How to delete backups of a volume from an APFS Time Machine snapshot?

Solution 1:

With Time Machine to APFS (TMA), it is not possible to delete particular folders inside any Time Machine snapshots. This is the only downside of the change from TMH (Time Machine to HFS) to TMA.

It is possible to delete whole snapshots from TMA using tmutil command. I have done this under Big Sur, but I have seen some doubts cast on whether this is still possible for Monterey. But deleting whole snapshots is not what you are wanting.

I suggest you start with a new Time Machine disk/volume and, at some point, discard your old backups. With sufficient free space on your existing TM disk you can create a new volume in Disk Utility and start a new Time Machine backup to that. Otherwise you need another physical disk.