Reclaim your disk space from Xcode

Do you have problems with the space on your disk? You are in the right place!

This post is for developers and users of Mac, particularly users of Xcode.

If you are working in a lot of projects or you have a lot of simulators you will notice that Xcode is using a lot of disk space and it generates a lot of cache data.

So let’s see how to clean up your Xcode folder.

First clic on “Go” menu in your finder and paste ~/Library/Developer/Xcode, press enter and you will you will see something like this:

Let’s analyze some of those folders.

DerivedData

Inside this folder we find subfolders for every project you are working on, this subfolder are created at build time and are used for accelerate the build process.
My advice it’s delete everything inside this folder every few days interval. Most of the time it occupy a huge space and also if you are experiment some wired issue with build in Xcode, it’s good to clean up this folder.
Important! Don’t delete ‘DerivedData’ – only subfolders!

iOS Device Support

This folder contains subfolder for every device that you connect to your Mac. For every iOS version a new one it will be created. After a long time working in the same Mac this subfolder will increase. You can delete them and Xcode will create a new subfolder the next time you connect your device.
Again! Don’t delete ‘iOS Device Support’ – only subfolders!

iOS Device Logs

It is safe to delete the logs that you find here and you may save a few gigas of space, if it is not useful for you, you can delete it safely.

Archives

Xcode creates new file when new build is archived. If you want to be able to debug deployed versions of your App, you should not delete the archives. Or you should backup older builds you might need to access in the future. But having said that you can delete anything you want.

In my experience I never had a problem deleting subfolders before mentioned. However it’s always safer to back up them and then proceed with the cleaning, Then you can check if everything is still working fine and when you are sure, delete these files permanently.