Is it safe to delete ~/Library/Caches on Mac?

Part of our guides for developer Macs · Tested on macOS 26 · Updated September 2026

Short answer: yes, mostly. ~/Library/Caches holds data apps can download or rebuild, and apps recreate it as needed. Quit apps before deleting their caches, delete the contents of app folders rather than the Caches folder itself, and expect the first launch afterwards to be slower. Two things to check first: package-manager caches (safe but slow to rebuild) and apps that keep offline downloads there.

What's inside

One folder per app, usually named after its bundle identifier (com.company.app). On our test Mac it held 2.6 GB across 115 apps; on developer Macs it's often 10–30 GB, mostly from package managers and browsers.

What	Where	Safe to delete?
App caches	`~/Library/Caches/com.*`	Yes, quit the app first
Homebrew downloads	`~/Library/Caches/Homebrew`	Yes, or run `brew cleanup --prune=all`
pip, Yarn, SwiftPM, CocoaPods, Go	`~/Library/Caches/pip`, `…/Yarn`, `…/org.swift.swiftpm`, `…/CocoaPods`, `…/go-build`	Yes, packages download again when needed (see clear package caches)
Browser caches	`~/Library/Caches/Google`, `…/com.apple.Safari`, `…/Firefox`	Yes; clearing from the browser's settings is cleaner
Offline media	Some music, podcast and map apps	Check first: deleting removes offline downloads you'd have to fetch again
The Caches folder itself	`~/Library/Caches`	No: keep the folder, delete what's inside

See what's using the space

du -sh ~/Library/Caches
du -sh ~/Library/Caches/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -15

Clean it safely

Quit the apps whose caches you're clearing (a running app may rewrite or crash on a missing cache).
In Finder, press ⇧⌘G, go to ~/Library/Caches, open the app's folder and move its contents to the Trash.
Use the tools' own commands where they exist: brew cleanup --prune=all, pip cache purge, npm cache clean --force.
Restart the app and check it works, then empty the Trash.

Don't use sudo rm -rf on /Library/Caches or /System. The system-wide caches are managed by macOS, and deleting them can break updates. The per-user ~/Library/Caches (with the ~) is the one to clean.

Skip the folder-by-folder work. Storage Cleaner finds the developer caches in ~/Library/Caches and elsewhere, shows what each one is and when it was last used, and moves them to the Trash with Undo.

Try Storage Cleaner free

Frequently asked

Will deleting caches free space permanently? Only until apps rebuild what they need. Caches of apps and tools you no longer use stay gone; caches of apps you use every day come back, often smaller.

Will I lose passwords or settings? No. Settings live in ~/Library/Preferences and passwords in the Keychain, not in Caches.

Why is ~/Library/Caches so big on my Mac? Usually package managers (Homebrew, pip, Yarn, SwiftPM) and browsers. They never clean up after themselves.

Is ~/Library/Caches the same as System Data? It's part of it. macOS counts everything in ~/Library that isn't a document as System Data. See why System Data is so large.