Laptopsaren’t only bigger than your smartphone, they tend to have more storage too. That combination of more physical real estate on your screen and storage on your hard drive means it’s not hard for things to get out of hand, either with a hard drive full of stuff, a cluttered desktop of files, folders, and application shortcuts, or both. Because laptops are frequently used for both entertainment and work, that kind of mess doesn’t make completing tasks or relaxing once they’re done any easier.
Culling your apps, letting go of photos you don’t need, and removing the leftovers that you can collect by just owning a computer is a great way to start.
With spring in full swing, now’s the perfect chance to tackle that problem head-on. Whether you have aMacor aWindowsmachine, culling your apps, letting go of photos you don’t need, and removing the leftovers that you collect just by owning a computer is a great way to start.
And topping that off with physically cleaning your screen and keyboard can make your laptop feel new. Here are a few tips and tricks to clean up your laptop, from freeing up storage, to removing dust.
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How to free up storage on your laptop by deleting apps, photos, and files
Modern laptops Windows and Mac laptops typically offer a built-in way to offload files and photos to the cloud to give your computer some more wiggle room, but apps, and all of their installers, uninstallers, and support files are a whole other story.
How to remove apps from your laptop
Depending on if you have a Mac or a Windows PC, the process for uninstalling and deleting apps is going to be different. To start, consider which apps you don’t use often and don’t need to keep around for the once-in-a-blue-moon work emergency. Once you have a list of apps in mind you want to delete, you may get started.
On a Mac, the easiest apps to get rid of are ones you’ve downloaded from the Mac App Store.
Much to Apple’s chagrin, there are plenty of other ways to get apps on your Mac, so even if an app appears in the Launchpad, it might not be able to be deleted there. For the apps you’ve downloaded off the web or installed off a disc (rare, but not impossible), there are three options:
On a Windows PC, there are similarly a couple of different methods for removing apps depending on how many you want to remove at once.
On a PC, the simplest method you can do straight from the Settings app:
You can also use the older, but still usable, Windows Control Panel. This is especially handy if you’re running an older version of Windows that doesn’t give you easy access in Settings like Windows 10 and 11 do.
Dedicated cleaning tools are also available for Windows, and much like the Mac ones, they typically cost money unless you’re willing to use a more limited or trial version.
How to remove photos and videos from your laptop
Other than applications, photos and videos are bound to be the items that take up the most space on your laptop’s hard drive. If you’re not already using a cloud service to store them, usingGoogle Photos,iCloud, orOneDriveto back them up can give you some peace of mind before you go to town deleting things.
On Mac, the most straightforward way to delete photos and videos is through the Photos app:
That’s still a highly manual process and doesn’t account for the other images or video files you have on your laptop.
To capture all the images and video files on your laptop you’ll need to use the Finder:
You can do the same thing and choose Movie rather than Image to get a Smart Folder of all the video files on your laptop in one place so that they’re easier to delete.
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On a Window PC use Windows' own Photos app:
File Explorer can get the rest of the images and video files you might have missed in the Photos app.
You can do the same thing by swapping the Movies folder in for the Pictures folder to find and remove any lingering video files still on your hard drive.
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How to organize and remove miscellaneous files
If you’ve removed the apps you don’t need and any photos or videos that are already safely backed up somewhere else, there still might be leftover files and folders taking up space.
On a Mac, unless you’re using a dedicated cleaning tool, removing leftover documents and files is still manual. There are still a few tips worth trying:
On Windows, the process of removing leftover files can at least be partially automated thanks to the Disk Cleanup feature built into Windows. And, of course, File Explorer makes it simple to sort through any remaining files on your laptop too.
How to remove dust and grime from your laptop
With the digital part of your laptop in a better state, now you may turn to the physical components. No matter how clean your own hands are, the keyboard and display of laptops are natural magnets for oil, dust, and dirt. It’s unavoidable that your computer is going to become gross eventually. It’s a matter of when, not if. Because they’re expensive electronics, you do want to be careful cleaning your laptop, though, and verify it’s entirely off before you start cleaning.
How to clean your screen
Many laptop displays are coated with an oleophobic coating so that they’re less likely to collect fingerprints, which means using cleaning sprays with a high alcohol content could damage the screen. Your best bet is to use a clean, lint-free microfiber cloth to wipe away any visible streaks or smudges, just by repeatedly rubbing the cloth on your display.
Laptop displays are coated with an oleophobic coating so that they’re less likely to collect fingerprints, which means using cleaning sprays with a high alcohol content could damage the screen.
For any hard-to-clean fingerprints, you can lightly dampen the cloth with water and try going over the patches again to see if that helps. If there’s still leftover residue once your display dries, try spraying a 70% isopropyl alcohol solution on the microfiber cloth and going over your display a third time to take care of the rest.
How to clean your keyboard
Keyboards are seemingly designed to collect crumbs and cleaning requires patience and care, so you don’t brush dirt and dust inside your laptop rather than just between your keys.
In general, compressed air is a recipe for getting crumbs shoved inside your laptop – if you’re going to use them, spray at an angle rather than straight down.
A safer optionis to brush dust out using a soft makeup brush that can fit between keys and direct crumbs out rather than in. Once you’re satisfied there’s no more dust to remove, you may wipe around the keyboard with a damp microfiber cloth to remove any remaining grime or dirt.
