Not long ago I wanted to install Windows on my Mac and I noticed that I didn’t have enough space on my hard drive. At first, I thought there was little I could do since most of the files on my Mac are pretty important, but upon further inspection I noticed that the Mail app was taking up several GB of space.
Control the download of your attachments. (via Shutterstock)
The main cause of this is that the Mail app downloads and keeps all emails and (most importantly) its attachments and stores them on your Mac for offline viewing.
While this method has advantages (like having all your stuff on Mail indexed by Spotlight), if you’re just setting up Mail on your Mac or have cleaned up all your files attachments that you no longer need, follow these tips to prevent the Mail app from taking up huge space on your Mac from now on.
1. Prevent Mail from automatically downloading attachments
This is the easiest and most convenient method to prevent any future mail attachments from being automatically downloaded and stored on your Mac.
If you’re running OS X Yosemite, go to Mail’s Interest and then select account menu.
There, click on the account for which you want to change the settings and then click High level navigation. Below it, make sure to uncheck Automatically download all attachments select.
With this, Mail will not download and keep the attachments of all incoming messages that contain them, but will instead keep those stored on your email server unless you specifically tell Mail to load. them down when you open them.
Important Note: If you have OS X Mavericks or an earlier version of OS X, when you go to Mail’s Interest you will find option Keep a copy of the message for offline viewing. Below that, you can choose Don’t keep so that Mail does not keep full copies of all attachments. However, this option was removed after Mavericks.
2. Limit the number of messages received directly from your Gmail server
If you want more control over how much space Mail takes up on your computer, you can literally get to the root of everything: your email server itself.
Some email services offer this option. In Gmail, for example, you can access Setting (located in the gear icon) then select Forwarding and POP/IMAP navigation.
There, under Folder size limit you can choose the option named Limit IMAP folders to no more than this number as well as the number of messages you want the folder to store.
This option simply ‘hides’ additional messages beyond the limit you’ve set, effectively reducing the load on your Mac’s hard drive.
And there you go. So, if you’re just setting up your Mac or want a fresh start with Mail on OS X, use these tips and you’ll save a lot of precious space on your hard drive. Nothing!
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
