Ever wondered how you can conserve space on your Mac? Ever thought that you have far more installed for the OS than you really thought you should? We have the answer.

When you first turn on your Mac you will have a full (or “easy”) install of the OS, not all of which you want. The main things installed can be broken down into 3 categories:

Of all of this, how much do you use? Do you use multiple languages? Do you ever use the iWork free trial? If the answers to these are no then we have a couple of suggestions for you.

Firstly, for those that don’t want to mess too much with their OS installs there is a great little free-ware program called DeLocalizer. This little app easily removes your unused language files, leaving you with only American English. We would like to note though that some users experience issues with Mac OS 10.4.0+ when GB_English is removed, for the most stable results do not remove American English or British English.

Well what about those of us that have decided we want our Mac to look and work as new, but with more space? Well, there is a way for us too, and best of all, it’s on the OS X disk. Insert the disk and choose the “Install OS X and Bundled Software” option. You will need to restart your Mac, leaving the DVD in the optical drive. When your Mac restarts, it will boot from the disk. For a completely clean install you can choose to Format the drive and then choose customize on the final screen before the format takes place. Here you can uncheck the options you won’t use including:

Follow your on screen options and there you will have it, 20 minutes later you will have a fresh, streamlined and only a 2Gb install (min.).

[Warning: Of course, it is recommended that you back up all of your data, media and other files before you run either of these options, especially the format option as this completely erases the hard drive before re-installing OS X.]