Time Machine Snapshots not erasable.

The worst thing you can do to your mac is letting creepy software like "cleanmymac" on it.

Snapshots should be cleared automatically, but for some reason sometimes they aren't.

It is however relatively easy to clear them using tmutil.

Try this: in Terminal, type the following:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 100000000000 4

type your password when requested (nothing will appear, not even bullets or asterisks as you type the password), and press enter. It will take a while, wait until the prompt appears on the next line.

Let us know how that goes.

That large number is about 100GB, and the number 4 is the highest "urgency".

So the above command will try to reclaim about 100GB of free space by "thinning" the space used for snapshots.

Hey again!

First, allow Terminal Full Disk Access. You can add it to System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access > “+” > Terminal.

Next, disable Auto-backup in System Preferences > Time Machine.

Next, open Terminal and run:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 999999999999999 4

(Yes, that’s 15 9’s)

Anyhow, I remember seeing them right under /Volumes, and don’t believe they’re read only as the system partition, but it’s been a while since I’ve had to find them, this command should get rid of them.

This developer article may also shed some light:

APFS snapshots: where are they located?

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/81171

Mind you, I believe this article was printed at the release of APFS/High Sierra, etc.

Hope one or the other helps! Let me know!

Snapshots can of course be deleted in Big Sur. Normally they’d be deleted automatically; on occasion they can be deleted with tmutil as previously discussed.

Something got corrupted on your system, and the snapshots kept being created and not deleted. I am afraid a clean install may be necessary.

At this point, I hope you have a good backup. If not, make one quickly.

I think you should erase and install and then migrate your stuff from Time Machine.

Hey again!

Wow, that should’ve wiped them clean. Well if it’s going to be stubborn, I’d go with @Luis Sequeria1, to erase the internal drive and reinstall the OS, I personally would set it up as new without migrating and do a manual restoration via drag and drop, copy and paste, etc.

Of course if you need to, you can also manually backup your data the same way.

Unless it’s actually an external HD that’s not functioning as expected, perhaps that drive would need the same.

Sorry the easiest route didn’t want to work as it should, good luck!

I've had the same problem. Sometimes terminal works, other times it doesn't.

What I use is Carbon Copy Cloner. You can see that TM loves to eat up space.

It's not too bad at the moment, though.

The delete tool (right click)

Seems to work for me more consistently than terminal.

I agree with aaronlin, CCC works great to delete snapshots both from TM and from CCC as CCC snapshots can also use up drive space.

If you right click on a snapshot a menu should appear where you can delete each item.

Hey there!

Can you say what you attempted in Terminal as far as removing the local snapshots? There maybe another way.

Likewise, I don’t understand some of the language in the screenshots. I know local snapshots are hidden by default. However can you show the file path in what those apps brought you to, to show the cause of the storage usage?