Has any one else noticed that gigs of storage dissapear right before your eyes on your M1 Macbook air? Do you know if it has something to do with these MS Apps like Zoom or some temp folder that is getting bigger as you use zoom. I started with 197 gbs of storage this morning and ended up with 188z. Right now I am installing the latest software update as last time i did a software update it relinquished quite a but if storage back.
It's not specific to the M1 chip. On any Mac, if you've got Time Machine turned on, TM will create local backups until it can write them to your backup disk (either an external or a network drive). macOS reports this space as "purgeable" but some software will report this as used space. macOS will reclaim/delete these local backups as needed, for example if it thinks you're running low on disk space while you're installing a large application, even if it hasn't yet written the TM local cache to your backup disk yet.
You can use an app like Daisy Disk or many others to see what's using your disk space if you're concerned that it's something else.
