Published May 25, 2023, 8:15 AM EDT
Dreamchild has been a professional writer since 2019. His career at MUO started in 2022, shortly after dropping out of law school. He specializes in covering macOS, iOS, Gaming, and AI.
He's also a tabletop role playing games nerd and has amassed a wealth of experience related to the technical aspects of playing tabletop role-playing games--online or offline.
In his spare time, Dreamchild either plays video games or volunteers at a repair shop, where he fixes minor software and hardware issues for various Apple devices.
Dreamchild's bylines include SlashGear, where he has lent his expertise in technology and cars. His consumer technology articles count in the hundreds and have been viewed by millions of readers.
Sign in to your MakeUseOf account
Just like Windows, macOS lets you run applications from a compatible external drive. Moving some software to an external drive saves you a lot of space on your Mac, and it's a recommended strategy to prevent your storage from getting full.
Overall, it's a pretty straightforward process, and here we'll show you everything you need to do to run it successfully. But we strongly recommend you use an SSD for this because they're more durable and much faster.
Prepare an External Drive With Disk Utility
You first have to prepare an external drive by formatting it; here's how to do that:
- Connect your external storage device to your Mac.
- Launch Disk Utility by searching it with Spotlight (Cmd + Space).
- Look for your external drive on the sidebar under External.
- Control-click on the drive's name and select Erase.
-
Choose the name, and select APFS as the Format. (You can learn more about Mac file systems for external drives in our dedicated guide on the topic).
- Click Erase and wait for the process to finish.
- Then, hit Done to exit the menu.
You can use pretty much all the available file system formats to run applications from an external drive, but APFS is the most optimized for macOS.
How to Transfer and Run Applications From an External Drive
There are generally two ways to install an application on your external drive:
Now, all you have to do to run the application is to click it on your storage device. The first time you ever run an application from your external drive, your Mac will verify it, but that won't happen again.
Organize Your Mac Apps on an External Drive
You can create a folder on your external drive to neatly organize all your applications and create a shortcut for the apps you plan to use often. To do this, follow these steps:
- Open your external drive by selecting it in Finder.
- Control-click on an empty space inside the drive and choose New Folder.
-
Name the folder "Applications" or whatever you desire.
- Now, to create a shortcut for your application, Control-click it and select Make Alias from the context menu.
- Drag the alias shortcut somewhere accessible on your Mac, like the Dock or desktop.
Apart from creating aliases and new folders, you can check other tips for managing folders on your Mac.
Save Your Mac's Storage Space With External Drives
The best way to handle large applications you use selectively is by running them off an external SSD drive. For example, if you only use Adobe Premiere Pro in the studio, you can put the app on your external drive and leave the drive in the studio. This way, you won't need to flood your Mac with apps you won't use while you're home.
Building a habit of selecting what apps to run on an external drive will help manage your Mac's storage space better and prevent the problems that come with low storage down the line.