Get Organized By Cleaning Up Your Mac

Let's face it, most of us have mess hard drives with files in all sorts of places. It is time to get organized by coming up with your own system of where files should go. Here are some suggestions to get you thinking about the best way to clean up your Mac.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to clean up your Mac and get organized.
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So this tutorial is about how to clean up your files on your Mac. So in other words how to organize all of your stuff. If you've been using your Mac for a while you probably have a lot of files in your Documents folder, on your Desktop, maybe in some other places and maybe it's getting to be quite a mess. So what's a good way to organize things. Now you could do this anyway you want. You can create folders in any kind of structure that you want. You can have all files just thrown in the Documents folder. You can have all your files cluttering your Desktop if you want. But if you're looking for suggestions on how to get organized here are some ideas that I have after using Macs and computers for 35 years.
First I going to assume that you're using iCloud Drive. This is the best way to have your files available across all of your devices. Most of these ideas will work even if you're not using iCloud Drive. In iCloud Drive you have the option to turn on Desktop and Documents which means that both those folders are part of iCloud Drive. Those are the two primary folders that you're going to want to put files in.
So let's start by looking at the Desktop. You can see here two views of my Desktop. You can see the Desktop over the background here and you could see a folder open to iCloud Desktop. You can see both are empty. Both are actually exactly the same thing. They are just showing you the same items. So if I were to drag and drop a document onto the Desktop here you would see it appear in the Desktop folder. If I were to delete it from the folder here you can see it's gone from here. Just two ways of looking at the same thing. 
Think of your Desktop as the actual surface of a physical desk. What do you want to see is in the morning? Do you want to come and sit down at a desk that's cluttered with papers and folders and things. Or do you want to start with a nice clean desk. I try to keep my Desktop empty with no files on it at all. Now, of course, one of the major reasons for clutter on a Mac is somebody that has all sorts of files and folders on the Desktop. If this works for you great. But for a lot of people it gets in the way of productivity. But you don't have to keep it completely clean like I do. For instance there are different strategies you can use. 
One is to use the Desktop when you create something completely new. You come up with a brand new idea and you want to start a Pages document, a Keynote document, something in Numbers and you don't want to stop your creative flow to organize things. So you create a file and you just stick it on the Desktop for now. Later on, later that day, maybe tomorrow then you figure out where that file will live permanently. Other people like to keep very  frequently accessed files on the Desktop separate from the rest of their documents. So maybe you have  a daily file that you constantly update things. Maybe that's on the Desktop. Maybe you like to keep the folder with all the items of the project you're currently working on on the Desktop. You can do that and still maintain a pretty neat desktop. 
Another way to handle that might be to create an alias to that item. For instance I could go to the Documents folder here, put this file in the Documents folder, and then hold Option and Command down and drag an alias to the Desktop. So you could see here I have an alias file, there's that little curved arrow there, and the actual file is in my Documents folder. This could be done inside of a folder for this project as well so that actual file is in the proper file place but you have an alias on the Desktop that you could simply double click to open and use that file.
So what about the Documents folder. This is where you want to put all of your stuff. Think of this as your file cabinet. Everything goes in here. But you just don't want to litter the entire Documents folder with all these individual files. You want to have it organized. So you want to create subfolders. So in the Documents folder here you can go to File, New Folder or Shift Command N and create a new folder here. You can create as many as you need. The trick is to find an organizational structure that works for you. So, for instance, you may have something that looks like this at the top level. Home, School, and Work. The first is for any kind of personal files. The second may be for your schoolwork, night classes that you're taking, whatever it is. The third is the stuff you do for work.
But you can name these whatever you want. For instance here I've got it named Business, Courses, and Personal. Basically the same idea but you use the name that fits better with how you think of these items. You can come up with more complex systems. Like, for instance, here I've got several folders for personal stuff; personal finance, personal health, and personal miscellaneous. For work I just call these Projects. So I have my current projects, I have a folder for future projects, and one where I archive old projects. So here I've got one for some Entertainment stuff. Here I've got one for new things I'm learning from online courses. Or if you're in school you could have a lot of things in here. 
Each one of these can have subfolders in them. There's lots of different ways to do this. I didn't have to create three separate folders for personal at the top level. I could have created one Personal folder and then in that created a finance, health, and miscellaneous folders or even more. For Projects I could have created a work folder or a projects folder and then in that created a current, future, and old. So you really have to think about what works for you. Doing it this way saves a step when I want to go into one of these. Instead of going into Projects and then to Current I can just go right into Projects Current. Notice I named these Projects Current and Projects Future and Projects Old so all the Projects folders are together alphabetically. If I called them current projects, future projects, and old projects they would be dispersed throughout here and harder to see the organization.
