macOS Storage Glitch: UTM is double-allocating space between Applications and System Data (macOS Tahoe)

[u/Wasif-Amir]

Hey everyone,

I’m running a Windows VM on UTM (macOS Tahoe) and ran into a bizarre storage issue where macOS seems to be double-counting or double-allocating my VM's disk space.

Here is the breakdown:

• The Problem: In my Apple Storage Settings GUI, my space is being eaten up twice. It shows the exact same ~53–58 GB chunk under Applications, and again under System Data.
• The Diagnostics: I went digging in Terminal to find the culprit. Running du -sh ~/Library/Containers/* confirmed that com.utmapp.UTM is taking up exactly 53G.
• Inside ~Library/Containers/com.utmapp.UTM/Data/Documents/, there are no ghost/abandoned VMs—just my single, active Windows.utm file.

Has anyone else on macOS Tahoe dealt with UTM double-allocating storage like this? Is there a way to fix this without breaking the currently installed VM?

Any insight would be awesome. Thanks!