How to free up space on MacBook Air

On macOS (especially on Apple silicon Macs), “low storage” is almost never about obvious files like movies or photos, it’s usually System Data quietly ballooning due to local Time Machine snapshots, APFS snapshots from updates, iOS device backups, Xcode leftovers, or cache churn from apps like Chrome, Slack, or Adobe.

First thing I’d check is tmutil listlocalsnapshots / and thin them if they’re stacking up, because macOS will happily sit on tens of gigabytes there until the disk is under real pressure. Next, look in ~/Library for Application Support, Caches, and Containers rather than the visible folders people keep deleting to no effect. iPhone/iPad backups under Finder are another common 20–50 GB surprise.

Also, if you recently updated macOS, old sealed system snapshots can linger until the next successful backup or reboot cycle. Storage Settings is a rough hint, not a truth source, so use it only to identify categories, then verify with Finder or du before deleting anything. If you clear snapshots and backups and the space doesn’t immediately come back, that’s normal, APFS frees space lazily, and it often only reclaims it once the system actually needs it.