Now you don't want to stop here. You want to have some folders inside each one of these. So for instance under Projects Current I have several different folders each one representing a different project. Under School I have different folders representing different classes. I also have this folder here that deals with other things like bills and paperwork. 
The thing about the Documents folder inside of iCloud is that it doesn't work well with very large files because everything is syncing to iCloud. So you may want to store some files locally. If you go to your Home folder, so you can Go, Home, you'll see some standard folders there like Movies, Music, and Pictures. These are great places to create your own folders to store some items. Of course Movies is going to have things like your iMovie files and files from other video editing software. But nothing to stop you from creating your own folder in there to store some videos. For instance say you have a large ClipArt video collection for various things. You don't necessarily want to have that on iCloud Drive. You just want to have it on your Desktop Mac. You can create that here in the Movies folder.
The same thing with Pictures. This is going to have your Photo Library. But you can create your own folders here. I've created one for Desktop Backgrounds here. You can create one for ClipArt say and store a large ClipArt collection in it. The same thing for Music you could put all sorts of different folders in here. These will be stored locally and it may be a better way to organize some files. You can also create your own local Documents folder right here at the Home level. You don't have to call it Local Documents. That's just a name I like so I can see that this is a different folder than the Documents folder. In here you can put very large files the you don't want to store in iCloud Drive. Then you can link to them with aliases.
So for instance if I go down in here I can see I have a folder called Old Projects. So I've taken Old Projects off of iCloud Drive and stored them in this folder on my Desktop Mac only. I also have one called Smith Videos. Remember I had a folder in my Current Projects folder called Smith. The idea here was I store some large videos here so they're not in iCloud Drive. I could easily go into my Documents folder, into Current Projects, into Smith and then drag and drop creating an alias here holding the Option and Command keys down. Now I have a quick alias to get to this videos folder that is stored on my local drive from the Smith Folder here stored in iCloud Drive. Of course that alias isn't going to work on anything except my Desktop Mac but it does keep things nice and organized.
Now everything I've done here looks pretty easy because I started with nothing. There was nothing in this Documents folder. I just created all of these folders as examples. What if you already have a cluttered documents folder and you're trying to clean it up. The best way to do that is to have two Finder windows open. So I've got one Finder window here and I'll create a second New Finder window. Let's put them side by side. macOS Catalina gives us an easy way to do this. If you hover over the green button here you'll see the ability to Tile windows left and right. I don't want to go to Split Screen Mode so I'm going to hold the Option key down and you could see it changes to Move Window to Left Side or Right Side. I'm going to move this one to the right side. I'm going to then go to this folder, go to this green button here, hold the Option key down and Move Window to Left Side. So now I have my screen divided into two different views of the Finder.
I can easily go into my Documents folder which could be quite cluttered with folders and subfolders. I can use these two to drag and drop each way to get things organized. It's just a matter of going through your files here. With the second window open I could very easily dig down into subfolders and still grab items and drag them to places that I want. I'm using the List View here but Column View could be useful too to be able to dig down into these folders here so I can drag items directly into the subfolders like that. From here it's just a matter of spending time. Now if you have a ton of files you may not be able to do it in one sitting. You may just have to do a little bit at a time. A few minutes here, fifteen minutes there until everything is organized.
After you're done you're not done! You're never done. To keep organized you have to keep it going. So there are things you may want to do in the future. Don't be afraid to split up folders. If a folder has too many things in it or a project kind of divides in half don't be afraid to put some files in one folder and some files in another folder. It maybe underneath the same folder. It maybe at the same level. You've got to constantly reinvent your organization this way. Don't be afraid to add new folders or rename folders as needed. Your life is going to change so what you do with your Mac is going to change. Don't be afraid to always be updating your organizational structure to best fit what you need right now. Also don't kind of feel organizing now is kind of a permanent thing. If you're not sure how to organize things or what folders to create just go with something for now knowing that you can change it later.
So I have two more pieces of advice for you. First is you've got to have discipline to stay organized. So set aside some time. Maybe it's Friday afternoon. Maybe it's the end of every day. Maybe it's the first day of every month. A little bit of time here and there to keep your stuff organized will go a long way and prevent things from becoming a complete mess that at some point during the year you have to clean up all over again. 
The second thing is don't obsess about organization. Search will save you. If a file isn't put in the right place or you have kind of a junk folder that has all sorts of different things in it you'll be able to find it. It will be there. You can use file searches or just look for things and you'll eventually find what you need. Don't spend so much time organizing things that it actually is taking more time to do that than it would be to simply search for the file later. The important thing is to strike a balance. Keep things organized but don't spend so much time organizing that you don't have enough time left for your work. Remember it's all very personal. You may have your system that works better for you because it's how you think and the way I suggest may not be the perfect way for you. 
Hopefully there are some ideas here that you can use or at least this has motivated you to think about organizing the files on your Mac.

