The Complete Guide to Freeing Up Space on Your Computer. Windows or mac. OS running out of room and crawling to a halt as a result Nowhere to store your latest batch of phone photos or i. Windows 8 has been out for download for developer preview. This version of Windows 8 is currently released as a beta version by Microsoft. Check the rest o. Bullguard Internet Security Gamer Edition on this page. Gmail is email thats intuitive, efficient, and useful. GB of storage, less spam, and mobile access. Youre in luck, actually it turns out that Windows 7 includes an entire set of small apps that Microsoft calls Gadgets, one of which is a clock. Tips and tricks you didnt know you could do with Google for on the go, at work and having fun. Gmail Desktop Gadgets For Windows 8' title='Gmail Desktop Gadgets For Windows 8' />Microsoft removed gadgets, the desktop widget feature introduced in Windows Vista, from Windows 8. Microsoft would prefer you use live tiles on the new Start screen. We know youve got a cool bag with some smart ideas inside, so let us know Share your bag in our Lifehacker Go Bag Show and Tell Flickr pool, shoot me a message. Not wild about using Gmail in your browser You dont have to. These free desktop clients give you a better interface and more options. Google today is introducing a new way to manage your Gmail inbox. This new view of your inbox puts a number of tabs at the top of Gmails inbox column. Tunes music purchases Dwindling computer storage space is a problem most of us have to face from time to time, and heres what you can do to ease the pressure. The more empty space youve got on your hard drive the betterit gives your OS more room to breathe and more flexibility when it comes to storing files and all the temporary data that goes along with day to day use of your system. Even if youve already got a sizeable chunk of disk space free, its always worth clearing out some more. Delete, delete, delete. Dont underestimate how much room you can free up using nothing but the Delete key, even if youve only got five or ten minutes for the job. While automated tools are faster, this gives you more control over what gets deleted and what doesnt. Your desktop and browser download folders are good places to start the clear out, followed by your photo, music, and video libraries, which are likely to be taking up plenty of room. If youve bought movies or TV shows from i. Tunes, for example, then you can safely delete your local copies and download them again if and when needed. If you need more time to sift through years of pictures or other types of files then moving them to an external drive while you do the sorting can relieve some of the pressure on the hard disk storage though you should have other backups in place as well. Look for blurred pictures, duplicate pictures, and pictures youd rather forget. Applications and games can take up a substantial number of gigabytes, so consider uninstalling any that youre not regularly using, having first checked that you can download them again should you need to. In some cases you might be able to remove certain components of apps rather than the full programs. If you use a file sync service like Dropbox or Google Drive, you can block certain folders from getting synced to your current computer while keeping copies in the cloud and on any other computers where youve got the clients installed delve into the client settings to configure thisthat might be useful if you want to keep your media library on one but not all of your computers, for instance. Do a before and after check for free space on your main hard drive and be as ruthless as you canyou might be surprised at how many 1s and 0s you can get rid of. The key is to think about files youre never going to make use of or that youve got somewhere else. Windows and mac. OS tools. Both Windows and mac. OS have built in tools to help you in your quest to gain as many extra gigabytes of room as possible, and theyve gotten so good you largely dont need data visualizers like Daisy Disk or Disk Inventory X for mac. OS and Win. Dir. Stat for Windows. From Windows Settings, click System and then Storageselect a drive usually This PC and you get a breakdown of how all the room on the hard drive is getting used up. You can click on any category to see the actual files themselves, but for our purposes the Temporary files section is of most interest. Click it, tick all the boxes, then select Remove files. Theres also the Disk Cleanup tool Just type disk cleanup into the search box to find it. Again, tick the types of files you want to get rid of temporary junk files left behind by Windows and other applications get mentioned again, then click OK to confirm your choice. Follow the Clean up system files link to make sure the utility has run a full scan for all the types of files that can be removed. Windows 1. 0 now lets you do all of this automatically, if you want to, via the Storage sense option that appeared with the Creators Update. You can see theres a toggle switch on the Storage screen, and if you click Change how we free up space you can choose which files get included its basically temporary files and files in the Recycle Bin. Over on the mac. OS side of the fence, a similar intelligent storage utility was added in Sierra. Open the Apple menu then click About This Mac and Storage, then click Manage next to the drive you want to tidy up. Youve got a variety of options here, and you can also see the types of files and the applications that are taking up most room in the list running down the left hand side. The option to Empty Trash Automatically is fairly self explanatory, as is the option to Store in i. Cloudif you click the Optimize button at the top then mac. OS basically takes you through the process of getting all your photos and videos into i. Cloud then deleting the local copies, replacing them with lower resolution thumbnails. The originals can be restored at any time, should you need them. The Optimize Storage option is a bit more interesting, and if you click on its Optimize button to the right you get a dialog box letting you clean up two apps Mail and i. Tunes. Specifically, you can remove older email attachments and movies and TV shows youve already watched as we mentioned before, they can be downloaded again from Apples servers if you want to watch them in the future. Finally, click Review Files next to the Reduce Clutter heading and mac. OS highlights some files that you might want to get rid ofit highlights large files, and files that havent been touched in a while, so you can decide for yourself which ones youd like to erase. Of course theres always the nuclear option Wiping your hard drive and reinstalling your OS, provided youve backed everything up first. Nothing is going to clear out as much room, though you need to make sure you can restore your applications and important files to their previous state. Weve previously covered how to do this for Windows and mac. OS. Third party tools. As well as the tools and techniques weve already mentioned, youve got a bunch of third party programs ready and willing to help you claim back some storage space. Primaria Veche Sibiu Program. For example, duplicate files can be a problem, especially when it comes to photo libraries, but Duplicate Files Finder free, Windows and Dupe. Guru free, mac. OS are two of the best tools weve found for tackling the issue. For a more robust clean up, wed once again recommend the excellent CCleaner free or 2. Pro, Windows or mac. OS It tidies up junk files left behind by your browsers and your other applications, fixes up problems in the registry, and more besides. If you pay for the Pro edition, it can scan for more types of files and run on a schedule too. Weve also been impressed with System Mechanic free or 3. Pro, Windows, which covers a lot of the same ground as CCleaner. It can hunt down and destroy 5. Windows settings. Meanwhile, Clean. My. Mac free demo then 3. OS comes highly recommended for Apple computers by most who use itit gives you access to a lot of maintenance options including removing old junk files and uninstalling apps though a simple, minimal interface. If you want the fastest disk space clean up and dont mind paying for it, then Clean. My. Mac is worth a look.