How to see how much storage space is available on your Mac

In this tutorial, we will tell you about five quick ways to check how much storage space is available on your Mac’s SSD or hard drive.

Storage screen in Mac System Settings

Since your Mac’s storage can be quite limited, it’s important for you to be able to check and see just how much available storage space your Mac’s solid-state drive or hard disk drive has left before it fills up.

There is more than one way to check, and you can use any of them, whether it’s a desktop or notebook computer. Most tips here will also help you know the total and available space on an external drive connected to your Mac.

1. Using About This Mac

  1. Click the Apple icon  from the top left corner of the screen and choose About This Mac.
  2. Click More Info, which will take you to the About section in System Settings.
  3. Scroll to the end to see the Storage section, which shows how much space is available.
About this Mac window

Note: On older versions of macOS, click the Apple icon  > About This Mac > Storage, and you’ll get to see a breakdown of all the content stored on your Mac’s internal storage drives.

Mac Storage Space Files About This Mac

2. Using System Settings

  1. Launch System Settings on your Mac and click General > Storage.
  2. You will see the available space here, along with a detailed breakdown of everything that’s occupying the local storage.
Storage screen in Mac System Settings

3. Using Quick Look

  1. Make sure your internal drive is visible on your Mac’s desktop.
  2. Select the drive and press the Space Bar to see the available space in a small Quick Look window.
Using Quick Look to see available storage on Mac

4. Using Finder

  1. Open Finder, and you should see your Mac’s drive under the Locations heading. If you don’t see it, click Finder > Settings from the top menu bar. Next, go to the Sidebar tab and check the box for Hard disks.
  2. Right-click over the hard drive and choose Get Info to see the total and available space under the General heading.
Use Get Info for a disk in Finder sidebar to see available space

5. Using Terminal

There is yet another way to check for how much available storage space you have, but it requires the use of Mac’s Terminal utility app. The command is very easy to use, but the output can be difficult to understand if you’re not very well acquainted with directories, hence why we would only recommend advanced macOS users use the Terminal method.

Nevertheless, if you’re interested in trying it out, just launch a Terminal window on your Mac and enter the following command followed by a press of the Return key:

df -h

The resulting output will be a table of data that shows the full size of your Mac’s storage drive partitions with their major sub-directories and the amount of space left over, the amount of space used, a percentage of capacity usage, and more.

Check Available Storage Space on Mac With Terminal

If you’ve got plenty of storage space left over, then you’re good to go; on the other hand, if you’re getting close to filling up, here are 30 tips to make space.

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