I have a 512 GB SSD and handle large files often on the go. I've had snapshots taking up 100+ GB with no explanation on my Macbook, just missing space.
Only figured this out when i googled support forums, used 3 party software or went into the terminal.
Apple and their "Magick", confuses regular users and wastes my time.
Volume snapshotting via checkpointing along with the copy-on-write has been used in UNIX file systems for a very long time and successfully, starting from Veritas VxFS. It is also used in ZFS, in btrfs, bcachefs et al and in some form in the log-structured file systems.
If the default volume snapshot reclamation policy does not work for you, «tmutil» provides a number of controls to fine-tune the behaviour:
1. Disable the snapshotting in perpetuity via «tmutil disable».
2. Exclude select directories from snaphots via «tmutil addexclusion directory1 directory2 directory3»
3. Adjust the quota on how much of the disk space to allot to the snapshosts/backups via «tmutil setquota»
All of the above are one-off commands that, once run, have a permanent to a long lasting effect.
If you want a first-party GUI you can also use Disk Utility: https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/view-apfs-snaps...