apfs disk space

APFS will share your disk space for several different types of data. If you look at your disk in Activity Monitor, it will say "Shared by 4 volumes". If you wanted to, you could create additional volumes that would share the same disk space. That is essentially what snapshots are. They are volumes, but normally aren't mounted. They use space very efficiently, but they still use space. Once you start to run low on space, they will be automatically deleted.

Also, the free space reporting if often very inaccurate. It uses the Spotlight indexing system to calculate your free space. Sometimes the indexing gets delayed. Sometimes it is just flat-out wrong.

Sorry. Mac users don't have a lot of options there. The snapshots will manage their space on their own. The free hard drive space will usually be correct, except when it isn't.

Hello James,

Under APFS, you don't have much control over free space. The system should automatically purge Time Machine snapshots if you run low on free space. There are also other options to keep disk space available through iCloud. I don't know if any of that applies to 3rd party software like Carbon Copy Cloner.

James Weisbin2 wrote:

Carbon Copy Cloner (v 5) snapshots. So I went into CCC, disabled snapshots, and deleted the three snapshots, which totaled around 30 GB (as reported by CCC). After that, my free space jumped up to 260GB! Where was all that space hiding?

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/protecting-data-already-on-your-destination-volume-c arbon-copy-cloner-safetynet

Thanks for the explanation, etresoft! I wonder, what would it take for Apple to fix these issues (i.e. incorrect HD free space reporting, etc.)? Also, what if I don't want the system to constantly create snapshots and clogging the free space? It seems that this functionality either is not implemented properly, or does not work as it should.

Under APFS, you don't have much control over free space.

That doesn't sound very good.. Could you tell more about it?