• Apps
  • System

The 47 built-in Mac apps you cannot delete take 693 MB, and none of it is yours

Apps in /System/Applications live on the sealed system volume, so they cannot be removed and do not use your space. Measured: 47 apps, 693 MB.

4 min read

Try to drag Chess, Music or Photos to the Trash and macOS refuses: the item cannot be modified or deleted because it is required by macOS. That is literally true, and it is also less of a loss than it looks.

Why they cannot be deleted

Since macOS Catalina, the system lives on a separate, sealed, read-only volume. Built-in apps are part of it. The seal is cryptographic: changing one file would break the check macOS runs at startup. There is no supported way around it, and the unsupported ones leave a Mac that will not take updates.

Why it does not matter much

  • The 693 MB is inside the roughly 13 GB system volume, which is the same size on every Mac with that macOS version. See how much space macOS takes.
  • Removing an app would not return space to your data volume, which is where your files, and your storage problem, are.
  • The data those apps create is on your side and can be large: the Photos library, the Music library, Mail. That is what to look at.

The apps you can delete

AppWhereDeletable?
Safari, Music, Photos, Mail, Messages/System/ApplicationsNo
Pages, Numbers, Keynote/ApplicationsYes, free to download again
GarageBand, iMovie/ApplicationsYes, free to download again
Xcode, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro/ApplicationsYes
ls /System/Applications | wc -l
du -sh /System/Applications
du -sh /System/Applications/*.app | sort -h | tail -5

The deletable ones are covered in iWork apps taking up space, and the data the built-in apps build up in Photos library, Mail attachments and Apple Music downloads.

Common questions

Can I delete built-in apps like Chess or Music on a Mac?

No. They are on the sealed system volume, which macOS protects. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand and iMovie are the exceptions, as App Store apps.

How much space do the built-in Mac apps use?

On the Mac measured, all 47 apps in /System/Applications came to 693 MB, inside the fixed system volume.

Would deleting built-in apps free up space?

No. They are on the system volume, which is the same size regardless. Your usable space is on the separate data volume.

Why does macOS say an app is required and cannot be deleted?

Because it is part of the signed, read-only system volume, which cannot be changed without breaking its seal.

Read next