Reply To: APFS Time Machine local snapshot consuming 95 GB purgeable space on M3 MacBook Air

The macOS installer’s “insufficient space” error is a false-positive logic check (analogous to Error 4013/9 generic comms failures) where osinstallersetupd queries physical free blocks (statfs) ignoring the APFS purgeable reserve; Finder’s syncdefaultsd/FileProvider sync state often lags behind diskspaced reclamation, showing stale capacity. tmutil deletelocalsnapshots targeting the specific failed-install timestamp is surgical and safe—APFS copy-on-write ensures zero data loss for the live volume. If the installer still blocks, trigger immediate reclamation via sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0 (grow to fit) which forces the reclaimer; ensure MagSafe/PD handshake is stable (no pmset -g log power assertions) as power loss during snapshot teardown corrupts the APFS superblock.