(If you’d rather pay for a prettier and more frequently updated app that does the same thing, DaisyDisk from Software Ambience is $10 in the Mac App Store.) But the app still works perfectly under OS X Yosemite, and costs nothing. It’s not a beautiful web site, and my link will take you to the most recent version, which is several years old. This is where to download GrandPerspective by Eriban Software. Step Two: Download GrandPerspective + OnyX For Free OS X will tell you that opening the app “will always allow it to run on this Mac,” without disabling security for anything else. Your app will pop open, and you won’t see Apple’s warning dialog again unless you download an updated version of the app later.Īlternately - thanks to readers Adam and Peskeguy for this tip! - you can just right-click on the app icon, choose Open, then tap the Open button to achieve the same result.

The pictures above show how this is done: after you get the warning dialog, go to the Apple menu, pick System Preferences, select the Security & Privacy icon, and hit the Open Anyway button. Instead, you should manually authorize each “unidentified developer” app the first time it launches. In the name of security (and popularizing the Mac App Store), Apple introduced a new dialog box several years ago, warning users the first time they click on an app from “an unidentified developer.” This warning has probably stopped some people from opening malware, but it also blocks completely safe apps by trustworthy developers who haven’t sought Apple’s approval.įor most people, the right solution isn’t to disable this security feature. Step One: Don’t Be Surprised By This OS X Warning

GrandPerspective offers a highly visual display of what’s taking up space on your Mac Onyx cleans up the Mac files you’d be afraid to touch yourself… Below, I’ll show you how two completely free Mac programs, GrandPerspective and OnyX, will do all the heavy lifting for you. Next, cleanse the cruft OS X builds up in the background as you use your computer. First, find and delete enough files to leave your Mac at least 50GB of free storage capacity - enough room for the Mac to work without pausing to manage its hard drive space.

This How-To article offers a simpler alternative. That’s not as hard as it sounds, but it’s a radical and fairly time-consuming solution.

Even die-hard Apple fans will admit that Macs typically run new OS X versions better (faster, and with fewer bugs) if you start with a clean slate: completely wipe your hard drive, do a fresh install of the latest OS X release, and restore only the files you need. I’ve devoted several columns to hardware solutions - replacing old hard drives with fast new SSDs, adding more RAM, and increasing storage capacity using an external drive - but there are software solutions, too. “My Mac used to be fast, but now it’s running so slow.” I’ve heard many versions of this complaint, and they’re always factually true, not just opinions: Macs do become sluggish over time, even if all of their chips and hard drives are working like new.

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