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

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

Short answer: no. ~/Library/Containers holds the entire private world of each sandboxed app (every Mac App Store app and many Apple apps): its documents, settings, caches and databases. Deleting a container is like reinstalling the app from scratch and can lose data. Only remove containers of apps you've uninstalled, and let macOS protect the rest.

What's inside

One folder per sandboxed app or extension, named by bundle identifier. On our test Mac there were 661 containers totalling 339 MB: most are tiny, a few are large. ~/Library/Group Containers is the shared version for app families (352 MB on the same Mac).

What	Where	Safe to delete?
Containers of uninstalled apps	`~/Library/Containers/<bundle id>`	Yes
A container's cache folder	`…/<bundle id>/Data/Library/Caches`	Usually yes, with the app quit
Containers of installed apps	`…/<bundle id>`	No: the app's data, including documents
Apple apps (Mail, Notes, Photos extensions…)	`com.apple.*`	No; macOS usually blocks it anyway ("Operation not permitted")
Group Containers	`~/Library/Group Containers`	No, unless every app in the group is uninstalled

See what's using the space

du -sh ~/Library/Containers/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10
du -sh ~/Library/Group\ Containers/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

If Terminal says "Operation not permitted", macOS is protecting that container; that's expected and a sign to leave it alone.

Clean it safely

Find large containers with the commands above and match the bundle identifier to an app (the folder name often includes the developer and app name).
If the app is installed, clean from inside the app (its settings often have a "clear cache" or "storage" option) instead of deleting the container.
If the app is gone, move its container to the Trash.

Developer clutter lives elsewhere. For most developers, containers are small; the gigabytes are in Xcode, AI models, node_modules and package caches. Storage Cleaner finds those in one scan and never touches app containers.

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Frequently asked

Why can't I delete some containers? macOS protects containers of apps it considers in use or that belong to the system. That's by design.

Will deleting a container uninstall the app? No. The app stays; it just loses its data and starts fresh.

What's the difference between Containers and Application Support? Sandboxed apps keep everything inside their container; apps that aren't sandboxed use ~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Caches instead. See is Application Support safe to delete.