I don't know with Mac, but this is why many Linux distros recommend putting /home is on a separate partition. If it fills, it won't lock up the whole system.

Fun story with this. Ubuntu now has an experimental root-on-zfs feature. I installed it and started playing with some docker containers, trying to compile a certain version of pytorch. Suddenly, my computer crashed. Apparently, my root partition filled because docker installed everything on the same partition as my OS, crashing everything immediately.