Is your Windows 10 laptop or tablet or phone running low on free space? Built-in
storage management tools let you pinpoint exactly which files and apps
are to blame. In many cases, you can recover that free space with just a
click or two.
Sometimes it seems like modern computing is a constant battle to
maintain enough free disk space for the data you need to stay
productive. Your adversaries are apps that chew up disk space when
you install them and then continue gobbling up disk space with the data
files they create. And then there's Windows itself, which uses disk
space for its system files, for hibernation and paging files, and for
System Restore points.
To find out exactly where your storage
space has gone, open the Windows 10 Settings app, click System, and then
click Storage. (You can skip all that clicking by typing storage in the search box and then clicking the top item on the results list.)
The
overall view displays the capacity and used space for all available
fixed drives. Click the entry for your system drive to see a bar chart
that breaks down how it's being used, with a color-coded list of
categories beneath it.
Keep drilling and you'll find some extremely useful tools:
- System & reserved Clicking this entry shows how much space Windows itself is glomming for its own use. You will find shortcuts here to help you enable or disable System Restore and clear away old restore points that can take up gigabytes of space.
- Apps & games This category lists every Windows 10 app and installed desktop program, with a search box and sorting options (sort by size or install date, for example). Click any entry on the list to remove that app and recover its used space.
- Temporary files You would be amazed how much clutter can accumulate in this catch-all category. Use the buttons here to delete temporary files and clear the Recycle Bin. If you have files left over from a previous Windows version after upgrading, there's an option here to remove them quickly.
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