On a Mac, a snapshot captures your data at a specific moment, letting you restore it to that exact state later. Time Machine and other tools like Carbon Copy Cloner create these snapshots to make backup and recovery easier. macOS stores them using the APFS file system. Therefore, in this guide, we shall discuss “Fix what is taking up my Mac Storage? Delete Snapshots”. Please, see Backup Mac with Veeam Agent for Mac to Synology DS923+ NAS, and Fixing AIX Veeam agent job startup delay issue.
It will interest you to know that APFS local snapshots often mysteriously consume space when using Time Machine. They are read-only, point-in-time copies of your filesystem stored locally on your drive.
This makes it easy to restore files or the whole system even without the backup drive connected. Here is see how to Backup MacOS to Synology NAS via Time Machine.
Mac automatically keeps Time Machine local snapshots internally. Thereby, storing point-in-time copies of your data on the internal drive. As space begins to run low, macOS steps in and removes the oldest snapshots first, freeing room for new files without interrupting your work.
Apple designs this system so the storage they occupy is considered purgeable. This means, it won’t block essential actions like downloading large files, copying data, or installing software updates.
While you normally don’t need to touch these snapshots, you can delete them yourself if you want to reclaim space immediately. If you no longer want to keep these snapshots, you can turn off the Time Machine backups. This will delete all local snapshots currently stored on your Mac.
Also, see how to install Veeam Backup Console on a Jump Server, and Best Storage for Veeam: Comparing OOTBI by ObjectFirst to VHR.
See what is utilising your Mac Storage?
To determine what is utilizing your storage space on Mac, one of the easiest way to go about this is to use the Storage Management Tool.
To access this, navigate to Apple Menu, and then on “About This Mac”, then “Storage”. Lastly, click on “Manage”. In the Recommendations section in the Storage Management tool offers quick actions to help free up space and these include the below;
- Store in iCloud: Move files, photos, and messages to iCloud, keeping only recent or optimized versions locally.
- Optimize Storage: This automatically remove watched movies or TV shows from Apple TV and delete older email attachments. From the image below, this has been completed as well.
- Empty Bin Automatically: Set your Mac to permanently delete items that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days. As you can see, this has been completed.
- Reduce Clutter: Here you will have to review large files, downloads, and unsupported apps so you can decide what to delete.
They act as guided clean-up options, especially for users who don’t want to dig manually through folders or run Terminal commands.
Beyond the standard recommendations, you can also identify large files, old downloads, unsupported apps, containers, and files from various browsers. The tool also highlights key storage categories, including Documents, System, Applications, and more as shown below.
Other build-in Mac tools includes “Finder + Smart Folders”, Disk Utility, and Terminal Commands such as du -sh ~/*, tmutil listlocalsnapshots / and the diskutil apfs listSnapshots /. In this guide, we will focus only on tmutil command.
You may want to take a look at some of these theird party tools. Some are free and and some are pid. they are DaisyDisk, GrandPerspective, OmniDiskSweeper, and CleanMyMac X.
Please, see The VM appears to be in use: Taking ownership failed, VM is not accessible: Fix Taking ownership of a VM failed, and how to Check what files are taking up space on Windows 11.
Time Machine command-line utility (tmutil) Command
The command below help lists Time Machine snapshots that may be taking up hidden space.
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Prune local APFS Snapshots
To delete the local APFS snapshots, we will use the command below. This will instruct the Time Machine to prune the local APFS snapshots until a certain amount of disk space is freed. When you run the command, you will be required to authenticate. Enter your password to proceed.
sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
The thinlocalsnapshots instructs the Time Machine to reduce the number of local snapshots on the specified volume. Here, the “1000000000” represents the bytes to free which is equivalent to 1GB.
Note: That you can increase this as you wish. For example 5000000000 which is equivalent to 5GB.
As you can see below, the snapshots it deletes will be listed under “Thinned local snapshots” in the output.
Now, use the command to list the Time Machine snapshots remaining.
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Delete Snapshots
As you can see also in the image, you can also use the “deletelocalsnapshots” command to instruct the Time Machine to remove a specific local APFS snapshot from the specified volume. You have to specify the timestamp of the snapshot you want to delete in the format below.
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots <snapshot-date>
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2025-04-05-002215
As you can see below, we have successfully deleted so many of the localsnapshots available on this volume. These commands affects only the local snapshots stored on your internal drive and not backups on an external Time Machine disk.
Therefore, we have been able to regain 118,43 GB of space again.
I hope you found this article very useful on “how to Fix what is taking up my Mac Storage? Delete Snapshots”. Please, feel free to leave a comment below.
