How to Stop Mail App on Mac From Eating Hard Disk Space – Guide

Using the Apple Mail app on your Mac? Be aware that it caches emails and attachments offline, potentially taking up tens of gigabytes of space. This can be a major issue for those with limited hard drive space, such as MacBooks with 128 GB.

1. Prevent Mail from automatically downloading attachments

To avoid having attachments from messages automatically downloaded and stored on your Mac, the simplest solution is to adjust your settings.

OS X Yosemite users should head to Mail Preferences and select the Accounts menu.

To change the settings of an account, click it and then select the Advanced tab. Uncheck “Automatically download all attachments” to complete the process.

Mail will no longer automatically download and store attachments from incoming messages, unless you choose to do so.

OS X Mavericks and later versions no longer offer the option to prevent Mail from keeping complete copies of all attachments. Prior to Mavericks, users could access Mail Preferences and select “Do not save” under the “Keep copies of messages for offline viewing” option.

2. Limit the number of messages received directly from your Gmail server

You can reduce the amount of space Mail takes up on your computer by accessing your email server.

Gmail users can access the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab in Settings, located under the gear icon, to enable email forwarding.

You can limit the number of messages stored in an IMAP folder by selecting the “Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this number of messages” option under Folder size limits.

This feature allows users to limit the amount of messages stored on their Mac’s hard drive by “hiding” any that exceed the set limit.

If you’re looking to free up space on your Mac, these tips can help. By setting up Mail on OS X correctly, you can save valuable hard drive space.

Final note

If you’re looking to free up hard disk space on your Mac, this guide can help. Have questions? Reach out to us. And don’t forget to share the article with your friends!