Forum Discussion

AnthonyGarcia's avatar
AnthonyGarcia
Iron Contributor
Apr 15, 2026

How to free up disk space on mac as storage is full?

My MacBook Air M2 has recently shown a "storage almost full" warning, and things have started to slow down a lot. Not very familiar with how storage works on macOS, so not sure what is taking up so m...
device management
Features
JosephKim's avatar
JosephKim
Iron Contributor
Apr 15, 2026

System data takes up most of the storage in Mac. 

This category is notoriously difficult to clear because it includes everything from hidden system caches and logs to massive local backup snapshots. Unlike photos or documents, these files aren't always easy to find in Finder, including time machine snapshots, library caches and dynamic assets.

You can force macOS to show and delete these through Disk Utility. This is one of the best ways to free up disk space from Mac.

1. Open Disk Utility (via Spotlight/Cmd + Space).

2. Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar.

3. Click View in the top menu bar and select Show APFS Snapshots.

4. A list will appear at the bottom. You can select old snapshots and click the minus (–) button to delete them instantly.

The Terminal Command: For a faster sweep, open Terminal and type:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

If snapshots appear, you can delete all of them by turning Time Machine off and back on in System Settings, which usually triggers a purge. You will free up a lot of storage on your Mac by doing this.