Is it safe to delete DerivedData?

30 August 2026

Yes. ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData is a pure build cache, intermediate objects, indexes, and module caches Xcode generates from your source. Delete it and Xcode simply rebuilds everything on the next build. Nothing you wrote lives there.

When deleting it actually helps

• It has quietly grown to 10–50 GB across every project you ever opened.
• Xcode is behaving strangely, phantom errors, stale previews, broken indexing. Clearing DerivedData is the standard first fix.

The cost: your next build of each project is a clean build. Minutes, not hours.

The neighbors, know the difference

• iOS DeviceSupport, debug symbols per iOS version. Safe to delete; they re-copy from a connected device. Old versions just accumulate.
• CoreSimulator/Caches, safe.
• Archives, ⚠️ careful. These hold the dSYM symbol files for builds you shipped. Delete an archive and you lose the ability to symbolicate that release's crash reports. Review before removing; send to the Trash, not the void.

The safe way to do all of it

ddeploy treats these exactly by those rules: DerivedData, DeviceSupport and simulator caches are one preselected safe box (cleaned in place, sizes measured before and after), while Archives is a separate careful box that goes to the Trash. And if you're ever unsure about any item, one right-click asks Claude or ChatGPT about that exact path.