Mac from time to time. Junk files can be application leftovers, cache, cookies, user log files, and internet temp files.

For those who use Mac OS Sierra, need to be more careful as it backs up all the old and redundant data, thus before you know it you will be paying for useless files on your cloud storage.

Must Read:How To Delete Unused Files On Windows

In this blog we will discuss steps on how to get rid of junk files on Mac. For those who do not have the patience to manually delete these files can also utilise software that remove junk files from Mac. Towards the end of the blog we will discuss about TuneupMyMac, a multipurpose software which will improve your Mac experience.

Note: Before you carry out any manual process, please make sure you take a backup.

4 Ways to Clean Junk Files On Mac

Delete Files On Mac

Let's look at a few steps that you can follow regularly, to keep your system clean:

  • Clean Cache And Temporary Files

  1. Close all active and open Mac Apps.
  2. Click on Finder>Go> Go to Folder.
  3. Type' ? /Library/Caches' and press Enter to open the folder.
  4. There will be a set of folders. Open each folder and delete the cache from them.
  5. Delete all the files from Trash and restart your system again.
  6. Repeat the same process, however minus the ? to delete the system cache files.
  • Clear Log Files

  1. Click on Finder>Go>Go to Folder.
  2. Type '?/Library/Logs' and hit Enter to open the folder.
  3. Select all the files that you want to delete and press Command+backspace.
  4. Once all the log files are deleted, delete from your Trash and restart your Mac.
  • Remove Unused Languages

  1. Go to Resources.
  2. Locate all the files ending with .Iproj.
  3. Each folder will have language files.
  4. Trash all the languages that you do not need.

While these steps seem easy to follow, one has to be cautious about deleting important files and it is also time consuming. Thus as mentioned above, it is usually advisable to use software made to clean junk files on Mac. Not only would the software improve the performance and speed of the system but also save you time as a good software takes care of maintaining your system.

Let us look at how TuneupMyMac helps get rid of junk files and maintain a fast performing Mac.

Must Read: How To Use Mac's General Preferences Pane

  • Clean Junk Files Using TuneupMyMac

TuneupMyMac is a powerful tool with multiple functions. All the functions that you would have to do manually and which would take time, will be taken care of by the software with added feature such as security. TuneupMyMac offers advanced features like Cleaning, Optimization, Manual Cleaning and Security.

You can use the software for Cleaning the Mac.

Just one click and the software will run four tools to get rid of junk from your Mac. The tools will clear user cache and log files. It will get rid of the remains of apps that you have already uninstalled and the unused languages of the localized apps. This will not only save you effort but also a lot of time.

Let us look at how you can use One Click Cleaning to clean junk files on Mac:

  1. When you open the App. Click on One Click Cleaning followed by Start System Scan. The app will scan your system and inform you about the junk on your Mac.
  2. Once the scan is completed, click on Clean Now.
  3. You can stop the scan by clicking on Stop Scan placed at bottom right. However, it is suggested that you allow the app to complete the scan.

Other Features Of TuneupMyMac

1.System Cleaner

Run a System Cleaner scan to scan your hard disk for cache files. What may seem harmless initially, Cache files over time occupy valuable space of your hard disk and can also hamper the smooth functioning of your system.

2.Logs Cleaner

Your Mac maintains a log file to collate data for statistical analysis. Like cache files, these may seem of no consequence however they occupy a considerable part of the disk. The software can be used to clean log files in a jiffy yet safely.

3.App Optimizer

Download Clean My Mac

One of the best features of the software, App Optimizer is that, it gets rid of all the useless parts of an app. When you install an app, it may have parts meant for platforms other than Mac. Thus, TuneupMyMac retains parts that are relevant to Mac and gets rid of junk files.

4.Unused Languages

How To Clean Files From Mac

The software lets the user delete all the languages that are of no use. This creates considerable space on the hard disk.

The software, as discussed above, also allows additional features like Optimization where in it offers Duplicate Finder, Uninstaller and Startup Apps tools. It lets the user do Manual Cleaning of the Mac by offering features like Internet Privacy, Misc Cleaning and maintaining Large Files. The Security feature has Shredder tool that allows the user to get rid of data on Mac safely, privately and permanently.

Clean Up Deleted Files

We hope that this blog helped you understand how certain non-consequential files occupy relevant space on your Mac thus making it slow and prone to malfunctioning. Which is why it is important to clean junk files on Mac from time to time.

Next Read: How To Resize Images On Mac Without Losing Quality





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