Whenever you download something on your Mac, it goes into one place by default — the Downloads folder. Ordinarily you download files from your web browser, but other apps as well use Downloads as a repository for files transferred to your Mac. Today we expect at managing the Mac Downloads folder and keep it from taking up a lot of storage on your computer.
Where is the Mac Downloads folder?
The Downloads folder is accessible from 2 places: the Dock, where it may appear as a "pile" of files or as a folder (epitome above), and in the Home folder.
The Dwelling house folder contains a lot of things: Movies, Music, and Pictures, first and foremost. For those who don't use iCloud Drive, Desktop and Documents folders are also in the Home folder. Home is the location for many folders and files for your user account. It's also where the Downloads folder lives.
How files are saved to the Mac Downloads folder
As mentioned in this article's opening paragraph, anything downloaded in a web browser goes into the Downloads folder by default. As an example, let'southward say that you lot desire to ship a friend a flick of the crawly OWC Envoy Pro Elektron you but bought. On the website, you lot encounter a perfect motion-picture show to send, so you right-click the image (a two-finger click on a trackpad) and encounter this pop-upwards menu:
Select "Salve Paradigm to 'Downloads'", and the paradigm is downloaded to the Downloads folder.
Other times yous may be downloading an app or driver from a software developer, and yous meet a Download push button. Click it, and you'll encounter an animation showing the file zipping from the website to your computer. When the file download is complete, the Downloads folder (or stack) in the Dock bounces to indicate that the file has arrived.
When receiving an email with attachments in the Mail service app, click the paperclip button that appears when you hover over the acme center of an e-mail bulletin (see image below). Past default, the attachments are saved to — you guessed it — the Downloads binder.
Why yous should manage your Downloads folder
It's very piece of cake to download apps, documents, PDFs, photos, installers, and other media to your Mac. If you don't lookout man it, your Downloads binder suddenly has hundreds or thousands of files in it. Don't believe me? Every day I download dozens of files for articles that I'thousand writing, and within weeks I'll have hundreds of files. I finally decided that I needed to do something nearly that mess!
Back when I was a Certified Apple tree Consultant, I had a client who was complaining almost not having enough storage space on his Mac. A quick wait showed that the client wasn't aware of the Downloads folder for some reason and had well over 110GB of files stored in that location. Nosotros moved some of them to another folder, only the bulk were deleted. Trouble solved.
The easiest way I personally found to handle all of those files was to figure out what I wanted to do with them as soon as they were downloaded.
How to manage downloaded files
That installer package (.pkg) or disk image (.dmg) file? Install the app, and then delete the installer! If you demand the app again at a futurity date, it'due south always available for download from the original source.
Images
Images? The chances are that you lot downloaded an paradigm for a reason — perhaps you needed it for an email or a document you're writing, Open the Downloads folder past correct-clicking the binder icon and selecting Open up Downloads.
To view a downloaded epitome, just highlight it with a click and press the space bar on the keyboard to open up it in Quick Wait. Need to edit the image? Double-click about any JPG, PNG, HEIC, or similar image file and it opens past default in Preview. Right-clicking provides other options for editing an image through the Open up With command. Information technology shows all apps that can open and edit a file of that type.
One time it is in your document or email, dump it into the Mac trash. My motto? "Use it, then lose it!"
Changing the default download folder
Downloading a lot of images? Why not save them right into your Photos binder or a project folder? You tin can change the default download folder to whatever other folder on your Mac.
This is quite easy to practice. In your browser (Safari every bit an example), select Safari > Preferences. In the General tab, click the dropdown card next to "File download location" (see prototype beneath).
To have Safari ask you each time for a location for saving downloaded files, select "Ask for each download". how do things end up in your Downloads folder? Want to save all those images into the Photos folder? Click on "Other…" and select the Photos folder or a subfolder within it.
Moving files to an iCloud Drive binder
Want to movement some of your downloaded files to a binder on your iCloud Bulldoze and so they're bachelor on all devices? Simply open up the Downloads binder, click on the file y'all want to move, and elevate it to the proper binder.
macOS has what are called "spring-loaded folders" that make it very to just elevate files from one place to another. The link here provides detailed directions on how spring-loaded folders work. This video also demonstrates what I'm talking about:
Keep it clean
The betoken of this post is that information technology'southward very easy to accumulate a lot of files in the Mac Downloads folder and chew up valuable storage on your Mac. Delete files from Downloads once they're used, or movement them to an iCloud folder if you want to keep them.
The simple instructions outlined here are a adept step at keeping the Downloads folder clean.
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Posted by: mcgeehicke1968.blogspot.com
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