macOS Xcode CoreSimulator folder very big. Is it ok to delete content?

Question

My ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices folder is 26 Gb in size.

Is it safe to just delete all the content? Will those files be automatically regenerated?

score 882 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

882

Try to run xcrun simctl delete unavailable in your terminal.

Original answer: Xcode - free to clear devices folder?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

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answered Mar 30 '16 at 09:59

Petr Syrov

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Your answer helped me reduce CoreSimulator/Devices to 230MB! – maosmurf Sep 15 '16 at 00:34
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Me too, that's really help to clear old simulator images. – Kevin Oct 25 '16 at 13:09
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Thanks. Reduce the size of that folder by 90%! – Steven L. Jan 26 '17 at 13:01
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@EralpB Oh no, my $2200 machine is running slowly. Guess I better upgrade to one of the new $3000 models. – TylerJames Apr 06 '17 at 15:03
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doing this and deleting the iOS DeviceSupport folder had gave me back 40 gigs of storage. The iOS DeviceSupport folder accumulates garbage overtime so it is safe to deleting every now and then – Jesus Rodriguez Jul 16 '17 at 00:03
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awesome freed 20gb – Raheel Sadiq Apr 04 '18 at 09:32
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Definitely better to use this command rather than deleting everything. However, running it returns always error, so I treat this folder like DerivedData and was able to free 30 GB, without any issues. – hris.to Jan 02 '19 at 07:45
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Thanks! 15.22 -> 2.48. Xcode should do this automatically . They should create a feature to clean/trim storage – Bhaskar May 09 '19 at 20:03
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40gb to 6gb, holy moly that 40gb was a pain in the ass for a 128 ssd – Benjamin Jimenez Aug 26 '19 at 19:37
It's amazing how absolutely crap xcode is. In general I find apple software and software development a flaky nightmare. It's like apple focused on end user experience, gloss and design but behind the scenes the whole thing is really a giant shitshow – Frank Sep 26 '20 at 03:12
16GB → 150MB Wow! – Pankaj Jangid Oct 16 '20 at 14:11
Thx a bunch! Got rid of 20 GB after running it as admin / sudo. Running it without privileges only deleted about 1 GB – Vering Oct 20 '20 at 11:05
You just saved me literally 100GB of hard drive space. You are a legend of Stack Overflow. – Zack May 26 '21 at 20:29

MacMark · Answer 2 · 2019-09-25T11:51:16.083

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That directory is part of your user data and you can delete any user data without affecting Xcode seriously. You can delete the whole CoreSimulator/ directory. Xcode will recreate fresh instances there for you when you do your next simulator run. If you can afford losing any previous simulator data of your apps this is the easy way to get space.

Update: A related useful app is "DevCleaner for Xcode" https://apps.apple.com/app/devcleaner-for-xcode/id1388020431

edited Sep 25 '19 at 11:51

answered Mar 25 '17 at 07:57

MacMark

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A note of caution: The fresh instances are only re-created if you use the xCode IDE. If you're trying to free space on a CI server which uses xcodebuild script, fastlane or other to build and run your test, best to avoid this method. – Litome Aug 06 '19 at 11:39
Lol, now I feel very good, thank you bro! This shift took me about 10GB. – Rainning Dec 04 '19 at 14:09
DevCleaner cleaned my Library/Developer/Xcode folder but not CoreSimulator. Any idea why? – Roberto Feb 25 '20 at 23:03
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@Roberto, maybe so that you can still run your apps on the Simulator. I did `rm ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/*`, opened Xcode, and then tried to run my app on the Simulator. I got an error: "Unable to boot device because it cannot be located on disk. Domain: NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code: 2 Failure Reason: The device's data is no longer present at ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/B2EFB6F6-6A64-4521-83A4-94EA45420073/data. Recovery Suggestion: Use the device manager in Xcode or the simctl command line tool to either delete the device properly or erase contents and settings." – ma11hew28 Apr 28 '20 at 16:27

AlexanderN · Answer 3 · 2020-11-04T00:40:13.877

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If you happen to be an iOS developer:

Check how many simulators that you have downloaded as they take up a lot of space:

Go to: ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport

Also delete old archived apps:

Go to: ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives

I cleared 100GB doing this.

edited Nov 04 '20 at 00:40

answered Jun 24 '19 at 01:39

AlexanderN

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Be careful. You may want to keep the archives for builds you've released. [Technical Note TN2151: Understanding and Analyzing Application Crash Reports: Symbolicating Crash Reports](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2151/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40008184-CH1-SYMBOLICATION) says: "Important: To symbolicate crash reports from testers, app review, and customers, you must retain the archive for each build of your application that you distribute." – ma11hew28 Apr 28 '20 at 16:13

whyoz · Answer 4 · 2017-04-25T14:10:39.070

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for Xcode 8:

What I do is run sudo du -khd 1 in the Terminal to see my file system's storage amounts for each folder in simple text, then drill up/down into where the huge GB are hiding using the cd command.

Ultimately you'll find the Users//Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices folder where you can have little concern about deleting all those "devices" using iOS versions you no longer need. It's also safe to just delete them all, but keep in mind you'll lose data that's written to the device like sqlite files you may want to use as a backup version.

I once saved over 50GB doing this since I did so much testing on older iOS versions.

edited Apr 25 '17 at 14:10

answered Apr 19 '17 at 17:29

whyoz

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GrandPerspective is a great tool to find what space is being used where, clearer & faster than `du`. (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net). – Graham Perks Dec 25 '17 at 21:15
I would recommend using [ncdu](https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu) (also available via Homebrew and MacPorts) instead of running `du` over and over again. it gives you an interactive drill-down interface in your terminal, and will also let you delete folders, etc. – Nils Breunese Apr 07 '21 at 14:14

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 01 '21 at 08:26

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I created a small command-line utility that cleans the CoreSimulator folder and some other Xcode-related folders that might take up extra space, specified in this answer. If you think this is something that would help you, you can check it out here.

answered Apr 01 '21 at 08:26

lajosdeme

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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 31 '21 at 05:56

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You can also remove ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Caches/dyld/ directory and free a lot of memory.

answered Mar 31 '21 at 05:56

Den

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 24 '21 at 07:44

In addition to xcrun simctl delete unavailable, you can also clean up all simulated OS data and apps at once:

 xcrun simctl erase all

That is, in case you don't need the data and installed apps on the simulators. Which you most likely don't - Xcode will install the OS and your app(s) next time you run it in one of the simulators.

This might free up some more gigabytes of disk space.

(Also in case xcrun says simctl could not be found: make sure the location of your dev tools is correctly specified in Xcode Preferences -> Locations -> Command Line Tools)

macOS Xcode CoreSimulator folder very big. Is it ok to delete content?

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