This brief tutorial will show you how to easily free up anywhere from hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes of disk space on your Mac – just by deleting unnecessary language resource files from OS X.
I only use five languages on my Mac – four of which I rarely use. By deleting all the other completely unused language related files, I was able to regain 2.5GB (gigabytes) of space. While that may not seem like a lot on a Mac with a 2TB (terabyte) hard drive, it’s pretty significant if you have a smaller and faster SSD hard drive.
Just follow these simple steps…
- Download Monolingual (a small and free App), open the .dmg file, then drag Monolingual to your Applications folder to install it.
- Launch Monolingual from your Applications folder.
- Place a check-mark in the boxes next to the languages you want to delete. Do not place a check-mark in the box next to a language you want to keep. Adding languages back to OS X is not as easy as removing them – you’ll probably need to reinstall OS X. So be very careful which languages you choose to delete. When you’ve made your selections (after triple-checking) click the Remove button.
- Click Continue.
- Enter your password when prompted, then click the Install Helper button.
- Sit back and wait while Monolingual does its thing. Depending on the number of languages you decided to delete, the number of Applications you have installed and/or open, and the overall speed of your Mac – this process can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to half an hour.
- Once it’s complete, a window will appear letting you know just how much space was just cleared up. Click OK and go off to download more MP3s or games :)
