Yep, it is an awful situation. I'm increasingly becoming frustrated with how Apple keeps disrespecting users.

I downloaded several MacOS installers, not for the MacBook I use, but intending to use them to create a partitioned USB installer (they were for macOS versions that I could clearly not even use for my current MacBook). Then, after creating the USB, since I was short of space, I deleted the installers, including from the trash.

Weirdly, I did not reclaim any space; I wondered why. After scratching my head for a while, I asked an LLM, which directed me to check the system snapshots. I had previously disabled time machine backup and snapshots, and yet I saw these huge system snapshots containing the files I had deleted, and kicker was, there was no way to delete them!

Again I scratched my head for a while for a solution other than wiping the MacBook and re-installing MacOS, and then I had the idea to just restart. Lo and behold, the snapshots were gone after restarting. I was relieved, but also pretty pissed off at Apple.

It's just as bas on Windows. Operating Systems and Applications have been using the user's hard drive as a trash dumping ground for decades. Temporary files, logs, caches, caches of caches, settings files, metadata files (desktop.ini, .fseventsd, .Trashes, .Spotlight-V100, .DS_Store). Developers just dump their shit all over your disk as if it belongs to them. I really think apps should have to ask permission before they can write to files, outside of direct user-initiated command.

I can't help but think back to a conversation with my girlfriend in 1984. She had just bought a PC and I had bought a Mac.

She said "Oh, you bought a toy computer. How cute!"

I've owned every architecture of Mac since then, and I still think of it is my toy computer.

Disk utility lets you delete them.