Thursday
Jun112009
Mac Tips Daily! #41 - Remove Languages and Free up disk space
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 2:58PM
If you have a Mac that has a smaller hard drive, and your disk space is
limited, you may consider freeing up some space by removing unused languages
from your applications.
Most of the Apple applications that are installed on your Mac have built in support for
about 15 languages. Mail, iLife Apps, Safari, etc. all have your default language, plus
a whole lot more. Not all third party Applications support these, and may only have
one language associated with them.
Removing the extra languages from each App can free up usually 10-30MB of space. Not a lot..
but it can become significant if you remove the extra languages for multiple applications.
First, on the Dock, click on Finder.
Now, open the Applications folder, then 'CONTROL and CLICK' on an Application icon.
In this example, I am using 'Address Book'
when the contextual menu appears, choose 'Get Info'
Now, in the Languages area, you can select these individually and remove the ones you don't
want to keep - but you must keep at least one language - preferably the one you speak and read!. That is the safest way.
I want to do this quicker, so I am going to take a shortcut.
Notice here, I pressed 'COMMAND' + 'A' and it selected them all.
If I Delete all of the languages.. the App will no longer work, so I need to be careful to leave
my preferred language, which for me, is English.
So, I need to hold down 'Command' and then 'CLICK' on 'English' so it will deselect it.
This is VERY IMPORTANT.. if you don't leave at least one language, the APP will no longer work.
Now, click Remove
Your Mac will ask you if you want to do this, and even tell you the App may no longer work.
If you did it correctly above, go ahead and click 'Continue' it will move the
languages to the 'Trash'.
You should now be left with just your preferred language, and it is also grayed out.
If you don't see this, go directly to 'Trash' and click on one of the files
and press 'Command' + 'Z'
This will undo it. If you don't do it right away, it could become impossible to restore the files.
If everything went as planned, to free up the disk space,
you need to do one final step EMPTY THE TRASH!
UP A listener wrote in and suggested a program that can do this as well. It is called Monolingual, find it here. I would read the reviews of it though, some people said it worked great, and others noted that they had some issues.
Now, open the Applications folder, then 'CONTROL and CLICK' on an Application icon.
In this example, I am using 'Address Book'
when the contextual menu appears, choose 'Get Info'
Now, in the Languages area, you can select these individually and remove the ones you don't
want to keep - but you must keep at least one language - preferably the one you speak and read!. That is the safest way.
I want to do this quicker, so I am going to take a shortcut.
Notice here, I pressed 'COMMAND' + 'A' and it selected them all.
If I Delete all of the languages.. the App will no longer work, so I need to be careful to leave
my preferred language, which for me, is English.
So, I need to hold down 'Command' and then 'CLICK' on 'English' so it will deselect it.
This is VERY IMPORTANT.. if you don't leave at least one language, the APP will no longer work.
Now, click Remove
Your Mac will ask you if you want to do this, and even tell you the App may no longer work.
If you did it correctly above, go ahead and click 'Continue' it will move the
languages to the 'Trash'.
You should now be left with just your preferred language, and it is also grayed out.
If you don't see this, go directly to 'Trash' and click on one of the files
and press 'Command' + 'Z'
This will undo it. If you don't do it right away, it could become impossible to restore the files.
If everything went as planned, to free up the disk space,
you need to do one final step EMPTY THE TRASH!
UP A listener wrote in and suggested a program that can do this as well. It is called Monolingual, find it here. I would read the reviews of it though, some people said it worked great, and others noted that they had some issues.
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