What is 'System' on mac laptop storage? I was just running lots of labour-intensive code on my mac, and then suddenly the disk space was full. I noticed two things that I hadn't seen before:


System was taking up a huge amount of disk space,
Other Volumes in Container was also taking up a huge amount of disk space.


The Other Volumes in Container decreased by itself. I'm guessing this was temporary storage space taken up by running the code, which is why it decreases automatically.

However, I'm pretty sure the System stuff wasn't there in such force before.

What is this? Is it OK to get rid of it? If so, how?
That is what is normally referred to as macOS, or "The Operating System". If it increased in size it may be the virtual memory (or "page file"). Note that I said "may."

I would look for a utility like Omni Disk Sweeper, Daisy Disk or Disk Inventory X and run it on your HD. Those utilities allow you to see a graphic representation of your drive sorted by file size. Which should show you what is eating up your disk space.