How to free up space on a Windows PC

Even with the abundance of streaming services we’re using now, Windows PC storage can still fill up quickly. Games, photos, movies, and apps can take up significant chunks of room, and before you know it, that SSD is starting to run low on free space. And a cluttered PC drive can impact performance as well as Windows updates.

You don’t have to accept the slow decline of available storage space on Windows, though — there’s plenty you can do about it, whether that’s using built-in tools provided by Microsoft or keeping your files and folders better organized.

If you’ve never given much thought to how your files and folders are organized, now might be the time to change that. Whether it’s a physical filing cabinet, a fridge freezer, or a Windows PC, having a system in place makes it quicker to get to what you want. It also means you can more easily identify data you’re done with and can safely delete.

The organizational structure you use is completely up to you. Windows itself gets you started with default folders for Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos, which you can make use of or ignore as you’d like. You can right-click on any folder to pin it to the Start menu or the Quick Access pane (which is on the left of File Explorer).

Once you’ve determined it’s time to start cleaning up, it’s a good idea to see where all your storage space is going in terms of apps and file types. From Windows Settings, choose System > Storage. You can then click on one of the categories — Temporary files, Documents, etc. — to get more info and possibly get rid of unwanted files.

You can also see which files are taking up the most room in a specific folder by going to File Explorer: from the top of the window, click Sort > More > Size. 

Now that you’ve got some idea of what to get rid of, it’s time to start doing some clearing. To begin with, hit Delete on any file or folder in File Explorer that you want to delete. It will get sent to the Recycle Bin. You can empty it manually: 

• Open it in File Explorer (search for it from the address bar at the top). 
• Select everything in the folder with Ctrl + A or by clicking the checkbox to the left of the column names.
• Press Delete to erase the files for good.

You can also have the Recycle Bin empty itself automatically, which helps with maximizing the storage space you have available. You do this by running the Windows Storage Sense feature. 

Storage Sense is a feature built into Windows that can automatically clean up different types of files from your system: temporary files that are no longer needed, deleted files in the Recycle Bin, and files that have already been backed up to your OneDrive account, among others. You can access all of these options from Settings > System > Storage > Storage Sense.

By default, the utility springs into action when it detects Windows is low on disk space and removes local copies of files that have been backed up to OneDrive once they’ve not been accessed for more than 30 days. However, you can adjust these settings to how often you want Storage Sense to run on its own.

From Windows Settings, choose System > Storage > Storage Sense and open the menu under Delete files in my Recycle Bin if they have been there for over: your options are Never, 1 day, 14 days, 30 days (the default), and 60 days. Choose Never if you want to run Storage Sense manually every time you need it.

If you use other cloud services besides OneDrive, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, they can also usually remove local copies of backed-up files. This means you can free up lots of storage space on your system while still having access to shortcuts to all your files: as soon as you need them again, they can be downloaded back to the local drive.

There’s another integrated Windows tool for freeing up some storage space. Go to the System > Storage page of Windows Settings and select Cleanup recommendations. You’ll find suggestions about where storage savings could be made, depending on the current state of your system.

Options can include removing temporary files, large files, unused files, and files already synced to the cloud. In each case, you’ll get descriptions of the types of files Windows has found, and you can select any groups of files you want to erase. Once you’ve made your selection, click Clean up to start deleting.

You can also click on See advanced options for more cleaning ideas, such as Windows update files that are no longer needed. Again, you’ll get full descriptions of the types of files Windows has found, plus details of how much space they’re taking up, so you can decide which files you can do without.

Unless you’re doing everything in the cloud, apps are likely to take up a substantial amount of room on your Windows PC. One way to find out which apps you might want to uninstall is to go back to Cleanup recommendations and look for Unused apps.

You might also want to check out which apps take up the most space. From Windows Settings, head to Apps > Installed apps. You can open the Sort by menu and choose Size (Large to small) to look up the worst offenders when it comes to storage.

To free up some space, click the three dots to the right of any program, then Uninstall, to delete it and its associated files from your system.

One more tip: if you’ve got games libraries installed on your Windows PC, removing older games you haven’t used in a while can free up serious amounts of space. In the Steam client for Windows, for instance, right-click on any title on the Library pane, then choose Manage > Uninstall to remove it.