Can You Offload Apps On Mac

Because of the relatively high cost of SSD storage, when buying a new Mac you might choose to pick a smaller-capacity drive than in a Mac you’re replacing. That might be to reduce the overall expense or to spend your budget on more RAM or a faster processor. Apple still offers laptops with 256GB SSDs, and that seems a little snug if you have digital downloads or ripped music and take even a modest amount of photos and videos.

iCloud is a solution for offloading on-device storage and offers a kind of loose backup of that material, too. In the US, you can upgrade iCloud storage from the included 5GB to 200GB for $2.99 per month and 2TB for $9.99 per month.

Next, tap on the iOS app you wish to offload. Scroll through the list of apps that can be offloaded, and tap on one you temporarily want to exchange for some free space. Tap on “Offload App”. Jul 25, 2020 Apple offers two ways to offload apps – automatically done by iOS and iPadOS or offload apps manually. In the former one, Apple will automatically offload unused apps when your iPhone or iPad is.

Here’s a strategy for migration, if you’re comfortable with many of your files having the only copy living in iCloud.

Enable iCloud Photos in Photos

In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences > iCloud. Check the iCloud Photos box and then select Optimize Mac Storage. If iCloud Photos was already enabled, macOS will only for sure retain thumbnails of images and videos. However, if you’re turning it on for the first time, Photos will upload all locally stored images. After those are copied to iCloud storage, Photos can optionally delete any local version and just show a thumbnail.

Offload an Unused App. If you have an app you don’t use much, but you don’t want to delete the app and its data, you can offload the app until you need it again. On a Mac with macOS Mojave 10.14 or earlier, or on a PC, open iTunes. You can get tips for how to save space and how to offload or delete apps and content that.

For a large Photos library, this can restore nearly all the space occupied by the library. Photos and videos are downloaded on demand as you view or use them.

Optimize iCloud Drive storage

In the Apple ID preference pane’s iCloud view (Catalina) or the iCloud preference pane (Mojave and earlier), there’s a checkbox marked Optimized Mac Storage. If it’s selected, macOS removes the least-accessed files from your local synced copy of iCloud Drive as your computer’s available storage drops; these files remain available in your online iCloud storage.

A sort of shadow version remains available on your desktop, so you can see the file and search against it. If you try to open that file, macOS quietly retrieves it from your iCloud account to make it available.

Enable Desktop & Documents Folders in iCloud Drive

Outside of images, your videos, and locally stored music, your Documents folder can occupy the most space. Some people organize on their Desktop, making it necessary to link both. With this item checked in iCloud Drive’s Options, macOS syncs the contents with iCloud Drive. But with the Optimized Mac Storage box checked as well, your Desktop and Documents folders are removed as necessary to make room on local storage after being uploaded.

iCloud Music Library via Apple Music or iTunes Match

With a subscription to the Apple Music service (various prices) or iTunes Match ($24.99 per year), you can use iCloud Music Library to sync music files you have downloaded on your Mac to iCloud. This doesn’t count against your iCloud storage, interestingly enough. Locally downloaded music and audio might include songs you ripped from CDs you own, purchases from Bandcamp and directly from musicians, songs and audio you’ve recorded yourself, and DRM-free iTunes Store items.

However, Apple Music and iTunes Match will replace any song that matches against a song found in the iTunes Store with a 256Kbps AAC file. That may not be desirable, and the matches aren’t always perfect. Apple improved on matching quite a bit a few years ago, but if you have any personal or non-label music, read up on Macworld and other sites about problems you might still encounter before proceeding. If you’ve only purchased iTunes Store music, it’s an easy choice.

Dropbox Smart Sync

If you’re a Dropbox user and have multiple Macs or are sharing folders from other people, you might have many gigabytes of files on a laptop that don’t need to be there. The service’s Smart Sync feature, added to all its paid plans in May 2019, lets you choose which files are stored locally and which are available via the Dropbox cloud. Right-click any file or folder in your Dropbox folder, choose the Smart Sync item, and choose Online Only. Unlike iCloud Drive, Dropbox immediately removes synced files, freeing up space. But like iCloud Drive, those files remain in the Dropbox folder, and will be downloaded automatically when you open them.