Comments: 13 Responses to “Get Organized By Cleaning Up Your Mac”

Lauren Eisen

4 years ago

i def needed this so thank you for addressing this topic. and as usual, thank you for your great advice!

Laverne Lachapelle

If I may, it might have been better and easier to follow this wonderful video had you been using, as you have recommended in some of your other videos, the column view.

Dav Norris

Gary, Do you have a recommendation for finding Duplicate Files (to delete!)? Over the course of time we have a ton.
Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Dav: First, I would figure out why you have so many and change how you work so you don't keep getting duplicate files. Second, I would just do a "spring cleaning" like I mention here. I wouldn't use any automatic process to delete files. I would go through your documents methodically and thoughtfully to clean them up.

Pat H

How can I save a article to go back to when I have a need for that partial article? Can I create a folder in Docs? How do I get your article to that folder on my iPad. I think I can drag & drop on my computer.

Dean Kutzler

Man, Gary! Your advice is always golden! This has helped me solve a problem I've had for 40 years! Thank you, so much! Very motivational, too!

Dean: Not sure what you mean by an Article. Do you mean a web page? You can always bookmark it. Or you can save it out as a PDF file and store it. If you store it on iCloud Drive and use iCloud Drive on both your Mac and iPad, then you'd have access to it in both places. You should also have access to bookmarks in both places.

Area49

Great topic,
I find my desktop can get very cluttered with shortcuts, so I also organize them into specific folders, (ie, Graphics, Media, Mail, etc),

Greg Fox

How to reindex the system So it can locate things after deleting and moving several Files on Large Multi-terabit external drives?

Greg: Indexing is ongoing. There is nothing you need to do.

Ken Vignona

Always enjoy a "refresher" or some basics on the Mac. Even though I have been on a Mac since almost the beginning (LCII) it is always a learning experience to watch your videos. Thanks.

nick

Gary, I'm with you on a clean desktop. Having been introduced to computers at University on an IBM mainframe with punchcards and using computers since then, I have to say the most useful habit that I ever developed is file organization. I rely on folder structure to organize files, and take advantage of the Mac's ability to let us customize the graphic icons of the folders. Unfortunately setting up a good file structure is an afterthought for most users and it should be the first. Thx

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Comments Closed.

Get Organized By Cleaning Up Your Mac

Comments: 13 Responses to “Get Organized By Cleaning Up Your Mac”

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