CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xcodemacosxcode7diskspace
Franck
Franck

Reputation: 9299

Is it okay to delete the macOS Xcode CoreSimulator devices folder?

My ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices folder is 26 GB.

Is it safe to just delete all the content? Will those files be automatically regenerated?

Upvotes: 543

Views: 231543

Answers (7)

AlexanderN
AlexanderN

Reputation: 2670

For iOS developers who find that they have very little available storage space without knowing why:

Check how many simulators that you have downloaded as they take up a lot of space (previous ones are not removed when you update XCode so this will quickly add up):

Go to: ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport

Also delete old archived apps that are no longer important to you:

Go to: ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives

I cleared 100GB doing this.

UPDATE: You can now easily do this by just going to the Apple icon in the top left corner -> About this Mac -> Storage -> Manage... -> Developer

Upvotes: 53

mojuba
mojuba

Reputation: 12207

In addition to xcrun simctl delete unavailable, you can also clean up all simulated OS data and apps at once:

 xcrun simctl erase all

That is, in case you don't need the data and installed apps on the simulators. Which you most likely don't - Xcode will install the OS and your app(s) next time you run it in one of the simulators.

This might free up some more gigabytes of disk space.

(Also in case xcrun says simctl could not be found: make sure the location of your dev tools is correctly specified in Xcode Preferences -> Locations -> Command Line Tools)

Upvotes: 20

lajosdeme
lajosdeme

Reputation: 2407

I created a small command-line utility that cleans the CoreSimulator folder and some other Xcode-related folders that might take up extra space, specified in this answer. If you think this is something that would help you, you can check it out here.

Upvotes: 9

Den
Den

Reputation: 1725

You can also remove ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Caches/dyld/ directory and free a lot of memory.

Upvotes: 16

MacMark
MacMark

Reputation: 6539

That directory is part of your user data and you can delete any user data without affecting Xcode seriously. You can delete the whole CoreSimulator/ directory. Xcode will recreate fresh instances there for you when you do your next simulator run. If you can afford losing any previous simulator data of your apps this is the easy way to get space.

Update: A related useful app is "DevCleaner for Xcode" https://apps.apple.com/app/devcleaner-for-xcode/id1388020431

Upvotes: 196

whyoz
whyoz

Reputation: 5246

for Xcode 8:

What I do is run sudo du -khd 1 in the Terminal to see my file system's storage amounts for each folder in simple text, then drill up/down into where the huge GB are hiding using the cd command.

Ultimately you'll find the Users//Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices folder where you can have little concern about deleting all those "devices" using iOS versions you no longer need. It's also safe to just delete them all, but keep in mind you'll lose data that's written to the device like sqlite files you may want to use as a backup version.

I once saved over 50GB doing this since I did so much testing on older iOS versions.

Upvotes: 19

Petr Syrov
Petr Syrov

Reputation: 15253

Try to run xcrun simctl delete unavailable in your terminal.

Original answer: Xcode - free to clear devices folder?

Upvotes: 1089

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