How to Stop Time Machine Local Snapshots on macOS

If you have ever looked at your Mac's storage breakdown and seen a surprisingly large "System Data" slice, local Time Machine snapshots are often the culprit. Understanding how to stop Time Machine local snapshots — and whether doing so is actually a good idea — requires knowing a bit about how macOS handles these automatic backups in the first place.

What Are Local Time Machine Snapshots?

Since macOS High Sierra, Time Machine creates local snapshots directly on your startup disk using APFS, even when your external backup drive is not connected. These snapshots are taken hourly and let you recover deleted files or earlier versions of documents without needing your backup drive present.

macOS stores them in a special, hidden part of your APFS volume. They show up as "purgeable" space in Finder's Get Info window, which means macOS will reclaim them automatically when your disk runs low. In theory, you should never need to manage them at all.

In practice, they can consume anywhere from a few gigabytes to tens of gigabytes, and on a tight SSD that matters.

Can You Truly Stop Time Machine Local Snapshots?

The short answer: not permanently, in the traditional sense. Apple does not expose a dedicated toggle for local snapshots in System Settings. The only true way to prevent them is to disable Time Machine entirely — which also stops off-site backups to your external or network drive. On macOS Ventura (13) through macOS Sequoia (15) and beyond, there is no built-in GUI switch to keep Time Machine active while suppressing local snapshots.

That said, there are several approaches depending on what you actually need.

Option 1: Delete Existing Local Snapshots via Terminal

You can list and delete local snapshots manually. This is safe to do, but the snapshots will return — typically within the hour — as long as Time Machine is enabled.

1. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
2. List all current local snapshots:

   tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

3. You will see output like com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-30-143012. Delete a specific snapshot by date:

   tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2025-05-30-143012

4. To delete all local snapshots at once:

   for snap in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshots / | grep -o '[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{6\}'); do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $snap; done

This immediately frees the space those snapshots occupied. The reclaimed space will show as available in Finder right away.

Option 2: Disable Time Machine Entirely

If you are not using Time Machine backups at all, turning it off stops local snapshots from being created.

1. Open System Settings (macOS Ventura and later) or System Preferences (Monterey and earlier).
2. Go to General > Time Machine (Ventura+) or simply Time Machine.
3. Toggle Time Machine off.

Alternatively, via Terminal:

sudo tmutil disable

After disabling, existing snapshots will gradually be cleaned up by macOS, or you can delete them immediately using the commands in Option 1.

Tradeoff: You lose all Time Machine backup protection. If you have an external backup drive connected, you lose the ability to recover files from it incrementally as well. Only do this if you are relying on a different backup strategy — such as a dedicated cloud backup, Carbon Copy Cloner, or Superduper.

Option 3: Pause Time Machine Temporarily

If you need disk space back for a short period — say, for a large video export — you can pause Time Machine without fully disabling it:

sudo tmutil disable

Then re-enable it when you are done:

sudo tmutil enable

This is the same as the GUI toggle, but it is faster when you are already in Terminal. It will not delete existing snapshots on its own, so combine it with the deletion commands above if you need the space immediately.

Option 4: Reduce How Long Snapshots Are Kept

macOS automatically expires local snapshots after 24 hours (or sooner when disk space is needed). There is no supported setting to shorten this window further without third-party tools. What you can control is how aggressively macOS reclaims that purgeable space.

In practice, macOS does a reasonable job of reclaiming snapshot space automatically. If your disk shows 20 GB of "purgeable" space, macOS will use it when you need it for other things. The concern arises when storage management tools misreport that space as "used" rather than "purgeable."

Snapshots vs. Backups: A Quick Comparison

Should You Disable Local Snapshots?

For most users, the answer is no. Local snapshots are purgeable — macOS reclaims them automatically when applications need disk space. They provide genuine protection: if you accidentally delete a file and your external drive is not plugged in, a local snapshot can save you. The convenience is real, and the storage cost is manageable on most modern Macs.

You should consider disabling or deleting snapshots if:

• You are on a critically small SSD (128 GB or less) and every gigabyte counts.
• You use a separate, more reliable backup solution and Time Machine is redundant.
• A storage management tool is incorrectly reporting purgeable space as consumed, causing confusion.
• You need disk space temporarily for a large task and want to reclaim it immediately.

How Crumb Helps With Snapshot-Related Clutter

Local snapshots themselves are managed by macOS and are not something a disk cleaner should touch directly — that is intentional. Where Crumb genuinely helps is with the surrounding clutter that accumulates alongside them: system caches, log files, temporary data, and purgeable space that macOS has not gotten around to reclaiming yet.

Crumb's one-click Clean targets ~/Library/Caches, system logs, and purgeable space — the places where real, removable waste hides. Its Visualize tool shows you exactly where your storage is going, so you can tell at a glance whether snapshots, large media files, or application caches are the real culprit. If you want to explore what is actually taking up space before running any cleanup, you can download Crumb and get a full picture without committing to any changes first.

One thing worth keeping in mind: cleaning caches and temp files is permanent. Crumb flags what is safe to remove and uses an AI explanation for anything ambiguous, but always back up important data before running any disk cleanup tool.

The Bottom Line

You cannot cleanly disable local Time Machine snapshots without also turning off Time Machine itself — Apple does not offer a middle-ground toggle in modern macOS. For most people, that is fine: snapshots are purgeable and protect you from accidental deletions when your backup drive is not nearby. If you genuinely need the space, deleting snapshots via tmutil works immediately, and temporarily disabling Time Machine stops them from returning until you re-enable it. The real question is whether the underlying storage pressure you are feeling comes from snapshots at all — or from something else that is worth investigating first.