Apple just made another nifty tweak to the way storage works with macOS in the latest version, Sequoia, which is still in beta testing (though it’s almost here). The tweak could be a lifesaver in certain scenarios.
The change involves a new option in Mac App Store settings that lets you set macOS to automatically download and install apps or games larger than 1GB to an external drive, instead of your Mac’s main system drive.
If 9 to 5 Mac This reportedly happened in the recently released beta of macOS 15.1, the third beta in the developer-only branch and the only build to feature Apple Intelligence features. (These AI capabilities won’t debut in macOS 15 Sequoia, but in the 15.1 release coming a little later.)
It’s useful if you have a small drive in your Mac or MacBook, like many of us do. It’s very expensive to equip a MacBook with a larger SSD, or if you’ve installed all sorts of software on it and you’ve run out of storage space.
We have mentioned this another one handy tweak that macOS 15 introduces in the storage space department, as it follows an earlier change in an earlier beta release where users no longer needed twice as much storage space when installing an app from the App Store. (A temporary requirement, it should be noted, but still a serious stumbling block in some cases where storage space is at a premium.)
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The new installation option is very welcome, although it’s always been the case that you could run apps from an external drive (some apps, anyway – there are others that need to be installed on the system drive for various reasons). Previously, you had to manually move the app after installing it to your main drive, so it’s clearly a much more convenient idea to just install apps to the external drive if that’s the way you want to go.
While it’s great to have this option, it does seem odd that Apple has only just added it. Why hasn’t it been included sooner? We can only shrug. With Macs continually making strides towards becoming better gaming machines – macOS 15 will help on this front too, with Game Mode tuning to ensure faster framerates – this may have moved up the priority list somewhere, as it will certainly help when it comes to fitting beefy game maps onto an Apple device.
Keep in mind that apps on an external drive can be considerably slower, so it may be worth picking up one of the best, fast external SSDs , especially if you also like to play games and plan on installing somewhere other than your Mac’s main drive.
