How to Delete Time Machine Local Backups on Mac (2026)

If your Mac's storage indicator shows a stubborn gray "System Data" or "Other" wedge that refuses to shrink, Time Machine local snapshots are a likely culprit. Knowing how to delete Time Machine local backups — and understanding what you're actually deleting — can recover gigabytes of space without touching your real backup drive.

Local Snapshots vs. Backup Drive: What's the Difference?

Time Machine operates on two levels that are easy to confuse:

• Backup drive backups — full hourly/daily/weekly backups stored on your external drive or NAS. These are the archives you browse in the Time Machine "starfield" UI and restore individual files from.
• Local snapshots (APFS snapshots) — lightweight, on-device copies that macOS keeps on your internal SSD when the backup drive isn't connected. They let Time Machine offer some recovery even when you're away from your desk.

Local snapshots live on your boot volume as APFS snapshots. macOS names them with the prefix com.apple.TimeMachine.YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS. Because APFS snapshots share unchanged blocks with the live filesystem, a fresh snapshot costs almost nothing — but as files change, the snapshot's unique blocks accumulate, and over days or weeks they can consume several gigabytes to tens of gigabytes of "purgeable" space.

Why macOS Thins Snapshots Automatically — But Slowly

Apple designed APFS to thin (delete old) local snapshots automatically when free space drops below a threshold. In practice, this thinning is conservative: macOS may report your disk as nearly full in Finder while still holding onto snapshots it considers "purgeable." Apps that check available space via the standard API will see purgeable space as available, but some workflows — virtual machines, video exports, large Xcode builds — can stall before thinning kicks in. That's when manual removal makes sense.

How to See Which Local Snapshots Exist

Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities → Terminal) and run:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

You'll see output like:

com.apple.TimeMachine.2026-05-28-091503.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2026-05-29-083012.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2026-05-30-074501.local

To see how much disk space each snapshot occupies, run:

tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates / | tail -n +2 | while read d; do tmutil localsnapshot /; done

Or use the simpler one-liner that shows sizes directly (macOS 12+):

du -sh /.MobileBackups 2>/dev/null || echo "No .MobileBackups directory (normal on APFS)"

On APFS, snapshots don't appear as a visible directory. The most reliable size view comes from Disk Utility or System Information → Storage.

How to Delete Time Machine Local Snapshots in Terminal

This is the most direct method. Each snapshot is identified by its date-time string.

1. List snapshots: tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
2. Delete a specific snapshot by its date string (copy it exactly from the list):

   tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2026-05-28-091503

3. To delete all local snapshots at once:

   for d in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates / | grep -v '^$'); do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots "$d"; done

4. Verify they're gone: tmutil listlocalsnapshots / should return no output.

Is this safe? Yes — local snapshots are supplementary. Your real backups on the external drive are untouched. If you've never connected a backup drive, you'll lose the ability to recover recent local changes, so consider connecting your backup drive first and confirming a successful backup before deleting all snapshots.

How to Remove Local Backups via Disk Utility

Disk Utility doesn't let you delete individual snapshots directly, but it shows you snapshot usage and offers a first-aid path:

1. Open Disk Utility (Applications → Utilities → Disk Utility).
2. Select your internal drive (e.g., "Macintosh HD") in the sidebar.
3. Choose View → Show All Devices if you only see volumes.
4. Click the volume, then choose Edit → Delete APFS Snapshot (available in macOS Monterey 12 and later). A sheet lists all snapshots with their dates.
5. Select a snapshot and click Delete.

This approach is useful if you prefer a GUI over Terminal, but it requires clicking through one snapshot at a time.

Turning Off Local Snapshots Entirely

If you're consistently running low on space and always keep your backup drive connected, you can disable local snapshot creation:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

On macOS Ventura (13) and later, this command is deprecated and local snapshots are always enabled. Apple removed the toggle because APFS handles purgeable space efficiently enough that Apple considers the snapshots safe to keep. To reclaim space on Ventura+, delete existing snapshots with tmutil deletelocalsnapshots rather than disabling the feature.

Comparison: Methods for Removing Time Machine Local Backups

How Crumb Surfaces and Removes Local Snapshot Space

If you'd rather not open Terminal, Crumb handles this from the menu bar. Its disk visualizer surfaces purgeable space and Time Machine snapshot usage as distinct segments in the storage treemap, so you can see exactly how many gigabytes snapshots are holding. The one-click Clean sweep includes purgeable and local-snapshot space alongside system caches, logs, and temp files — no commands required. For anything you're unsure about, the built-in "Is this safe to delete?" AI explains the folder or item before you remove it. You can download Crumb and try the first cleanup for free.

After Deleting: Will Space Show as Free Immediately?

Yes — after running tmutil deletelocalsnapshots, the space should be reclaimed almost immediately. Finder's Get Info and System Settings → General → Storage may take a minute or two to refresh their display, but the space is genuinely free as soon as the command completes. If the gray "System Data" bar in System Settings still appears large after deleting all snapshots, other contributors — iOS backups in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/, large log bundles in /private/var/db/diagnostics/, or oversized Xcode derived data in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ — may be the remainder.

Summary

Time Machine local snapshots are a useful safety net, but they can quietly consume substantial disk space while appearing as opaque "System Data." The fastest fix is a single Terminal command — tmutil deletelocalsnapshots <date> — or the bulk loop to clear them all. Your external backup drive is unaffected. If you prefer a point-and-click workflow with a clear view of what's using space, Crumb's visualizer and one-click clean cover it without touching anything you haven't approved.