Clean Developer Caches on Mac: Homebrew, pip, Cargo, Go and More

20 October 2026 · 3 min read · By Himanshu Singh, maker of DiskMac

Every language and package manager keeps its own cache, in its own place, with its own cleanup command. Individually they are a few gigabytes; together they can be tens. Here’s the cheat sheet.

Check sizes first

du -sh ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew ~/.npm ~/.cache/pip ~/Library/Caches/pip \
  ~/.cargo/registry ~/go/pkg/mod ~/Library/Caches/go-build ~/.m2 \
  ~/.gradle ~/.pub-cache ~/Library/Caches/CocoaPods 2>/dev/null

Homebrew

brew cleanup --prune=all   # old versions and all cached downloads
brew autoremove            # dependencies nothing needs any more

Node

npm cache clean --force
pnpm store prune
yarn cache clean

The bigger win is usually project node_modules — see how to delete node_modules.

Python

pip cache purge
uv cache clean
poetry cache clear --all pypi

Also look for old virtual environments (.venv, venv) in projects you’ve finished, and unused conda environments (conda env list).

Rust

rustup toolchain list
rustup toolchain uninstall <old-toolchain>
cargo install cargo-cache && cargo cache --autoclean

Project target/ folders are often the biggest: cargo clean in each finished project.

Go

go clean -cache       # build cache
go clean -modcache    # module downloads

Java / Maven / Gradle

rm -rf ~/.m2/repository   # Maven redownloads on next build

Gradle and Android are covered in the Android Studio guide.

CocoaPods and SwiftPM

pod cache clean --all
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/org.swift.swiftpm

Xcode itself has its own guide: clearing DerivedData and simulators.

Flutter / Dart

flutter clean            # per project
dart pub cache clean     # global pub cache

Editors

VS Code, Cursor and JetBrains IDEs keep caches, logs and old extension versions in ~/Library/Application Support/Code, ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor and ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains. Old IDE version folders are safe to remove.

Docker

docker system prune — details in Docker on Mac.

All of this in one scan

DiskMac’s Developer mode covers Homebrew, Rust, Go, pip/uv/Poetry, Maven, JetBrains, VS Code and Cursor alongside Xcode, Docker, Node, Android, Gradle, CocoaPods and Flutter. It explains each item and how it comes back, and its free CLI works in scripts:

diskmac                      # table of what is reclaimable
diskmac --only node,xcode    # limit to some toolchains
diskmac --json               # machine-readable

FAQ