"System" is currently using up 115GB of my 121GB available and restarting in safe mode did not help, how can I free up this space?

Safe Mode won't provide more storage. You have too much stuff on your SSD.

Get Correct Storage Information

Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.

The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.

How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive

1. Where did all that free space go on my APFS disk?
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
6. Files That Make Up the 'Other' Storage Category, and How to Remove Them
7. Free up storage space on your Mac.
8. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
9. Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
10. Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
11. Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

Hi Cale 83, By now you should have acquired significant FREE space on

that SSD.

Select the Disk and CMD + I to view the Drive's FREE space.

If it gained significantly, determine if the Notebook functions faster/better.

If it doesn't, here's a suggestion.

Locate the Activity Monitor App in the Utilities Folder and

launch it.

View the CPU and Memory activity. If the Graph below shows IDLE percentage

above 75% while you have no Apps running, and only one system item in the list

shows very high usage , then you may have a Drive or CPU problem.

I hope not.

Uncle Mac wrote:

View the CPU and Memory activity. If the Graph below shows IDLE percentage

above 75% while you have no Apps running, and only one system item in the list

shows very high usage , then you may have a Drive or CPU problem.

I hope not.

My MISTAKE.... I meant to say.....

View the CPU and Memory activity. There is a Graph below that shows

CPU Load with System, User, and Idle, percentages.

If the Graph below shows IDLE percentage below 25% while you have no Apps running,

and System percentage shows very high usage like 85% , then you may have a Drive or CPU problem.

The shared folder is use so that others can access your computer as a guest and open the Shared folder and files therein. Either you put the files in the folder or some guest user did. You can delete everything in that folder if you aren't using it and no one else is signing into your computer looking for those files. If you don't know why there are files in that folder nor what they are, then they shouldn't be on your computer.