How to clean up the "SYSTEM" on my hard drive?

Hi eliseandkeegan,

Great to hear! Glad that you could get some of your space back.

In regards to disk-cleaning apps, please be careful. Well-written apps should work exactly as expected, but some apps may attempt to delete important resources needed by the system, or other low-level settings. These resources (along with third-party app data) are usually found in the system-wide Library folder (/Library), or in the hidden Library folder in your user account (~/Library).

Most of the resources there would likely fall into the "Other" (macOS Catalina & Big Sur) or "System Data" (macOS Monterey and future) categories, shown when you click on the Apple logo in the top left corner, and select About This Mac -> Storage. In macOS Mojave and earlier, this category would also include core macOS system files, and the total category was just named "System".

To safely reduce the amount of storage space taken up by "Other" or "System Data", please see the linked user tip below. In macOS Mojave or earlier, this would also apply to the "System" category: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002781

To protect your Mac, macOS does include some safety mechanisms to prevent apps from deleting critical system files, even if those apps are running with superuser privileges. These protections do not extend to /Library and ~/Library, as those folders can be used to hold third-party app components:

• System Integrity Protection (SIP): SIP protects your Mac by preventing any user or app from modifying certain critical system directories and their files. It also applies other system-level protections. To ensure that System Integrity Protection is enabled, run this command in Terminal: csrutil status

• Signed System Volume (SSV): In macOS Catalina, core macOS system files are stored on a read-only System volume, while your apps and other data are stored on a writable Data volume. In macOS Big Sur and later, this protection is extended: your Mac starts up from a sealed snapshot of the System volume, signed by Apple. Snapshots are inherently read-only, and their contents cannot be changed after snapshot creation. And because the system snapshot is sealed, and the seal is signed by Apple, your Mac can instantly verify (each time it starts up) that the system content hasn't been tampered with.

The best way to do a clean on your Mac is download CleanMyMacX app , use the 3 free days trial to do a custom clean

CleanMyMac is Satan.