After MAC OS 12 Monterey update that System Data Folder swelled to incredible 320 GB

I am curious what you mean by command shift? the only keyboard shortcut I am familiar with to show the hidden "Library" folder is the Option key.

In my Library, the Application Support folder is what I am thinking is causing my System Data to show a high number, but this appears to be the fact that I have Spotify and have downloaded all the music to the Mac, and this is where Spotify saves your downloaded music (user/library/app support), which is listed as "System Data" in the system information window.

I have a similar situation. In my case, it appears that it is including in "System Data" my entire User folder, as those files don't appear anywhere else in the "About This Mac" Storage tab. Interestingly, if I click "Manage..." next to "Documents" it says "Zero KB", and yet I can browse all of the files which are clearly there.

Edit: I can see in the above screenshots that "sadingeldein", "rechtoriks" and "leciawo" also have the same "Zero KB" reported size for Documents.

Me too.

Bought an expensive m1x MacBook to replace my 2015 running big sur. 500gb on a 1tb. Tried to migrate to the new MacBook running Monterey. Migration assistant failed saying I need 1.2 tb on the new 1tb MacBook.

Senior advisor told me to upgrade my old MacBook to Monterey. Swelled it to 980gb. Apple took images and promised to call me back. No call back. They sent me to genius bar and closed the case. "genius" told me to replace it with a 4tb machine to be able to accommodate my 500gb footprint from big sur.

Apple support refused to tell me their analysis.

Huge coverup by Apple. Apple's gonna pay.

using Avira, can't find large usage there.

I used Drill Doctor to look around, found a large video file that was apparently using system data?

I deleted it and a few other large files and that helped. down to system data using 185Gb. still extremely high I would think,

can't find anything else to delete.

I took my new MacBook Pro into an Apple Store today due to issues with the trackpad and gestures. I was advised to try doing a clean install of the OS. I checked my storage and it shows 22 GB of system data. The Monterey OS is only taking up 15.69 GB. This is on a clean install. Either the OS is not figuring up the storage correctly or the OS has a major issue.

/System/Volumes/Data/

That is the mount point for the Data volume. The Fortnite data wasn't "hidden" in the system folder. It was stored in the user's Home folder, most likely in ~/Library/Application Support/, or possibly in ~/Library/Fortnite

Interesting, so how did you delete the folder in question? Also, the folder I have has Data in the Volumes under the System.

You hold down the Option Key and select Library from the Go menu in Finder. Look for a Fortnite folder there or in Application Support or possible somewhere else in your home folder.

As I already stated, the Data volume is mounted there and contains your home folder which you can find by going to /Users or Go > Home. The Finder shows the Data volume as if it is part of the startup drive.

I report this as being fixed and my storage space back to normal with the latest update 12.2.1. Screenshot attached. Thanks Apple! 😊

I've had this problem for a while and not been able to fix it. Under the prior OS editions I somehow had two HD Data buckets and now it is all in one bucket that is 2.7 TB! I've tried before to clean it out and been unsuccessful. Would love an answer as well.

Hello, I have similar problem. System date in my Macbook Pro on macOS Monterey takes more than 228,14GB. It's crazy that is almost a half of internal SSD. Has anyone found a solution yet? I have emptied the trash bin and I have also run CCleaner app and nothing changed.

I also have this problem. Almost 2/3s of my drive is taken up with system data storage ... I basically have no computer to use at this point ... not sure if it's connected to Monterey or this bash shell vs zsh shell ... which I do not understand well enough to use the single help document I've found.

I have the same just bought a late 2016 MacBook with a 1TB flash drive. My 'System Data' take up 550GB of it. I ran CleanMyMac to see what it would say and it only calculated the 'junk' at 1.1GB. FWIW, I was very surprised that when I moved the content from my old iMac with Migration Assistant, there were about 1.5 MILLION files! Any ideas out there?

It's the same on my end as well. I updated to Monterey and now I have 160 GB of System Data. I just have Xcode on this Mac. I tried a few 3rd parties in order to scan and clean the disk but no luck. Better wait for Apple to figure it out.

Totally OK to delete all files. I did that and everything works fine. Look for a hidden folder called Group Containers in your home directory. Once you delete contents of that folder, you will get your space back