We also have an article that explains How to delete cache on a Mac. But there are aspects you can delete including: old Time Machine snapshots, iOS backups, cache files, any downloaded disc images for upgrading apps or macOS, and, if you’ve enabled the FileVault encryption feature, files associated with that. It’s also the operating system files, which you obviously can’t delete. Essentially these are all the same thing: files that don’t fall into the other categories, usually data and files used by macOS, caches, temporary files, backups, plug-ins and so on. Whether Apple calls it System, System Data, or macOS, this is a catch-all title for various elements that are spread across your Mac’s drive. What is in System or System Data in Mac storage (or macOS)? Whether it’s referred to as System, System Storage, macOS, or something else, you can reduce the amount of space taken up by this section of storage, but you will need to identify what is being attributed as Storage (or whatever Apple’s named it in your version of macOS).įollow the steps below to find out what’s in System or System data so you can free up some space on your Mac. We’ve heard of people with even more space being attributed to System. As you can see from the image above: System was using up 19.63GB on our Mac in Big Sur, but the number is a little more concerning in Ventura at almost 47GB. Regardless of the version of macOS you are running those graphs indicates how much of your storage is attributed to certain types of files on your Mac. Older versions of macOS labelled certain types of storage as System or Other. The question of whether you can reclaim any of the space given over to this class of storage is complicated somewhat by fact that Apple seems to give it a new name with every version of macOS, as you can see from the images below: We’ll assume that you’ve already been confronted by System or System Data taking up an astonishing amount of storage on your Mac and are thinking that you’d quite like that 50GB or so back. If you aren’t sure how to see how much disk space your Mac has read: How to check how much disk space you have. You may also find that you can’t install an update to macOS if you don’t have enough free storage.

If your Mac is low on storage it can cause problems – you might see a message that your start-up disk is almost full, for example, and if you ignore that you might find you can’t even start up your Mac! Low storage can also slow your Mac right down and cause other issues stopping it from running at its best.

Download Free Edition 2023 Can you delete System on the Mac?įirst we’ll address why you might want to delete System or System Data on your Mac – and whether you should.

Clear space on macbook air hard drive