How to clean and organize your Mac

The longer you use anything, including your Mac, the more cluttered it becomes. One solution is to simply upgrade to a new machine, but a more economical (and environmentally friendly) move is to make your existing machine work better. To make your computer feel like new, or at least cleaner and less cluttered, we’ve combined this guide with techniques and useful apps that help us maintain a more civilized computer. From physical cleaning to hard drive organization and tab management ideas, here’s how to clean and organize your Mac.

How to clean your Mac’s screen and body

While you can buy many products designed to help you clean your computer, I’ve found that the simplest method works best – and it’s the method recommended by Apple. To get started, all you need is water in a spray bottle and a clean microfiber cloth. You can use regular water or distilled water. The advantage of the latter is that it’s less likely to leave any residue on your Mac, especially on your monitor. You can buy distilled water at the grocery store or make your own with some simple cooking utensils. Either way, it’s more affordable and more versatile than dedicated cleaning solutions. If you don’t have any microfiber cloths yet, Amazon sells an affordable 24-pack for about $14.

Two other products I’ve found that make my job easier are Whoosh Screen Cleaner and Giottos Rocket Blower. I can’t say enough good things about the latter. It will save you from purchasing expensive and wasteful compressed air tanks.

As for the process of cleaning your Mac, the most important tip to remember is to start with a clean cloth (which is part of the reason we recommend buying them in bulk). This way you’ll save time and reduce frustration. Start by shutting down the computer and unplugging it from the power source. If you went out and purchased a rocket blower, use it immediately to remove dust. If not, wipe your computer with a dry microfiber cloth. Be especially careful with the keys, especially if you have a Mac with a butterfly keyboard.

Next, moisten one side of the cleaning cloth with water or “Whoosh.” Never spray any liquid directly on the computer. This way, you’ll have more control and avoid getting moisture inside your Mac. I always clean my monitor first because the last thing I want to do is create more work for myself by transferring dirt from other parts of the computer to the screen. The final step is to polish the computer with the dry side of the cloth. Be gentle as you don’t want to scratch the screen or any other part. That’s all. Your Mac should be clean again.

How to organize your hard drive

One of the most difficult parts of cleaning your Mac hard drive is knowing where to start. After all, most of us have applications on our computers that we don’t even remember installing in the first place. Thankfully, macOS comes with a tool that can help you fix this problem.

Navigate to System Settings > General > Storage. Here you’ll find a tool to organize your storage into broad categories, such as Apps, Documents, Music, Photos, and more. Double-click an item in the list (such as “Apps”) to see the last time you used an application and how much space it took up. You can delete applications from the same window.

The section dedicated to apps is particularly useful, as you can see when the program was last used and whether it is no longer supported by the operating system or has become obsolete due to a newer version.

You don’t need me to tell you to uninstall programs you don’t use, but what you might not know is that there’s a better way to delete them than simply dragging them to the trash. A free program called AppCleaner will help you track down any files and folders left behind when you simply deleted an app.

After deleting any apps you don’t need, go to the Documents section. The name is a bit misleading here, as you’ll find more than just text files and Excel spreadsheets. In this case, file is the tool’s collective name for various files, including files that take up a lot of space. You can also safely delete any DMG (disc image file with a .dmg extension) that has the relevant application installed. The rest of the storage space is self-explanatory. The only other thing I would mention is that if you have been using an iPhone for a while, you most likely have old iOS backups stored on your computer. You can also delete them safely.

At this point, your hard drive should be in good condition. If you want to take a few extra steps to clean it, there are specialized apps that can help. I like a software called CleanMyMac X. It’s $40 per year and saves you the time and hassle of doing all the things I mentioned above (and a few others) yourself. It also doubles as a malware removal tool.

Tips and tricks for keeping your desktop and Finder tidy

Let’s start with the menu bar. Technically, it may not be part of the desktop, but a tidy desktop can make everything else look less cluttered. My suggestion is to download an app called Bartender, which costs $16. At first glance, this is a simple program that allows you to hide unwanted menu items behind a three-dot icon. However, the great thing about Bartender is that you get a lot of customization options. For example, you can set up a trigger that automatically moves the battery status icon out of hiding when your computer isn’t connected to an electrical outlet.

While we’re on the topic of menu bars, take a moment to navigate to System Settings > General > Login Items and look at all the apps that launch when you start your system. You can reduce this list to only the programs you use frequently to speed up your system.

When it comes to the desktop itself, the best advice is that less is more. Nothing makes your computer look more cluttered than a busy desktop. Folders and stacks can help, but for most people, I suspect part of the problem is that they use the desktop to quickly and easily find the files that matter to them.

If you’ve ever had trouble finding a specific file or folder on your computer, try using your Mac’s tagging feature.First open the Finder settings menu (“Command” + “,”) and click on the Labels tab. You can use the presets provided by macOS or create your own. Either way, drag the items you think you’ll use most often to the Favorites area at the bottom of the Preferences window. This will allow you to easily access them when you need to use them. To attach a label to a file or folder, hold down the ctrl key while clicking it, then select the desired label from the drop-down menu. You can also tag files while you’re working on them in the app. Remember, you can apply multiple labels to a single file or folder. You can even apply them into apps.

What makes tags so useful in macOS is that they can appear in Finder’s sidebar and are easily searchable directly from Finder or using Siri. As long as you have a system for organizing your files, even a simple one, you’ll find it easier to keep track of them. As an example, I like to apply Engadget tags to any files related to my work. If it’s important and I want to find it quickly, I’ll add an “Important” tag.

Alfred is a tool that can help enhance your Finder experience. It’s actually a more powerful version of Apple’s Spotlight feature. In addition, you can use Alfred to quickly find and launch applications. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, Alfred will change the way you use your Mac for the better.

How to organize windows and tabs

If you’ve used both macOS and Windows 10, you know that Apple’s operating system doesn’t come with the best window management tools. You can click and hold the green full-screen button to tile windows to the left or right side of the screen, but that’s about it, and the feature always feels less precise than its Windows counterpart.

My suggestion is to download an app that replicates the capture functionality of Windows 10. You have several competing options that offer more or less the same functionality. My favorite is a $5 program called Magnet. If you want a free alternative, check out Rectangle. Another option is BetterSnapTool, which offers more features than Magnet, but doesn’t have as clean an interface. These three apps give you more ways to configure Windows than the built-in tools in macOS. They also offer shortcut support, which means you can quickly set up your window and start working.

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