How can I reduce system data on my MacBook Pro?

System data of ~85 GB is not a lot as compared to many users.

“System Data” (or “Other”) storage is an amalgam of files that don’t easily fall into the defined categories of “Audio", " Documents", “Movies”, “Photos”, “Apps” and “Backups”.

You can’t directly manage the contents of this category. That is done by macOS. The category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.

What you can do to create more free space:

• Empty the Trash in the Dock. 

• Empty the trash in the Photos app.

• Delete unused and unneeded application installers from your downloads folder and desktop. No need to store on your Mac what you can freely download any time.

• Reboot your Mac at least weekly. Let the OS do its housekeeping.

• Transfer files that you don’t use daily to an external drive and then delete them from the startup drive and empty the trash. Files that take up the most room are movies, images and music.

This from Apple on the subject of freeing up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Also, please see the following guidance from Apple: 

Find and delete files on your Mac - Apple Support

Know that you have a computer with less than adequate storage for most users today. It may have been "fine" years ago, but things change. If you wish to continue to do computing without having to constantly consider your storage situation, you'd be wise to start planning to replace that Mac with something that has greater storage capacity, say 512 GB or 1 TB at minimum.

janmesh_ wrote:

My system data is 83.9 GB, my. total storage is 256 GB. what steps should I take to reduce the system data?.

I am using Macbook Pro intel i5.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: System Data 83.9 GB

Is there some associated issue?

Lets see the output from this Terminal command, copy & paste:

diskutil list internal

this would paint the big picture of your drive.

System Data is anything that does not fit neatly into any other categories—

typically it is standard Time machine "snapshots" make up the large part of the System Data category you see in the GUI.

There are basically two ( 2 ) ways to deal with this issue.

1 - The more  popular and effective ways to address this issue is to Start Over from Scratch 

For Apple Silicon computer >> Use Disk Utility to erase a Mac with Apple silicon.

For Apple Intel computers >>   Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac followed by How to reinstall macOS

Always make a Time Machine Backup  before  proceeding 

It is also suggested to  Only Migrating the User Account and nothing more.

Emphasis on User Account Only

Reinstall the Needed and not the Wanted applications from the Apple Apps Store or Directly from the Developers 

2 - I could not agree more with @ D.I. Johnson 👍 suggestion regarding a New Computer with a Larger Internal Drive Capacity 

To add my take on this

It is because the Internal Drive Capacity of this computer maybe on the small size

Meaning, the computer has a 256 GB Capacity Drive

In 2025 having the 256 GB Capacity Drive is equal to when Apple sold the 128 GB Drives for the Entry Level Computers 

Unfortunately, the users' needs for Storage may have grown since the time it was originally purchased 

The implications being that on your next purchase

Spend the Extra Money Up Front on a larger Drive Capacity Drive and add more RAM

This may just Future Proof the computer for your growing needs