Bottom Line: It is 100% safe to delete Local Time Machine Snapshots. Purging local snapshots using Terminal will NOT delete your primary Time Machine backups on external hard drives or NAS devices.
What are Local Time Machine Snapshots?
Created automatically by macOS Time Machine, local snapshots are saved directly on your Mac’s internal SSD when your external backup disk is disconnected.
macOS creates hourly APFS snapshot points of modified files. While Apple claims local snapshots only use “free space” and self-purge when disk space is tight, they frequently fail to release space, causing macOS to display 50 GB to 150 GB+ of unexplained storage categorized under “System Data”.
Can You Delete Local Snapshots?
✅ Yes, it is completely safe to delete.
- No backup risk: Your permanent backups on external backup drives remain 100% intact.
- Instant SSD space recovery: Deleting local APFS snapshots immediately frees up tens of gigabytes on Mac SSDs.
How to Safely Purge Local Time Machine Snapshots
Method 1: Using Mac Terminal Commands (Recommended)
- Open Terminal on Mac (
Cmd + Space> type Terminal). - List all active local snapshots:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots / - Delete all local snapshots in one command:
for date in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshots / | grep -oE '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{6}'); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $date; done
Related Guides
- Learn about deleting [macOS MobileSync Backups].
- How to clean up macOS ~/Library/Caches.
- Check if you can clean macOS Core Dumps.
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