Mac Delete Garageband Instruments And Lessons
Garage Band was taking up 47GB of Storage Space on my Mac Pro.
And I didn’t even have it installed!
The Problem:
Let me start of by introducing the backstory:
As a means of of spending less and being able to upgrade more components, I bought a used Mac Pro from 2012 on eBay for £1,295 ($1,600) with the following specifications:
- 6 Core Intel Xeon @ 3.33 GHz
- 24 GB RAM
- 1GB VRAM Graphics Card
- 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
It’s a very capable workstation that for now suffices for my needs. It also came pre-installed with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro X, software worth £500 alone. Here’s the catch though, the Macintosh HD disk (disk on which the OS is installed) is only a 256GB SSD
, which is a very small capacity for my needs and the software that I run. It’s also got a 1TB HDD for storing all of the other files that don’t require such a speed for as they’re accessed less frequently, but that is no use if the software can’t efficiently be run on it.
GarageBand has a built-in tuner that can work with instruments plugged into your Mac’s selected audio input or picked up via a microphone (including your Mac’s built-in mic). This includes the GarageBand-compatible instruments and loops that you get when you purchase Apple MainStage, which you can get from the Mac App Store for $30. However, this does not include all the music lessons you can purchase within GarageBand. From the Apple menu select “About this Mac”, then click on Storage: Click on Manage Under Music Creation you can delete the GarageBand Sound Library. The higher the BPM, the faster the song will play. By default, Garageband starts a new project with a BPM of 120, which is a very common tempo for many types of songs. Key – This button lets us change the musical key of our project. By default, Garageband starts a new project in the key of C Major. GarageBand for Windows app initially has primary pack with 500 sounds and loops, 1 drummer and some primitive lessons for guitar and piano. Garageband also include symphony orchestra and boldt packages; and any user wants further increase in lessons and sound system, they can add Garageband Library by purchasing from Garageband Sound Library. GarageBand is a fully equipped music creation studio right inside your Mac — with a complete sound library that includes instruments, presets for guitar and voice, and an incredible selection of session drummers and percussionists.
Now that you know the Hardware that I run on, here’s the main problem:
After receiving and booting up the Mac Pro for the first time (in my ownership), I installed all of the necessary software for my daily operation as well as a couple of other Steam games that I wanted to try out on a more powerful machine as opposed to my old Windows laptop. As you can see in the image on the left, this left me with roughly 25GB of storage space left (I didn’t check it before installing all the software, how much space was available 🙁 ). So I started investigating what was bloating up the space taken on the Mac Pro, I knew that I didn’t install that much software to take the SSD
to it’s edge.
Discovering the problem:
TeamViewer provides easy, fast and secure remote access to Windows, Mac and Linux systems.
After looking at the Storage Overview on the Mac, it wasn’t hard to see what the problem was. As you can see in the picture on the right, GarageBand was taking up almost 47GB of storage space for the instruments and lessons and the best part is, that I didn’t even have GarageBand installed!
Ok, so the obvious reason for this space being taken is that the previous owner had garageBand Installed and then uninstalled it, but why didn’t GarageBand get rid of these files?
Solution to free Storage Space:
Ipad Garageband
Do this at your own Risk!
The solution isn’t always as easy as it seams. But after some online research, I found the following to fix the issue:
Step 1 (If you have GarageBand Installed):
Garageband
Navigate to:
Delete the .app file. According to the source, this should clear about 1.16GB of Storage space if you have that installed. For me this was not the case, as I didn’t have GarageBand installed on my Mac.
Step 2:
Garageband For Windows
Navigate to:
Delete the whole folder. This will vary in size according to how much GarageBand had downloaded and installed. For me this folder was using up 14.79 GB of Storage Space on the SSD
for various instruments and lessons.
Step 3 (Do NOT Delete if you are using Logic Pro X):
Navigate to:
Delete the whole folder, but only if you’re not using Logic Pro X. I decided to go ahead with it as I had the full Adobe CC Suite Installed, so I had (according to my opinion) as much better piece of software to utilise. This cleared of 27.29GB of Storage Space on the SSD
! The single biggest factor in the problem.
Step 4 (Do NOT Delete if you are using Logic Pro X):
I suggest backing-up this folder if you’re uncertain.
Navigate to:
Delete the whole folder, but only if you’re not using Logic Pro X. Again, I deleted this as I had Adobe’s alternative available to me. This folder made 4.83GB available to me on the SSD
.
Garageband Windows
Step 5 (If you Don’t need Logic Pro X):
Free Garageband Audio Units
Navigate to your Applications Folder and Drag the Logic Pro X icon to Trash. This will clear up some more space on your Mac.
Conclusion:
My best advice would be to get rid of GarageBand unless you really need it. It’s a piece of software that can take up A LOT of space on your Macintosh HD drive that can be much better utilised by other software. Especially if you are using a small capacity SSD
, then it’s not worth the extra hassle that it creates. I managed to save 39.91 GB of Space on my SSD
, that’s 15.6% of the total capacity of the drive!