How to free up iMovie disk space

Update 2017-04-18: As of iMovie version 10.1.3, you can delete Render Files within iMovie Preferences (credit).

As we create more iMovie projects, our disk space starts to diminish.

What if we want to recover all that storage space?

One approach is to delete the Render Files of projects you’re no longer working on.

Disclaimer: although the operation should be safe, I’m not liable if anything goes wrong.

Open Terminal and run the following line of code (this operation cannot be undone):

find ~/Movies/iMovie\ Library.imovielibrary -path "*/Render Files" -type d -exec rm -r {} +

What the above does is it looks in iMovie Library and finds and removes all directories named Render Files.

If you’re not sure about running this code, you can also clean up the files manually.

Open Finder and go to ~/Movies/.

Then open iMovie Library Package Contents (right click and select the option):

iMovie Show Package Contents

Go inside each project folder and delete the Render Files folder:

iMovie Render Files

Now empty your Trash and you should see all that recovered space!