Huge System Data Filling Storage on Your Mac? 7 Possible Fixes
Many Mac users are reporting that “System Data” is taking up huge amounts of disk storage capacity on their Macs. While this issue is reported more commonly with MacOS Sequoia, some users find the bloated System Data storage on older versions of MacOS as well. In many cases, the “System Data” in MacOS is taking up unusually large amounts of disk storage, with reports ranging in size from 100GB to even 500GB. With how small the SSD storage capacity is on Mac’s and how much of a huge premium Apple charges to have more local storage, something consuming such a large amount of disk capacity is understandably frustrating and concerning. Even if you have an upgraded 1TB drive, having “System Data” take up 100GB to 500GB of that is obviously unreasonable and ridiculous.
Not everyone reports having an inordinately large “System Data” folder in macOS. In fact, many users have System Data that takes up a reasonable amount of storage, around a few GB to perhaps 10 or 20GB. This article is intended to address the Mac users who have excessively large “System Data” capacities on their Mac, and offer a discussion and some solutions around the problem.
Potential Fixes for Large “System Data” on Mac
Here are a list of some potential fixes that users have reported for remedying the excessively large “System Data” issue on MacOS:
- Restart the Mac
- Boot into Safe Mode, then reboot back into normal macOS
- Install any available MacOS system software update
- Backup the Mac with Time Machine and let the backup complete
- Backup, format, reinstall MacOS, restore from backup – huge hassle but multiple reports of this working
- Clearing out local caches, clearing Spotlight caches, and removing local iOS/iPadOS backups
- Using fewer Safari tabs, closing tons of open Safari tabs if applicable – presumably Safari tabs quickly consume available RAM and then start swapping, leading to caching and disk usage of swap files in /System/Volumes/VM/
Sometimes a simple restart fixes the problem. Sometimes a restart of MacOS does nothing for the problem. Sometimes installing system software updates resolves the issue, whereas sometimes installing system software updates makes the issue worse or return if it was resolved.
A fair number of users have reported that rebooting the Mac into Safe Mode, then rebooting yet again, will remedy the issue, but that it will return. For example, here’s a positive report of this approach from Apple support forums:
“I’m having this problem too! I spent an hour plus on the phone with Apple Tech Support last month. The fix we stumbled upon was to boot into Safe Mode. After booting into Safe Mode, my System Data shrunk from 365GB to 45GBs. I switched my Time Machine backup schedule from daily to weekly thinking that was the culprit, but I’m still having to boot into Safe Mode every 1-2 weeks to shrink my System Data.”
My “System Data” folder ballooned out to 100GB after installing MacOS Sequoia 15.5 update and no matter what I do I have not been able to recover that storage capacity. Reboots, safe mode reboots, installing updates, cache clearing, deleting old backups, using third party cleaner apps (many of which are scams and to avoid), you name it, and that 112GB of “System Data” storage will simply not budge.
Why is “System Data” so large on the Mac?
It’s not always clear why “System Data” on MacOS can be so enormously large.
Sometimes the bloated System Data problem is related to large system caches and temporary files, including bloated CoreSpotlight Metadata storage and large com.apple.mediaanalysisd caches, and while you can clear caches manually and that might help the problem, it doesn’t always remedy the excessive storage consumption of “System Data”.
Some users report that “System Data” increases in correlation to the size of files they send to the Trash and attempt to delete in MacOS Sequoia. Other users report that “System Data” seems to increase exponentially after they have backed up an iPhone or iPad to their Mac. There’s not always
Is huge “System Data” unique to MacOS Sequoia?
The bloated “System Data” in MacOS is commonly reported with MacOS Sequoia in particular, so there may simply be a bug relating to System Data on the Mac that has not been resolved in any version of MacOS Sequoia up to this point. With that said, there are Mac users with earlier versions of system software who also report having large System Data allocations.
It’s worth remembering this is not a unique problem to the Mac and MacOS, and an age-old problem for iPhone/iOS and iPad/iPadOS is their “System Data” and “Other” storage can also balloon into intrusively large sizes that take up tons of storage capacity on those devices too. What is unique however is that, despite having access to the file system in MacOS, it’s still very difficult to track down and resolve the bloated System Data folder problem in MacOS.
search on Apple Support forums for “System Data” returns over 9000 results, and the
Apple forums,support, and discussions along with MacRumors forums and reddit also contain many such complaints. Nobody has a clear answer to the cause, and nobody has a clear solution either. One frustrated user reports having 68% of their 1TB drive taken up by System Data; “I have an open support case with Apple on this. I have spent countless hours on this and up to this point, over three hours on the phone with them trying to figure out what is going on. I have run several rounds of diagnostics and provided the output to them which hopefully will reveal root cause.
My scenario is my 1TB drive has 680GB being eaten up by system files.”
