System Library size difference between Intel and M1

[mdwsta4]

Last week I upgraded my late 2016 15" MBP to a M1 Mac Mini. The MBP was still running High Sierra while the MM obviously has Big Sur. When I set up the MM, I did so from a Time Machine backup I made the same day on the MBP. Looking through Daisy Disk, I noticed a 10GB size difference between the system Library and I'm wondering if anyone has an idea on why this might be?

Here is a snapshot of the Intel MBP. 7GB of system Library used

Whereas on the M1 MM, there's 17GB of space being used. The largest of which are dyld, AssetsV2, and Private Frameworks.

Dyld is not on the Intel machine and I have no idea what this 4GB is. Assets went from 240mb on the Intel to almost 3GB on the M1. Private Frameworks doubled from 1.1GB to 2GB. Speech and desktop pictures take up another 2GB which are not present on the Intel Mac.

Any idea what any of these things are and why the sizes are so different between the two machines?

 

[ChanceLP]

It seems the DYLD folder might have something to with iOS apps.
Developing iOS apps for Xcode on an Intel machine, I have a 6.16 GB folder also called DYLD. Only difference, rather then being located at /System/Library, it's located at ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Caches, which points toward it being something to do with relinking iOS frameworks to macOS frameworks.
This would also solve why the M1 MacBook would have it and not the Intel one, as the Intel MacBook wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of dynamic links for iOS apps outside of developing, whereas the M1 MacBook would have to.
TL;DR, M1 Macs need to keep track of how it converted iOS backends to macOS ones, whereas Intel Macs don't.
EDIT: I looked through the files and the largest file was a watchOS DYLD shared cache, which definitely proves this theory, as watchOS uses different framework prefixes then iOS and macOS.

 

[mdwsta4]

Thanks for the info. I'm not a developer, nor do I have an Apple Watch, but do have an iPhone and iPad synced with the MM. Seems crazy that either of those backups would all of a sudden be that much larger

It seems the DYLD folder might have something to with iOS apps.
Developing iOS apps for Xcode on an Intel machine, I have a 6.16 GB folder also called DYLD. Only difference, rather then being located at /System/Library, it's located at ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Caches, which points toward it being something to do with relinking iOS frameworks to macOS frameworks.
This would also solve why the M1 MacBook would have it and not the Intel one, as the Intel MacBook wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of dynamic links for iOS apps outside of developing, whereas the M1 MacBook would have to.
TL;DR, M1 Macs need to keep track of how it converted iOS backends to macOS ones, whereas Intel Macs don't.
EDIT: I looked through the files and the largest file was a watchOS DYLD shared cache, which definitely proves this theory, as watchOS uses different framework prefixes then iOS and macOS.

 

[ChanceLP]

Thanks for the info. I'm not a developer, nor do I have an Apple Watch, but do have an iPhone and iPad synced with the MM. Seems crazy that either of those backups would all of a sudden be that much larger

It's not the backups, if you have iOS apps installed on your M1 MacBook, it has to make that DYLD folder.
Developing iOS apps on an Intel machine still makes this folder, just in a different location.