How to delete Xcode DerivedData and developer caches

A practical guide from the makers of Clear Storage — Disk Visualizer

If you build iOS or Mac apps, a meaningful slice of your disk belongs to files no human ever opens: intermediate build products. They're safe to delete precisely because they're derived — Xcode regenerates them from source. The only cost of clearing them is a slower next build.

Where developer space goes

• DerivedData: Xcode's per-project build folder — indexes, intermediates, build products. Grows with every project you've ever opened, including ones you deleted months ago.
• Build artifacts: archives and products from past builds.
• SPM caches: Swift Package Manager's downloaded and compiled dependencies.
• CocoaPods caches: the same idea for Pod-based projects.

The manual way and its problem

You can delete ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData in Finder, and many developers do. The problem is coverage and visibility: the caches live in several locations, you can't easily see which projects' data is stale, and typing paths into Terminal to check sizes gets old fast.

The scan-and-review way

1. In Clear Storage, run the Developer Folders scan on the folders you grant access to. It finds Xcode DerivedData, build artifacts, and SPM and CocoaPods caches together.
2. Review the results with sizes visible — it's common to find entries for projects you archived long ago.
3. Clear what you select. Everything here regenerates on the next build of a live project.

What to expect afterward

The first build of each active project after clearing will take noticeably longer while Xcode rebuilds its caches — that's the trade, and it's a one-time cost per project. Stale projects' caches simply never come back, which is the point.