How to Clear Xcode DerivedData on Mac (and Why It's 50 GB)

July 2026 · 5 min read · Dev Box Cleaner

If you build iOS or macOS apps, there's a folder on your Mac quietly eating disk space right now. It's called DerivedData, it lives deep inside ~/Library, and on an active development machine it routinely grows to 20–100 GB. The good news: every byte of it is safe to delete.

What is DerivedData?

DerivedData is Xcode's working directory. Every time you build a project, Xcode writes its intermediate output there:

• Build products and object files for every scheme, configuration and simulator you've ever used
• The index store that powers autocomplete and jump-to-definition
• Module caches, logs and precompiled headers

The folder lives at:

~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

Because Xcode keeps a separate subfolder for every project you've ever opened — including that repo you cloned once to look at — the folder only ever grows. A single large project can produce several gigabytes per simulator architecture.

Is it safe to delete?

Yes. DerivedData is a cache, nothing more. Xcode rebuilds whatever it needs on the next build. The only cost is that your first build afterwards is a clean build (slower), and indexing re-runs for the projects you actually still work on. You lose nothing permanent.

Three ways to clear it

1. From Xcode

For a single project: Product → Clean Build Folder (⇧⌘K). To see and manage all of it: Xcode → Settings → Locations, then click the small arrow next to the DerivedData path to open it in Finder and delete what you don't need.

2. From Terminal

# see how big it is first
du -sh ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

# delete all of it
rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

⚠️ Quit Xcode before deleting, or it may immediately re-create index files for open projects and confuse the build system mid-write.

3. With a cleaner app

The catch with manual cleaning is that DerivedData grows back — silently. A disk-space app that tracks it for you turns this from a "remember every few months" chore into a one-click habit.

Keeping it under control

• Clear DerivedData after finishing work on a project you won't touch for a while — that project's subfolder is pure dead weight.
• CI machines: wipe it between pipelines or use a dedicated build path.
• Don't move DerivedData to an external drive to "save space" — build times suffer badly on anything slower than the internal SSD.