How to Free Up Disk Space on Windows 11

1. Measure before you touch anything Run a scan with a folder-size tool such as TreeSize, or at minimum check Settings > System > Storage, before deleting a single file. Without this step you're guessing at what's large, and you risk spending an hour clearing a folder that was only ever a few hundred MB. See how to use TreeSize for a first scan.
2. Empty the Recycle Bin and clear Downloads These two are the easiest wins because everything in them is something you already chose to discard or already used once. Right-click the Recycle Bin and empty it, then open C:\Users\YourName\Downloads and sort by size to spot installers and archives you no longer need.
3. Run Storage Sense and clear temporary files In Settings > System > Storage, turn on Storage Sense and run it once manually, then open Temporary files in the same screen and clear what it flags. This clears cache and update leftovers Windows itself no longer needs.
4. Uninstall apps you don't use Settings > Apps > Installed apps sorts by size. Games and creative suites are usually the heaviest entries. If you're not sure whether you still need something, check when you last opened it rather than guessing.
5. Clean up C:\Windows.old through Disk Cleanup After a Windows feature update, C:\Windows.old can hold tens of gigabytes of the previous installation as a rollback option. Don't delete this folder manually. Run Disk Cleanup, choose "Clean up system files," and select Previous Windows installation(s) — this removes it correctly and also gives up the rollback option, so only do it once you're confident the update is working fine.
6. Move large media to another drive Video projects, photo libraries, and game capture footage are usually the biggest movable items on a system drive. If you have a secondary internal drive or an external one, relocate these folders rather than deleting anything, and update the app that uses them to point at the new location.
7. Rescan to confirm what you actually recovered Run the same tool you used in step one again. Comparing the two scans tells you exactly what changed and whether anything you expected to shrink didn't — which usually means a cache rebuilt itself or an app is still writing to the old location.

If you've gone through every step and the drive is still nearly full, the cause is usually something the built-in tools don't surface clearly, such as a duplicated cloud-sync folder or an oversized AppData cache from one specific application. A full tree scan will show that folder directly instead of leaving you to check apps one at a time. Compare the built-in Storage page against a dedicated scan in Windows Storage settings vs TreeSize.

Before deleting anything unfamiliar that a scan turns up, check deleting large files safely so you don't remove something Windows or another app still needs.