This is super useful, as a software engineer (and a vibe coder :P) i'm ramping up so much GBs that sometimes my top tier macos pro even hangs and asks me to free up space, turns out alot of these GBs are build artifacts! thanks OP
Your Mac is hoarding 23.7 GB of build artifacts.
DerivedData. Gradle caches. Old simulators. npm’s attic. Every build tool keeps a private stash it never cleans up. DevCleaner finds it all, tells you what’s safe to delete, and frees the space in one click.
menu bar app — look for the wand icon near the clock
Fantastic job! I didn't know about this problem until I've try it. And its HUGE. Thank you that you built DevCleaner!
Love the idea. It's always surprising how much disk space developer tools quietly consume 😅
Xcode projects + DerivedData is basically a hidden storage leak on every Mac.
Feels like a mix between backup tool and cleanup utility, which is actually interesting.
All quotes from the DevCleaner launch on Product Hunt · finished #12 on launch day · add your review
Watch it find the gigabytes, then free them.
From the first scan to the safe-only clean — the whole idea in twenty-two seconds.
One cleaner for every toolchain on your machine.
DevCleaner ships with scanners for twenty-three ecosystems — from classic build tools to AI editors and local LLMs — plus any folder you add yourself. Each one knows exactly where its tool hides caches — and which ones grow back on the next build. Prefer the manual route? The developer's guide to freeing disk space on a Mac shows every path and command.
brew cleanup --prune=allIt knows the difference between cache and catastrophe.
Disk cleaners that treat your SDK like a temp folder are how weekends die. Every category in DevCleaner carries an explicit risk level — and the dangerous ones are never selected for you.
Deleted by default
Pure caches that regenerate automatically on your next build. Deleting them costs you one slower compile, nothing more.
Your call
Things that grow back slowly — simulators you might still need, archived builds, emulator images. Visible, measured, but never pre-selected.
Hands off
SDKs and device symbols that can break your environment. DevCleaner shows you their size, asks twice, and never touches them on its own.
Set it, forget it, reclaim it.
Lives in your menu bar
No dock icon, no window cluttering your desktop. Just a small badge quietly reporting how many gigabytes you could get back right now.
Scans while you watch
Sizes stream in live as the scanner walks your caches — every category, every toolchain, counted byte by byte in front of you.
One click. Gigabytes back.
Quick Clean wipes everything marked safe. Or pick categories yourself and watch the freed space add up in real time.
More caches to reclaim. Full control over every simulator.
1.9 reaches Source Packages, browser testing caches, Android snapshots, and System Temp — and turns Simulator Slimmer into a full device manager: every device, app names in the caption, Erase or Delete per device or per iOS version.
Broader cleanup targets
SwiftPM Source Packages, Xcode Build Logs, Browser Testing Caches (Playwright, Electron, Cypress, Puppeteer), Android Emulator Snapshots, and System Temp older than 7 days — gigabytes that used to hide outside the usual DerivedData sweep.
Full simulator management
Every CoreSimulator device shows up, with installed app names as captions. Choose
simctl erase or full delete per device — plus bulk Erase/Delete on each iOS runtime group
(with Mixed when devices disagree).
More reliable simulator cleanup
Deleting an iOS simulator runtime no longer fails silently. And when you want a clean slate before picking categories, Unselect All clears every selection in one click.
Done with a project? Park it, don't delete it.
Old projects you can't quite throw away sit on your disk for years. DevCleaner archives a whole project into a single file, strips the regenerable junk, and brings it back exactly as it was with one click — dependencies and all.
Archive what's idle
Spot projects you haven't touched in months and pack each one into a single compact file. node_modules and build folders are stripped, the lockfiles that rebuild them are kept.
Preview before you trust it
A dry-run restore opens and verifies the archive and shows exactly what will land where — without writing a thing. Built for production projects you can't afford to lose.
Restore in one click
Bring a project back to its original path and let DevCleaner re-run the install for you. The original is never deleted until the archive is verified safe.
Free for cleanup. Pro for autopilot.
Manual cleanup, scanning and Quick Clean are free forever, no account needed. Ghost Projects and Project Artifacts show you what's stale for free; restoring a hibernated project is always free. Pro adds the automation: scheduled cleaning, Smart Triggers when you quit a dev app, and Project Hibernation with batch archive. Try all of it free for 14 days.
- Scanners for 23 dev toolchains & AI apps
- Ghost Projects & Project Artifacts discovery
- Safe / Warning / Danger risk model
- One-click Quick Clean from the menu bar
- 30-day cleanup history & stats
- Restore hibernated projects
- Auto Clean & Smart Triggers
- Archive & batch hibernate
- Everything in Free
- Auto Clean safe caches in the background
- Smart Triggers — clean when you quit an app
- Project Hibernation — archive & restore projects
- Batch Archive All — every unused project at once
- Activate on up to 3 of your Macs
- 14-day free trial, no card needed
Prefer a subscription? Yearly is $19.99/year · secure checkout by Stripe · tax excluded
Rather do it by hand? Here's exactly how.
Every gigabyte DevCleaner reclaims, you can also clear yourself from the Terminal. These guides give the exact paths, the commands, and what's safe to delete.
Questions developers ask before they download.
Straight answers about pricing, safety, and how DevCleaner compares to general Mac cleaners.
- Is DevCleaner free?
- Yes. Scanning, Quick Clean, Ghost Projects, and restoring hibernated projects are free forever — no account. Pro adds automation (Auto Clean, Smart Triggers, Project Hibernation) with a 14-day trial. See pricing for the full split.
- Is it safe?
- Every category is rated Safe, Warning, or Danger. Safe caches are selected by default; risky items like iOS Device Support never are. Credentials and session files sit on a hard deny-list, and DevCleaner warns before touching caches of an app that's still running.
- Is it a menu bar app?
- Yes — no dock icon, no desktop clutter. Look for the wand icon near the clock. It shows reclaimable space at a glance and opens the full scan from there.
- What does Pro add?
- Auto Clean wipes safe caches in the background. Smart Triggers run a clean when you quit Xcode, Cursor, or another dev app. Project Hibernation archives idle repos and brings them back with dependencies intact. Batch Archive All is Pro; discovery and restore stay free.
- How is it different from CleanMyMac?
- CleanMyMac is built for general Mac housekeeping. DevCleaner knows developer caches — DerivedData, Gradle, Docker layers, npm's attic, Ollama weights — and labels what's safe per toolchain instead of treating every folder like temp files. Our honest comparison guide walks through the trade-offs.
- What can it clean?
- Twenty-three ecosystems: Xcode, Android Studio, npm/Yarn/pnpm, pip, Cargo, Go, Homebrew, Docker, CocoaPods, Maven, VS Code, Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, Ollama, LM Studio, and any custom path you add.
Your disk has been patient enough.
Free download. Scans in seconds. The only thing you’ll lose is the clutter.
Download DevCleaner for macOS ↓One indie dev. Three tools for the build cycle.
DevCleaner is one of three apps I build for people who ship their own software — from the first idea to the first beta.