None of these strategies except Dropbox Smart Sync deletes files locally except when storage space becomes full and there’s no way to force deletion without removing the actual items. If you have plenty of storage left on the Mac you’re migrating from, you might try the bizarre trick of making a large empty file and then duplicating it to start filling storage. macOS will notice storage getting cramped and start removing local, synced files that are stored in iCloud in one of the above forms.

To create this file, launch Applications > Utilities > Terminal, and then type or copy exactly the following and press return:

mkfile 1g ~/Desktop/BigFile.txt

This makes a 1GB file that you can duplicate until macOS feels the pressure. You can check whether material was removed for iCloud storage in several ways:

In the Finder, make sure View > Show Status Bar, which will show the currently available storage at the bottom of any window showing a folder within the startup drive.
Select the startup drive in the Finder and choose File > Get Info. macOS shows in the Used section how much is occupied as files are deleted.
Choose  > About This Mac and then click the Storage button and click Manage. This few shows a number of suggestions for deleting files and applications altogether, but can also track how much The Recommendations assistant appears in System Information, offering a variety of ideas about reducing storage.

When consumed storage on your current Mac drops significantly below the size limited of your new drive, you can delete those large files and empty the trash, and then proceed on your migration.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Chris.

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Published On: , by MacSoftAdmin

Using our phones can be fun and a headache at the same time. There are times when a particular app is required and the phone sends you an error message to free up some room by erasing apps as there is no more available space.

Well, stop to worry as iOS 11 came up with a cool item that can naturally erase apps when space is full. The other good thing is just the app is erased. All the information concerning app is secured. Perhaps you might want to reinstall the app in the future, then all your data is right there on your device waiting for you. Offloading is the term used to describe the process of naturally erasing apps when there is no more available room. I think you will agree with me that it’s better to offload any app you do not need manually as you are the one using the device and you know what apps are more useful to you. Below I will share with you how you can do this in a very convenient way.

Before we dig deeper into how to manually remove apps you need to know a few things. On your appliance, is it the iPad or iPhone, there is the auto-offloading option that is available for you but it can only start working when you click on the box to mark it active. This you can do by simply visiting your settings.

Settings > General > iPad Storage or Settings > General >iPhone Storage

Doesn’t matter what type of device you have in both settings are the same as listed above. Just follow the process and you will get to the page where you need to activate this feature. Note that after enabling your auto-offloading mode, this setting will vanish but you can still find it in Settings>iTunes & App Store.

In the same setting menu only in the bottom of the page, you can find the list of all apps on your appliance. You might want to check to know how much space each app occupies. This can be done by clicking on the app and you will be directed to a detailed page with all information. There may even be advanced options for you just in case you need to make any further modifications. Apps owned by Apple will not be erased totally. If you want a better result, all you can do is to use the advanced option or Extra option. For instance, the Music app shows you all the songs you have saved up locally on your device so it’s quite easy to dig in and see what songs you no longer find interesting and delete.

In my opinion, offloading is the best option when dealing with apps with large storage requirements. For example, I have the GarageBand on my iPad, it’s occupying 2.26GB. The app itself takes 1.44GB and 825MB is for my data (songs). I can save 1.44GB by offloading the app itself. My data remains safe and unbothered. Should I choose to reinstall GarageBand sometime later in the future; I can successfully retrieve my data and settings.

Well, the thought of losing your data will certainly cross your mind. Most especially if you do not have a backup. But it’s great as it takes away the negative aspect of erasing an app. Also, you have to remember what apps you deleted as there is no list of offloaded apps. Nonetheless, the offloaded apps still remain the list of apps, so anytime you want to reinstall them they are right there for you. I can say as a space securing feature it’s a great app to have running. A good app for the future as it makes finding deleted apps much easier.

While surfing around in your Settings>General>iPad Storage, take a good look around. You’ll see some quite fantastic features you can use for creating additional space. For instance, Safari has a setting that allows you to delete your Reading List to secure more space.

Offloading, in my opinion, is a fantastic way of saving up some space. With the manual option, it gives us the flexibility of dumping an app whenever there’s no need in it and return back to it when we want all our data safe at any point when we chose to come back to it. Doesn’t make any sense running out of space when there are apps you barely use and they take up a chunk of your storage space.

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