How to clean "purgeable space" on iMac macOS Monterey?

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255121100?answerId=259529290022#259529290022

Use the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

Dannymac22 wrote:

Using SuperDuper for backups. If it uses such snapshots, why doesn't it remove them when the backup is completed?

Some apps will retain some snapshots for longer periods of time, even Apple's own Time Machine. Check the SuperDuper settings for its snapshot retention settings.

Also, if I've deleted snapshots, which is my purgeable space getting LARGER???

APFS snapshots are not the only thing which can be taking up storage space. Many times cloud file syncing services are responsible for disappearing storage space. Two easy ways to test:

• Disconnect the Mac from the network.
• Create a new macOS user account. Log out of the main user account & log into the new macOS user account. Avoid logging into your AppleID or iCloud with the new macOS user. Just see what happens since this new user account should not have any login items or cloud based services enabled.

Storage on recent versions of macOS and APFS file systems is very complex with Apple not providing any good tools to investigate issues like this since so many areas even of your own home user folder have restrictions placed on them. Plus there really is nothing a person can really do to control the System Data area where most of this Purgeable storage is being utilized.

Do you by any chance have "Optimize Storage" setting enabled in the iCloud System Preferences?

Free up storage space - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

As for the EtreCheck report, I will leave that to @BDAqua and other more knowledgeable contributors since I am not a macOS software expert. I can, however, say that you should uninstall the Trusteer software by following the developer's instructions since anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software are not needed on a Mac. These types of software usually cause more problems than they solve since they interfere with the normal operation of macOS. While MalwareBytes is the one partial exception to the rule, there is still no need to use its real-time scanner. Only if your school or employer require the software should it remain, but I would try to have them accept MalwareBytes instead of Trusteer. macOS has great built-in security especially when combined with the user practicing safe computing habits as outlined in this excellent article written by a respected forum contributor

Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community

The first thing should be to uninstall trusteer. Completely useless and detrimental.

Also: restore security updates and SIP.

You have loads of VERY OLD stuff - this clearly indicates that you have migrated everything from a previous mac.

You still have Perian, which was deprecated a decade ago! Plus Real, Flip4mac....

All this old cruft can and will cause your system to slow down and potentially crash.

You have a very old VirtualBox that is not Apple Silicon compatible...

When setting up your Apple Silicon mac, you should have migrated ONLY the user accounts, and not everything.

You can still do it now. Make sure that you have a fully updated backup - I would actually have two, SuperDuper! and Time Machine on separate drives.

System Settings->General->Transfer or Reset->Erase All Content and Settings

Migrate ONLY the users

Reinstall the applications that you do need.

I wonder if Spotlight once thought it was enabled?

Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates. 

Hit enter.

Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.

Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required

http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots / # deletes all the snapshots

I can not speak to Shirt Pocket SD

But CCC and SafetyNet can acquired snapshot which can be managed from within the application is configured properly

There is Purgeable Space and there is Empty Space.

Purgeable Space which is Controlled by the Operating System.

When the Operating Systems decides the computer needs additional Empty Space, it will move a portion of the Purgeable to Empty space

AFAIK - there is no User Actions to hasten this transition from Purgeable to Empty Space

It can day or longer before this will occur.

Just in case: open Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD - Data and see what it shows for "APFS snapshots".

What software are you using for backups? Most macOS backup software will utilize APFS snapshots. It is also possible that other apps may also use them. Boot into Safe Mode to see if it stops the snapshots which would indicate a third party app is creating those snapshots.

Let's see if this doesn't cure that problem & the crashes of MenuCalendarClock iCal, PerfPowerServices, + the high CPU use of ApplicationsStorageExtension, & fseventsd...

Delete these files & restart...

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.philandro.anydesk.service.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.klieme.TimeMachineScheduler.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.philandro.anydesk.Frontend.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.motive.systemDaemon.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents/net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.motive.userAgent.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.trusteer.rapport.rapportd.plist

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.logmein.GoToMeeting.G2MUpdate.plist

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.ARM.***.plist

~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist

~ tilde indicates your home folder

Apple hid the Users' Library folders...

Method 1:

1 From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.

2 In the window that opens, enter ~/Library, and click Go.

Yes, it's supposedly TM making them, afaik.

Did you restart after deleting them?