Disk Full

Time Machine Local Snapshots

Time Machine creates local APFS snapshots every hour. These use temporary disk space.

Check:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

Clean up:

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2026-03-30-120000

Or just connect your Time Machine drive: snapshots transfer and free up space.

Other Common Space Hogs

Culprit	Where	Fix
Xcode caches	~/Library/Developer/	Delete DerivedData, CoreSimulator
iOS/iPadOS backups	~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/	Manage in Finder sidebar
System logs	~/Library/Logs/	Safe to delete
Old downloads	~/Downloads/	Sort by date, delete old .dmg files
Docker images	~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/	docker system prune
Homebrew caches	~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/	brew cleanup

Check What's Using Space

System Settings > General > Storage

Or from Terminal:

du -sh ~/* | sort -rh | head -20

"Why Are Screenshots All Over My Desktop?"

By default, macOS saves screenshots to the Desktop. To change:

# Save to a Screenshots folder instead
mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

Or press Cmd + Shift + 5 → Options → choose a save location.