Can I delete a partition and leave the space unallocated in Monterey?

Question

I'm trying to shrink my MacOS (Monterey) partition using Disk Utility to reclaim some space for my Bootcamp partition using Minitool Partition Wizard on the Windows side. I succeeded in shrinking the MacOS partition by 35 GB with Disk Utility, but it forced me to create a new partition in the empty space, so now I have a new 35 GB ExFAT partition.

I just can't figure out how to delete this partition; everything I've read just says to click the minus button in Disk Utility, and while that does remove the partition, it makes me dedicate those 35 GB to another existing partition with no option to leave the space unallocated. Some things I read, like this answer, say clicking the minus should leave a "blank hole" where the partition was, but in my experience Disk Utility always automatically adds the 35 GB back to my MacOS partition without asking.

I could delete the partition from the Windows side, but for some reason MiniTool only sees it as being 32 GB, and I want to dedicate all 35 GB to the Bootcamp partition. So, is it possible to delete the ExFAT partition from the MacOS side and leave 35 GB unallocated so that I can boot into Windows and reclaim that space for the BootCamp partition?

Answer 1

Note: The answer below applies to Macs which UEFI boot Windows. If you have an older Mac which legacy BIOS boots Windows, then you should should not use the answer below.

You can open a Terminal application window and enter the command given below. This command will convert the BRIDGE volume to free space.

diskutil erasevolume free none BRIDGE

To add the free space to Windows, you will have to move the partition containing the BOOTCAMP volume to so the free space will reside after this partition. This can be can be done with the MiniTool Partition Wizard. I would recommend moving the partition containing Windows without resizing. You can also use the GNOME Partition Editor (GParted) to move a partition. For a comparison of these tools, see this answer.

Note: Before attempting to move the Windows partition, the Windows chkdsk command should be applied to the NTFS volume in this partition. This can be accomplish by booting to Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and entering the command below.

chkdsk c: /f

After moving the partition, you can use the Disk Management application provided by Microsoft to extend the BOOTCAMP volume to include the free space.