In Parallels Desktop you can automate reclaiming disk space back to Mac each time you shut down the virtual machine. Select Shut Down and reclaiming disk space will start. The third option reclaims space from a currently selected virtual machine.Īfter clicking on the Reclaim button, it will be offered to shut the virtual machine down. Shutting down the suspended virtual machines will also reclaim some disk space.Ĭlick on Resume button > then shut down all Windows virtual machines through the Start menu button > Power button > Shut Down or by going to Mac menu bar > Actions > Shut Down.

In the appeared window walk through each option in the list one-by-one starting from deleting snapshots if there are any. To reclaim extra disk space find File menu on Mac menu bar > choose Free Up Disk Space. Note: Do not terminate virtual machine while it reclaim disk space to avoid corrupting it. Reclaiming extra disk space clears up the unused hard disk space from Windows back to the Mac.

Note: You may also use a 3rd-party tools that help to identify large files that you no longer need, like Scanner. For example, previous Windows installation takes up to 27.5 GB of disk space in my case. Wait for scan to complete, scroll down to review files that take plenty of space.

To free up space manually click 'Free up space now': Enable Storage Sense to allow Windows automatically free up disk space. To manage Windows storage go to Windows Settings > System > Storage. The space taken by VM on Mac disk mostly belongs to operating system, programs and files in Windows. Identifying the contents of a virtual machine Note: Visit this article to learn more how to clear cache from Mac. If you want to reduce size of your VM(s), click on Parallels VMs > Free Up Disk Space. Look through the files in Documents section (it includes Downloads folder as well) and delete large files that you no longer need, make sure to empty the Trash. Note: Parallels VMs stored in the Shared or other directories will not be included. Click on Apple () menu > About This Mac > Storage > Manage. Parallels VMs stored in your User directory will be listed separately: Use macOS® Storage Management menu to check what files take plenty of space on your Mac disk. Identifying what takes disk space on a Mac

My virtual machine (VM) takes a lot of disk space on my Mac, and I want to make shrink it.

My Mac performance is affected due to low disk space.

I am running out of a disk space on my Mac, and I want to make sure that my virtual machine (VM) doesn't occupy it all.

Mac hard drive space usage