System Data on a Mac involves pretty much everything that doesn’t cover the regular storage categories. That means it includes game data, browser data, old backups, app support files, fonts, virtual memory files, caches or system logs and temporary files. The idea here is that system data can accumulate and it might end up requiring quite a bit of space on your Mac. At some point, you may have to free up space where possible, and there are a few things for you to consider here.
Checking the system Data on your Mac
Before you start removing System Data, you want to check and see all the info. Enter the Apple Menu, choose About This Mac and here you want to see the Storage Data in the Storage tier here. It will give you a pretty good idea of what’s there and then you can narrow it down from there. Not only will it be better to know what it entails, but also how much space it requires as well, after all.
Generally, it’s expected for your System Data to have around 12 GB. It might sound like a lot, but those are crucial files that Mac OS needs in order to run properly. But sometimes, it could have more, other times less. It’s very important to understand that and monitor how much space this actually needs. At the end of the day, if you see the System Data having 14-20 or more GB, then that means there’s an opportunity to slim it down and thus reclaim some space in the process.
Restart your Mac
If System Data takes too much space, a good starting point is to restart your Mac and see whether that will help or not. The System Data can sometimes have a large size temporarily. But if you restart, it should go back to the smaller size. And yes, a lot of the time this will happen. So it does become a very good idea to restart your Mac appropriately, and it will help make things a whole lot better in the end.
Remove the cache files
Cache files will end up eating quite a bit of space. That’s especially true if you never cleaned them in the first place. So it certainly becomes a very good idea to try and remove these files from Library/Caches and assess what folders/files can be deleted. Remove stuff from apps and tools you are not using anymore. That will usually make things the easiest to manage, so keep that in mind.
Delete the log files
In the Library/Logs folder you will find the various log files which are generated by apps on your device. Most of the time, a great idea is to delete these log files and rest assured it will be a handy thing to do. Not only do you save space with this approach, but it will also alleviate the pressure you are adding onto your device. It just makes sense to delete log files, because most of the time you won’t really need them.
Remove the Time Machine backups
While you will be using some of the backups, a lot of the time you will also have situations where a lot of those backups are not necessary. You can remove them via the Terminal. You do that via copy and pasting this command in the terminal “tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates”. Thatwill show the snapshots, and then you see a list of backups, you delete via typing “tmutil deletelocalsnapshots XXXXX, where XXXXX can be replaced with the name of the backups. Press Return to delete, and you will be fine.
Another approach you can have here is to remove the app leftovers. A lot of the time, you can find these in Library/Application Support. Look for certain folders that might have app leftovers and then you can remove them. Just make sure that you are not removing stuff which you are indeed needing.
Of course, you can also choose to delete the dynamic screensavers if you want. Anything that you can delete to save space is going to come in handy. Enter the Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer and here you want to remove large files. That’s a nice thing to have, because it will streamline the process and make it better in the end.
Conclusion
It always comes as highly recommended to tackle the system data properly and in a way that’s very powerful. The truth is that it will make it easier for you to handle your device and improve performance if you keep the System Data size under control. That is not going to appear as something simple at first. But all these tips will help quite a lot. Plus, you can also use a Mac cleanup tool to remove some of the System Data content that’s unnecessary, which will help you further in this quest!