Suggestions: what's safe to move, and whether it comes back

The free way first

You don't need an app to clear caches. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder, type ~/Library/Caches, and move folders for apps you no longer use to the Trash. Browsers and many apps have their own clear-cache command too. The guides to clearing cache on a Mac and Library caches go through it step by step, including which folders to leave alone.

What doing it by hand doesn't tell you is whether the space stays free. Most caches come back within days. Suggestions is built around that.

How a rule decides

Each suggestion comes from a rule in a plain data file. A rule says where to look, how old or big something has to be, and whether it's safe to check for you. Here are two, exactly as the app has them.

Suggestions rule · Browser caches

Browser caches

Web pages, images and scripts your browsers saved so sites load faster. You stay signed in, and history, bookmarks and passwords aren't touched. Browsers download them again within days, so moving them frees space only for a while. They start unchecked.

• ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari
• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Caches/*
• ~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/*
• ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/*/Code Cache

Listed, but you decide whether to check it.

Suggestions rule · Xcode

Xcode DerivedData

Build products and indexes. Xcode rebuilds them the next time you build each project.

• ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/*

Checked for you, because it's safe to lose and doesn't come straight back.

Rules only check items for you when they're safe to lose and don't come straight back. Some rules wait for an age: crash reports after a month, project build folders once the project has been untouched for 30 days, device support files after six months. Others list things and leave them to you: Xcode archives older than 90 days, downloads you haven't opened in 90 days, and files over 500 MB untouched for a year. You can change the limits for downloads, project folders and large files in Settings → Cleanup.

iPhone and iPad backups are never checked, whatever their age. A backup doesn't come back on its own, but it can't be made again later either.

What you see

Suggestions groups rules by category. In the screenshot, Developer files add up to 46.1 GB across Project artifacts, Xcode, Package managers and Editors. Caches hold 20.2 GB, with Browser caches at 11.3 GB and App caches at 8.9 GB, none of it staged. Logs take 204 MB, all staged. iOS backups and the Trash sit under Needs Full Disk Access, with a link to System Settings, because macOS hides those folders until you allow access.

Each row shows how many items it found and how many are staged. Open a group to see every item and the rule's explanation, and check or uncheck any of it. Things you stage from the Map, Find, Duplicates, Applications or Compress appear in their own group, Added from other views.

Rules that don't need a scan, like caches, logs and developer data, run at launch. Scan your home folder to add old downloads, project build folders and large files. Look Again runs every rule once more.

Caches come back, so they start unchecked

After a cleanup, History measures each place again after a day, a week and a month. Suggestions uses those measurements. Groups are ordered by the space that lasts, not the space found. A group whose items came back says what share returned last time and how soon: within a day, a week or a month. One whose space held says "last time it stayed free".

Moving 11 GB of browser cache to the Trash looks like a lot. If the browsers download it again within the week, the disk is no emptier than before. That's why caches are listed and sized but left unchecked.

For developers

Of the 28 rules, 17 cover developer data: Xcode DerivedData, archives and device support files, unavailable simulators and simulator caches, npm, Yarn, pnpm and Bun caches, pip, uv and Poetry, Homebrew downloads, Cargo, Go, Gradle and Maven, CocoaPods and Swift packages, Playwright and Cypress browsers, JetBrains and VS Code or Cursor caches, build folders like node_modules, target and .venv inside your projects, and Docker's disk image, which is only reported. The developers page covers them, and the guide to clearing Xcode DerivedData shows the manual way too.

From checked to the Trash

Checked items wait in the Cleanup tray, which remembers them between launches. The footer shows the total, 14.5 GB and 123 items in the screenshot, with Unstage All and Review & Clean Up…. The review list shows every item with its size, and you can remove anything from it. Only Move to Trash moves anything, and each item is checked again first: if it changed, is open in an app or is now protected, it's skipped and you're told why.

Every cleanup can be undone from History while the items are in the Trash. The space comes back when you empty the Trash, which MacClearings never does for you. The safety page explains each step.