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Developer Cleanup

MacSweep’s developer cleanup module is the flagship feature — designed for developers who accumulate gigabytes of build artifacts, dependency caches, and tool debris.

How It Works

MacSweep scans your filesystem for known development artifact patterns. It identifies safe-to-remove directories and calculates potential space savings before any deletion.

Fixed-Location Targets

These are cleaned from known, fixed paths:

TargetPath
Xcode DerivedData~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
Xcode Archives~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives
Device Support~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport
CoreSimulator~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator

Project-Based Targets

These are found by scanning your project directories:

  • Node.js: node_modules, .next, .nuxt, .turbo, dist, .parcel-cache, .vite
  • Swift/Xcode: .build, DerivedData (local)
  • iOS: Pods
  • Rust: target
  • Python: __pycache__, .venv
  • Java/Kotlin: .gradle
  • Go: vendor
  • PHP: vendor
  • Ruby: .bundle
  • .NET: bin, obj
  • C/C++: CMake build directories
  • Linting: .eslintcache, .cache

Safety

MacSweep never deletes without confirmation. Each cleanup target shows:

  • Directory path
  • Size on disk
  • Last modified date
  • A “Keep” or “Delete” toggle
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