devpurge

Purge hidden dev caches on macOS. Reclaim GBs from Claude Desktop, Cursor, node_modules, uv, Playwright, Bun, and 30+ more.

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Why devpurge?

Your Mac's "System Data" keeps growing. Tools like CleanMyMac have no idea what Claude Desktop, Cursor, uv, or Playwright are — let alone where they hide gigabytes of cached data.

devpurge knows exactly where AI-era dev tools store their bloat, and safely removes it.

$ devpurge -n

  devpurge v0.2.0
  Purge hidden dev caches on macOS

  Scanning cache directories...

  #     Tier      Size      Description
  ──    ────────  ────────  ───────────────────────────────────
  N01   Project   6.3G      node_modules (my-app)
  N02   Project   2.1G      node_modules (dashboard)
  A04   AI-Era    4.2G      uv Python cache
  A01   AI-Era    1.8G      Claude Desktop VM bundles
  D10   DevTool   3.1G      Xcode DerivedData
  D01   DevTool   890M      npm cache
  D21   DevTool   302M      npm npx cache

  Total reclaimable: 18.7G

Real Results

On one machine, 45GB recovered — from 221GB down to 176GB:

Before (221 GB used)	After (176 GB used)

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap sogadaiki/devpurge
brew install devpurge

curl

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sogadaiki/devpurge/main/install.sh | bash

Manual

git clone https://github.com/sogadaiki/devpurge.git ~/.devpurge
ln -sf ~/.devpurge/bin/devpurge /usr/local/bin/devpurge

Usage

# Scan only (dry run) — see what's there without deleting
devpurge -n

# Interactive cleanup — scan, review, confirm, delete
devpurge

# Auto-confirm + generate share text
devpurge -y -s

# AI-era caches only
devpurge --ai-only

# Include everything (Notion, Discord, Slack, etc.)
devpurge -a

# Exclude specific paths
devpurge --exclude ~/Projects/my-app/node_modules

# Multiple excludes
devpurge --exclude ~/Projects/app1/node_modules --exclude ~/Projects/app2/node_modules

Options

Flag	Description
-n, --dry-run	Scan only, don't delete anything
-a, --all	Include caution-level caches
-y, --yes	Skip confirmation prompt
-s, --share	Generate shareable summary after cleanup
--exclude PATH	Exclude path from scanning (repeatable)
--ai-only	AI-era caches only
--no-color	Disable colored output
-v, --version	Show version
-h, --help	Show help

Cache Targets

Project (v0.2.0 new)

ID	Target	Typical Size
N01+	node_modules in your projects	1GB - 10GB+
X01+	.next build caches in your projects	100MB - 2GB+

Automatically scans ~/Desktop, ~/Documents, ~/Projects, ~/Developer, etc. Recoverable with npm install / npm run build.

AI-Era (no other tool covers these)

ID	Target	Typical Size
A01	Claude Desktop VM bundles	500MB - 2GB
A02	Cursor IDE cache	200MB - 1GB
A03	Cursor cached data	300MB - 1GB
A04	uv Python cache	500MB - 5GB
A05	Playwright browsers	500MB - 2GB
A06	Puppeteer browsers	500MB - 2GB
A07	Bun package cache	200MB - 2GB
A08	Codeium AI cache	200MB - 1GB
A09	Claude Code CLI cache	10MB - 200MB
A10	Kiro IDE cache	200MB - 1GB

Standard Dev Tools

npm, Homebrew, Chrome (browser cache + Service Workers + IndexedDB), VS Code, pip, Cargo (registry + source), Gradle, Maven, Xcode DerivedData, iOS Simulator, Go build cache, npm npx cache, system logs, Adobe media cache, dotslash, Poetry, node-gyp, next-swc.

Caution (use --all)

Notion, Discord, Slack, Adobe Fonts, Adobe CoreSync, Filmora, Steam, Zoom, Chatwork, Telegram.

vs CleanMyMac / OnyX / Other Tools

Feature	devpurge	CleanMyMac	OnyX
Claude Desktop cache	Yes	No	No
Cursor IDE cache	Yes	No	No
uv / Bun / Playwright	Yes	No	No
Codeium / Kiro / Claude Code	Yes	No	No
node_modules + .next auto-scan	Yes	No	No
Xcode DerivedData	Yes	Yes	Yes
npm / pip / Cargo	Yes	Partial	No
Free & open source	Yes	No ($35/yr)	Yes
No GUI needed	Yes	No	No
Zero dependencies	Yes	No	No

Config File

Create ~/.devpurgerc to permanently exclude paths:

# Keep active project dependencies
exclude=~/Desktop/development/my-app/node_modules
exclude=~/Desktop/development/dashboard/node_modules

CLI --exclude flags are merged with config file entries.

Safety

• Static targets are limited to a hardcoded whitelist
• node_modules scanning is dynamic but restricted to $HOME and whitelisted by path pattern
• Never uses sudo
• Permission errors are skipped, not forced
• All paths are absolute and double-quoted
• Interactive confirmation by default (use --yes to skip)
• Dry run mode (--dry-run) for safe scanning

Share Your Results

After cleanup, use --share to generate a ready-to-post summary:

I just purged 7.2GB of hidden dev caches with devpurge

Claude Desktop: 2.1GB
uv Python: 1.8GB
Playwright: 1.2GB
+ 8 more

Your Mac is hoarding AI-era bloat. Check yours:
https://github.com/sogadaiki/devpurge
#devpurge

Add a badge to your README:

[![Cleaned with devpurge](https://img.shields.io/badge/cleaned_with-devpurge-00cc88)](https://github.com/sogadaiki/devpurge)

Requirements

• macOS (any version with Bash 3.2+)
• No dependencies. Pure Bash.

License

MIT