Mac High Sierra No Manage Button For Storage
Feb 03, 2020 So, your Mac is running out of storage. You try to figure out what’s taking up your disk space by clicking the Apple logo on the top-left of the screen, selecting About This Mac, and hitting the Storage tab. To your surprise, you see a yellow bar representing “System” that seems to occupy way more space than you think it should.
- Mac OS Sierra and later includes a storage management app to quickly review and free up used space on your hard drive. This app eliminated the needs for a 3 rd party space analyzer app. In order to access the Storage Management app, follow the steps below. 1 st Method to Access Mac Storage Management App. Right-click your hard drive and choose Manage Storage. 2 nd Method to Access Mac Storage.
- Jan 04, 2017 Accordingly, Mac users can free up storage space on their computer by tracking down large Mac apps and deleting them. The latest versions of MacOS offer a very easy way to track down large applications, see when they were last used, and offers a simple way to delete the apps from the Mac, all from a unified Storage Management tool.
- Apr 15, 2018 My System disk use is around 90GB on a machine I have been using for years (including migration from an older one). But, when I opened About This Mac Storage Manage, it fine tuned the report and then reported System as only 62GB. So, it seems initially it reports stuff in the System category until it digs deeper to analyze the disk use.
In the very last OS update, Apple decided that Mac storage is not enough for Mac users and introduced a new space-clearing feature, Optimized Storage. In this article we’ll take a look at what it is, how it works, how it could be better, and how you can fill in the gaps left in space-clearing. Let us begin.
What is Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra?
In short, the macOS Sierra's Oprimized Storage feature is a set of rules in the system that move certain files into the cloud. They don’t get deleted, but instead of the file, you get a link to the file, the whole weight of which is now up in iCloud. The result of the optimization is more free space on your hard drive and many-many gigabytes of cloud storage taken up. So whether to use it or not is really up to you.
How Optimized Storage works
It’s not that straightforward and there are quite a few components to it. First, you can take a general look at the main menu of the storage.
To access Optimized Storage:
- Click on the Apple icon in the top left corner of any window
- Choose About this Mac.
- Choose Storage.
- Find the Manage button above the storage bar.
- Now you should see a menu like below.
On the left there is a menu of possible cleanups and optimizers. You can also click on every button to turn on all the possible settings for automatic cloud storage.
How do you optimize Mac with Optimized Storage
All of these options are ways to optimize Mac storage, each effective in it’s own fashion. Here’s what they do:
Store in iCloud.
As you can see, what it does is notices when you’re running low on disk space and moves files and photos you haven’t opened recently to iCloud.
What it means is that you can’t access them if you don’t have internet connection or you logged out of your iCloud account. What it also means is that you still have all those files, they are not deleted and yet they don’t waste your disk space.
Optimize Storage.
This command refers mainly to iTunes and Mail attachments. The movies you’ve already watched and old Mail attachments get off your Mac. You can re-download all of it whenever you need, because the movies are bought for good and attachments are always there in your Mail client.
Empty Trash Automatically does what it says, mainly.
Reduce Clutter
Reduce Clutter is a way to look through your docs to see the largest files on your Mac and possibly remove them. You can also sort these large files by date to see the oldest first. And quickly go through Downloads folder to pick out useless space-wasters over there.
Downsides of Optimized Storage
Generally, getting more free space on Mac is a common pain for Mac users and should’ve been addressed long ago. Apple have offered an elegant solution with cloud storage, yet it’s not perfect. Here’s why Optimized storage is not all that good:
- You have to pay monthly to keep it active. In iCloud you have 5GB of free storage and the rest comes at a price. It’s small, it depends on your country, and it’s generally affordable. But — it’s yet another monthly payment.
- System junk and cache files keep storing on drive and taking up space. There are still no tools to get rid of them. C’mon, Apple.
- Moving to the iCloud doesn’t mean sorting stuff out. You’re just adding to the space trash, sweeping the dust under the rug instead of throwing it away. Do you really need all those files that will be moved into iCloud? Are you sure you will open them again, ever?
Your Mac is clean and organized, while your iCloud drive becomes a mess. By the way, here are some tips on how to keep your iCloud in order.
Fixing Optimized Storage
How to deal with overstoring in the iCloud
Make sure you delete old useless files instead of moving them.
When an application crashes, a crash report is created and stored on the device. Crash reports describe the conditions under which the application terminated, in most cases including a complete backtrace for each executing thread, and are typically very useful for. When an app crashes on your Mac, it automatically generates a crash report. You’ll see this appear after the crash with a warning dialog saying “App has quit unexpectedly.” That crash report is available to read immediately in that window by clicking the “Report ” button. The crash report can also be found in the Console app. Starting in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X automatically restarts when you have a kernel panic, and then displays a similar-looking message for 60 seconds (or until you press a key) telling you. When a kernel panic occurs in Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.7, the computer displays a multilingual message informing the user that they need to reboot the system. Prior to 10.2, a more traditional Unix-style panic message was displayed; in 10.8 and later, the computer automatically reboots and displays a message after the restart. The panic report includes the memory address and, in most cases, the name of the process that called for the panic function to be invoked. The calling process may be helpful, but it doesn’t always indicate what actually caused the event that led up to the panic; only the last process in the chain of events. 
How to deal with system junk on hard drive
Get a Mac cleaner. There are plenty of handy apps out there, such as CleanMyMac X. It removes all system caches, app caches, runs regular maintenance, and generally keeps your Mac in shape.
Here’s how to clean up system junk with CleanMyMac X:
Mac Storage No Manage Button
- Download CleanMyMac for free.
- Launch the app.
- Hit “Scan.”
- Wait for it to find junk on your Mac.
- Hit “Run.”
- Viola, all done.
How to Disable Optimized Storage
Of course, you can just pass on Optimized Storage and keep managing your files the way you’ve always had. When you turn off storage optimization, macOS Sierra will stop moving files to iCloud and deleting your old (possibly favorite) iTunes movies. Here’s how to disable Optimized Storage on your Mac:
- Click on the Apple icon in the top left corner.
- Choose System Preferences from the menu.
- Click on iCloud.
- Click on the Options right next to iCloud Drive.
- Uncheck the Optimize Mac Storage checkbox at the bottom.
- Hit Done.
That’s it, storage optimization is switched off now. If you change your mind, you can always enable it again by repeating steps 1 to 4 and then checking that Optimize Mac Storage checkbox.
Now you know most of what there is to know about the new Optimized Storage feature on your macOS Sierra. Space on your Mac can be cleaned out easily with it, yet it’s not quite enough to keep your whole Mac running smoothly.
Unfortunately, Optimized Storage doesn’t filter what it moves to iCloud, nor does it help deal with system junk left by apps and the OS itself. Clean up the junk, don’t waste your cloud space on files you’ll never use, and have a nice day. Cheers.