181gb of system data on a 256gb Macbook Pro M1 ?!?

What follows may not be well received

I currently run Sonoma 14.5 on a 2020 M1 Macbook Pro 256gb " and " I work in graphic design "

It would seem your needs for space have outstripped the capabilities of this machine.

Purchase another machine with at least 1 TB Storage Capacity and possible 16 GB or more of Unified RAM

Or for the existing situation and it will be a struggle

You can’t manage this category’s contents. macOS manages them, and the size varies based on your Mac’s state.

Users have control over the User Account Folder (Home Folder). All other areas are inaccessible.

It’s good computer practice to keep at least 15% to 20% of the total drive capacity empty to avoid unintended consequences.

Purgeable Space is controlled by the operating system. When the system needs more empty space, it moves some purgeable space to empty space.

There’s no user action to hasten this transition. It can take days or longer.

The links below help identify what’s taking up space on the internal drive and provide ways to remove user-controlled data (Home Folder).

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac.

What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it?

Free up storage space on your Mac.

GrandPerspective

TM Backup makes snapshots on the internal drive until the Time Machine Drive is attached. Then, the snapshots are transferred to the external drive.

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac

See used and available storage space on your Mac.

Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

If you use a suite of Adobe applications on this computer, they may create large cache files that can be removed. However, the Adobe cache files will be recreated as the applications need them.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/premiere-pro/kb/clear-cache.html

The same clearing of System Cache files can be achieved by booting into Safe Mode. They will be recreated as the system requires. 

From another contributor @etresoft regarding Free Space and Available Space 

Free vs available disk space huge differe… - Apple Community

Quote >>  “ The "available" storage is the amount of used storage that the operating system could automatically delete if it felt that it was really necessary. The "free" storage is the amount that you can actually use for something.

There are system processes that run in the background and automatically delete some of the "available" storage and convert it to "free". If you completely run out of storage, then those system processes will try a little harder. When you "delete" files you are just hinting to the operating system that you don't need those files anymore. The operating system will eventually remove them, but on its own schedule.

Certain tools will allow you to force the issue and manually clean up some of this storage and manually delete local snapshots. But that is only temporary. "  << End Quote 

The machine is capable Of a lot of things

What seem abundantly clear is the computer Drive Capacity at Time of Purchase may have been fine 5 Year ago

That was 5 year ago and you needs have grown

Yes, CAD $ 3000. is a good bit of change

With recent " Events " that are unfolding who know what is to come

You are welcome for the Tariff Free Advise from a fellow 🇨🇦

The only solution I have found to reduce the system data is to erase the drive and reinstall all. Then that number is reduced significantly but will once again increase over time. I have done that task several times with success.

Apple Trade In - Apple (CA)

You need to clear the app cache from Libraries -> Application Support.

no automatic way to do this. You have to delete the temporary and app data by yourself. This does help sometimes!