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What are APFS system snapshots?

Today I got my macbook air m1 with 512GB of storage,

while I was wiping an old SSD to use it as an external drive, I noticed a partition which was labeled as APFS Systemsnapshot.

I was very confused since it used half of my storage cutting the useable storage down to 250GB.

I did some research on it and found that this is used for safety reasons and backups etc.

But what if my usable storage hits 250GB?

Can I tell my mac to use the full 512GB instead or will it use the rest of the drive when it needs to?

Im really concerned about this since I bought the higher storage model for the reasons being that 256 is not enough for my use case.

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on Aug 13, 2021 7:27 AM

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Posted on Aug 13, 2021 7:30 AM

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

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7 replies

Aug 13, 2021 8:37 AM in response to uncldrw

A "system snapshot" is used by APFS for a number of reasons and should not be deleted. For example, any time you update macOS, that process starts by first making a copy of the APFS system volume (Macintosh HD) to a snapshot. It then updates the snapshot, and when completed, signs & seals it to become the "new" Macintosh HD.


You may find the following article an interesting read, specifically the section covering macOS Big Sur:

Aug 13, 2021 8:51 AM in response to uncldrw

The question is, will my mac use the remaining volume if "Data" gets full?

That large black bar on the right side is what is free to be used.

The blue and gray sections are what has been used.


However, I have no idea if you really have a 512GB SSD. It looks like you have a 256GB SSD.

Click on the View button (Darstellung) and choose "Show all devices."

Look for an additional Container on that drive (or post another screen shot).

Aug 13, 2021 8:57 AM in response to uncldrw

uncldrw wrote:

Here you can see that I got 2 Volumes.
I guess that "com.apple..os.update..." is used for the system snapshots
and "Data" is used for all other stuff like, documents, programs etc.

Yes, that is correct on both counts. With APFS, the macOS operating system resides in a volume group. By default, that group consists of: Macintosh HD & Macintosh HD - Data. The former is a sealed volume and contains the critical macOS system files. The latter also contains some system files but is mostly user apps and data. Also with APFS, a Container equals what used to be called a Partition. There must be at least one Container on a drive. In turn, a Container can have multiple volumes. Those volumes can "grow," as required, to fill the entire Container. APFS will manage those snapshots for you.

What are APFS system snapshots?

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