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Have you experienced any problems with MacOS “System Data” taking up an unusually large amount of storage on your Mac? Did this only happen for you with MacOS Sequoia or did you experience it with another MacOS version? Did you find a solution to this issue? Did any of the suggested fixes here work for you? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
A class action lawsuit may be the only remedy for this. Or maybe the EU can step with legislation in as it promotes vast amounts of unnecessary e-waste.
Clearly Apple has a vested interest in people paying outrageously high prices for additional storage, or having to upgrade to a new computer. There is a clear conflict of interests here.
After reading this article, I checked my system and found my system data usage was in the 20’s. I think that my weekly use of CleanMyMac keeps it down because it reports a high amount of GB’s being cleaned out. It cleans out about 5GB every week.
That is my experience.
I hadn’t been aware of this since the nifty Particulars app tells me I have 266.69Gb of free space on my 1Tb M2 MacBook Air. Which is a little suspicious because I don’t use this as much as another Mac. So, I checked and YIKES! My system data is 474.38Gb. By far the largest consumer of disk space according to the storage graph, which reports I have 626.37Gb used. The Safe Mode start and reboot did NOT fix the problem. I don’t use Time Machine, and I don’t have “Clean-My-Mac.” I have Parallels Toolbox but it only reports I can free 7.1Gb. The freeware Pearcleaner reports 48.89Gb of “orphaned files” (some of which I know aren’t true “orphans”) so the massive glut of disk space used by System Data appears to be invisible to outside queries. I’m not going to re-install Sequoia (I’m on 15.4.1). But I am going to update to 15.5 tonight. I don’t expect an improvement, but I like to stay up to date. I hope Apple addresses this soon.
Just checked mine, System Data is at 150 GB. I also don’t use Time Machine or have much installed. Reboot into Safe Mode boot did not fix it.
What’s going on, this is a problematic amount of storage eaten up by the operating system. Is macOS that bloated now to need 150GB of disk space? Why hasn’t Apple fixed this?
For me, System Data will calculate continuously and not give results. I read that this happens if Apple Intelligence is turned off.
Here is the solution for huge system data
system settings – general – storage
I had 680GB system data on my 1TB Macbook pro – my 1TB drive almost full with 960GB used.
Only some of it is old data to be removed.
It is easy to solve it.
2 things can make system data so big, A) a timemachine / update snapshot that is happening or not used or A) icloud idrive data.
for A) check diskutilities make sure the snapshot is not used and remove it.
for B)
the reason was that lots of data from my icloud drive ( 2TB subscription with 800GB used)
was stored and kept on my macbook.
The macos system keeps as much as possible of the icloud drive data locally on your mac if you do not tell it which you need locally.
Go to:
system settings- apple account – icloud – drive – optimize mac storage on
Than in icloud drive you can select the folders – right click / menue: remove download – or keep download.
You can select what you want to keep locally or just in the icloud.
Now my system data is down to 72GB again.
I wonder why no one ever mentioned that in the other forums. – Hope that helps
Isn’t iCloud Drive data shown as “iCloud Drive” in Storage? Why would Apple put iCloud Drive data under System Data instead of the iCloud Drive category they provide? Actually that sounds exactly like something a Gen Z modern Apple employee would do, since it makes no sense at all.
If Apple and all their gurus can’t figure this out it leaves ordinary users like me out on a limb. Unfortunately, finding out about this issue after having purchased two MacBook Air, M2s is very upsetting.
I used “Clean-My-Mac” by MacPaw and it helped, but it
does not ‘solve’ the problem. IMO it is time for Apple to step up. With a 256MB SSD my MacBooks will soon be boat anchors !
My System Data is over 120GB and I swear it grows a GB or two every day. I can’t clear it no matter what I do. I reboot, I used the CleanMyMac apps, I have done the steps here with restarting into Safe Mode, none of it makes any difference. I can’t get the space back, and I can’t backup my iPhone to my Mac because there isn’t enough space.
WTF is Apple doing? Do they even use macOS?
Beware of “Clean-My-Mac”. Many / most of the advanced users on Apple Support forums report that it causes more problems than it solves and recommend uninstalling it, reformatting your drive and reinstalling the system.
I’ve got 250 gb in system data
Note that if you use Microsoft OneDrive or Sharepoint some of the System Data can include downloaded Sharepoint or OneDrive files…at least that’s what an Apple senior advisor told me.
How do I see how much System Data I have? I went to settings and clicked on every option, but couldn’t find it.
System Settings > General > Storage
It’ll be at the very bottom as “System Data”
1-system settings
2-General/storage
then system datais at the bottom
I have the same issue. My system data is currently 75 GB and it grows by about 5 GB per month. None of the possible fixes described in this article have helped. May do a clean install of Sequoia at some point. Thanks for the article.