Disable local snapshots in High Sierra with APFS

There is a terminal command to turn off local snapshots: sudo tmutil disablelocal

It's from this Apple Developer's page: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/81171

If you don't have a Developer's account here's what it says:

Is there a way to turn on and off the local TM snapshots? On Sierra, there was "sudo tmutil enablelocal" but it's no longer supported.

Correct Answer by tclementdev on Jun 30, 2017 9:08 AM

1. Yes, this is similar to the current local snapshots implementation. I think it is represented in Disk Utility or About this Mac as "backup" or "purgeable" disk space. It's supposed to be automatically reclaimed as needed. And I think there was a trick where the Finder would display the free size of a disk as the actual free size + the purgeable size, so users wouldn't be confused as much.

But Snapshots (and clones) can be way more confusing, for example deleting files will not necessarily give you back disk space, if the files data is still referenced somewhere in clones or snapshots. So it's quite important to harvest snapshots periodically.

The 'tmutil listlocalsnapshots /' command will list all the snapshots but will not tell you how much size they occupy. By that, I mean the size that only they are referencing (.i.e. the size you would get back by deleting the snapshots). But that can be done, I just don't think Apple is showing that information anywhere for now. You're not supposed to have to worry about all this if Time Machine does its job correctly of managing the snapshots.

2. As far as I know, APFS snapshots are only exposed through the Time Machine local snapshots feature. That being said, you don't need to configure any backup disk or enable automatic backups to be able to create local snapshots (but they will be created for you as part of the automatic backups of Time Machine). I think local snapshots and regular backups will just be shown together when you browse the Time Machine history of your disk as is currently the case.

3. Just enable the "Back Up Automatically" checkbox from System Preferences > Time Machine. This will ask you to configure a backup disk. I don't think there is currently a way to have only local snapshots being created automatically, without also configuring a regular backup disk.

And to directly answer your question, in High Sierra you can no longer ONLY disable local snapshots. You can, however, turn of automatic backups. Then whenever you want to do a backup on your external Time Machine drive, make sure it's connected then click the Time Machine icon and select Backup Now. Simple.

I want to disable this. I do not want any local snapshots in my ssd.

Turn off Time Machine's automatic backups. That's the only way to do it.

Local snapshots affects to the overall SSD lifespan.

There is no evidence of that, and Time Machine's local snapshots have little influence on the millions of write / erase cycles that occur just in a normal course of using a Mac.

Apple has many years of using solid state memory, in hundreds of millions of devices. There have yet to be any widespread reports of life-limited failures.

Do as you please though.

I decided to sort of do away with local snapshots. I have a cron job that runs every night at 1AM and deletes them all.

0 1 * * * /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4

(I have my sudo running with NOPASSWD for my ID)

That's true in theory, but in High Sierra, all of a sudden I'm getting this: "Time Machine could not create a local snapshot to back up from because there was insufficient free space on the source volume(s)."

This seems to be a common problem under High Sierra and there is no way to turn off the local snapshots, which is the problem.

I'm trying to manually delete local snapshots with tmutil, and even though it says it deleted, the snapshot still is listed when I list the local snapshots. There appears to be a bug in the local snapshot management where High Sierra isn't deleting them un APFS.

I feel the same way about these snapshots "sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4" Go to terminal and copy and paste and login this will thin out a lot of these snapsots . I found that unchecking automatic updates and removing your disks slowed it down but didn't stop it ! If this continues and they don't fix this I am fuming about not being able to disable this . I want to keep my backups on an external drive where I have access to the fifes so I can delete them if I want , not in a hidden file I don't have permission to edit or even access it .I will get carbon copy cloner and disable time machine for good and wish I could delete it! "sudo tmutil disablelocal" was my go to command in terminal till they removed it.

Thank you so much. This has worked for me: "sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4". Please see full thread: Re: Disable local snapshots in High Sierra with APFS.

Your command "thinned" a local snapshots that I was not aware the system had created. As a result, I have freed up nearly 40GB in SSD hard drive.

DaisyDisk still shows 8GB hidden space...so a bit more digging...

-T

Only Real way is to Type

tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates / |grep 20|while read f; do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $f; done

The snapshots are deleted as space is needed. There is no real advantage to disabling them or turning off Time Machine. See the last section of this article.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

Further to my last post it seems that " If you're using macOS High Sierra, another snapshot is saved before installing any macOS update.”https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204015

This is what has happened to me, I think.....when I installed the latest supplemental update https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208397

Argh...All this is ridiculous! I have to use ESET End Point Protection because of work and now EVERY TIME there is a 'local snapshot' it thinks that its a new drive, so every 10 minutes its asking me if I want to scan it....driving me crazy. WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO DISABLE THIS. I have my own Time Machine drive that I use, I don't want this ridiculous secondary snap shot. HELP APPLE!!

Thanks, but I'm not sure you're addressing my issue. It may be that my computer was always doing this silly local snap shot, but from what I can tell, this is new because I now have a list of local snapshots only beginning the day that I downloaded High Sierra. I also have my own backup drive for time machine already in place. There is no reason to have the local snapshots with my TM there...its an unnecessary redundancy. The real nuisance is that my antivirus software thinks that every time there is a local snapshot taken, that its a new drive, and so asks me if I want to scan this new drive. Always. This was never a problem before I upgraded to high sierra. this is a new thing and its annoying. There must have been some configurational change to affect this... but how do I stop it from happening. I'm not allowed to remove my Antivirus as its institutionally mandated. The only other thing I can think of is stopping the local snapshot. If I have time machine backing up every hour to my external drive then I don't need local snapshot doing the same thing. Unless it was already doing this, but it was invisible before and so my AV software wasn't detecting it.

Strange.

There is no reason to have the local snapshots with my TM there...its an unnecessary redundancy.

Local Snapshots are necessary for Time Machine to work.

I'm not allowed to remove my Antivirus as its institutionally mandated.

Either find another institution or have a Mac that isn't backed up, will never work properly, while increasing its exposure to malware and related threats. Your choice.

A third option is to fire the incompetent idiots mandating your antivirus software. That's my favorite because it saves institutions tons of money. I take only a small percentage.

C'mon Apple, this is just taking your loyal customer base for fools.

I've just had to turn down a short-notice paid remix job because I couldn't get space on my hard drive for reinstalling a couple of apps and their associated samples. After reading this I thinned the snapshots on my laptop SSD (256GB) and free space suddenly went from 15GB free to 130GB free. The snapshots had already been backed up, so I can't see why Time Machine needs to maintain them.

Yeahyeahyeah I know, buy a larger hard disk, but A) the space is there, just being hogged by these snapshots and B) Don't try to tell me the fix to something you created is to spend more money on your products - that's a justification that a heroin dealer would use, not befitting the manufacture of elegant technical products.