Help · Mac storage

How to clear developer caches on a Mac.

By Grant and Brad, who make Pangalin's apps · Updated 11 October 2026

Every package manager keeps a cache of what it has downloaded, so installs are faster next time. Most never shrink on their own. Clearing them is safe: things download again when needed, at the cost of a slower next install. Always use the tool's own command; some caches are read-only or self-indexing, and deleting their folders by hand can confuse the tool.

To see which are big, check the paths below in Finder (Go › Go to Folder…) with Get Info, or run du -sh on them in Terminal.

Commands, tool by tool

• Homebrew (~/Library/Caches/Homebrew): brew cleanup removes old versions and downloads older than 120 days. brew cleanup --prune=all removes all old downloads. Add -n to preview first.
• npm (~/.npm): npm cache clean --force. npm's cache heals itself, so this is only for reclaiming space. npm cache verify tidies it without emptying it.
• pnpm (~/Library/pnpm/store): pnpm store prune removes packages no project uses. pnpm says it's safe to run now and then.
• Yarn: yarn cache clean. In Yarn 2 and later, add --all to include the shared cache in ~/.yarn/berry.
• pip (~/Library/Caches/pip): pip cache purge. pip cache dir shows where it is.
• uv (~/.cache/uv): uv cache prune removes unused entries; uv cache clean empties it. uv asks you never to edit its cache by hand.
• CocoaPods: pod cache clean --all.
• Gradle (~/.gradle): Gradle cleans unused cache entries itself after about 30 days. gradle --stop stops background daemons that hold memory.
• Cargo (~/.cargo): recent versions clean the global cache automatically (downloads unused for 3 months). Cargo's docs say any part of its cache can be removed and it will be restored. cargo clean in a project removes that project's target folder, often the biggest part.
• Go (~/Library/Caches/go-build and ~/go/pkg/mod): go clean -cache and go clean -modcache. Use these rather than deleting: the module cache is read-only.

For Xcode's DerivedData, simulators and device support, see clearing Xcode's cache. For Docker, see Docker disk space.

Don't forget project folders

Old projects' node_modules, target, .build and Pods folders can be bigger than any cache. They're rebuilt by an install or build, so for projects you're not working on, they can go.