In my quest to find out why Xcode is so big, i found out that a lot of the space is taken up by the subfolders to the Developer>Platforms>iPhoneOS.platform>DeviceSupport folder..
Since I am (apparently) only allowed to develop for the last of them in Xcode, can I safely remove the rest (in this case 3.0 to 4.2.1)?
Same question regarding the subfolders of Developer>Platforms>iPhoneSimulator.platform>Developer>SDKs..
Yes you can remove SKDs prior to 4.0 in Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport it's just old stuff.
For the subfolders in Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer it's all the devices version that you will find in iOS Simulator in the menu Hardware>Device>Version. It can be sometimes usefull to keep them to test retrocompatibility (But remember that a test on a real device is still better). But if you want you can also remove these SKDs.
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I have installed Xcode in my machine in order to use it for desktop development (OS X/Cocoa/Command line tools). Whenever I create a new project, there are templates in the wizard for iOS, watchOS and tvOS development, but at this moment I have no interest in these SDKs.
Since Xcode.app is taking a lot of space in my disk even after a fresh install, is it possible to remove these SDKs and reclaim some space?
I found out how to do this. I don't know at this moment if this can have any side-effect on other components for Xcode that could fail. In that case it may be possible to reinstall it from the Mac AppStore again.
Xcode packages the SDKs for these different products as Platforms. There is a Platform for macOS, a Platform for iOS, and so on. All these Platforms are stored in this folder:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms
It seems it's possible to actually remove platforms by deleting the correspondent folders inside, such as:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchOS.platform
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform
Whenever one or more of these folders are deleted, the New Project wizard won't even show them anymore as categories.
Above in incorrect. You will have to reinstall Xcode if you delete any of these folders. /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform I deleted above Xcode wanted me to reinstall.
Try to delete all folders besides "developer" inside platform folders.
Example, delete all beside this:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/developer.
Other folders in that area you can delete
My ~/Library/Developer/Xcode folder is over 17 gigs in size. As I work in virtual machine (Parallels 12) with a 64 gig limit in total virtual disk size, I need to recover some disk space.
Amongst the folders such as:
Archives
DerivedData
Installs
iOS Device Logs
iOS DeviceSupport
Snapshots
UserData
What might I be able to delete without ruining my project?
Under Archives you can delete anything you want but you should keep recent builds. And you should backup older builds you might need to access in the future.
You can delete everything under DerivedData. Next time you build a project, the needed files will be recreated.
My Installs folder only contains a set of empty folders and the newest if over 3 years old. Check yours, that may be safe to delete.
The iOS Device Logs folder contains old device logs for various versions of iOS. You can safely delete any of the older logs.
The iOS DeviceSupport folder contains a folder for each version of iOS you ever had on an iOS device you ever connected while Xcode was running. Feel free to delete any folders for versions of iOS you don't support anymore. For example, if none of your apps have a Deployment Target older than iOS 8.1, for example, you can safely delete any folder for iOS 8.0.x and earlier. These folders are only needed to symbolicate crash reports.
The Snapshots folder is used by Xcode to save snapshots (backups). You can delete snapshots for old projects you don't care about.
I'd leave the UserData folder alone.
Here is explantation for each folder and what you can delete to reduce the size.
DeviceSupport - You can keep the simulator which log's you may need in future. It's symbolicate crash logs for different device/iOS.
Delete this folder after every few days interval. Most of the time, it occupy huge space!
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
All your targets are kept in the archived form in Archives folder. Before you decide to delete contents of this folder, here is a warning - if you want to be able to debug deployed versions of your App, you shouldn’t delete the archives. Xcode will manage of archives and creates new file when new build is archived.
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives
iOS Device Support folder creates a subfolder with the device version as an identifier when you attach the device. Most of the time it’s just old stuff. Keep the latest version and rest of them can be deleted (if you don’t have an app that runs on 5.1.1, there’s no reason to keep the 5.1.1 directory/directories). If you really don't need these, delete. But we should keep a few although we test app from device mostly.
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport
Core Simulator folder is familiar for many Xcode users. It’s simulator’s territory; that's where it stores app data. It’s obvious that you can toss the older version simulator folder/folders if you no longer support your apps for those versions. As it is user data, no big issue if you delete it completely but it’s safer to use ‘Reset Content and Settings’ option from the menu to delete all of your app data in a Simulator.
~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator
(Here's a handy shell command for step 5: xcrun simctl delete unavailable)
Caches are always safe to delete since they will be recreated as necessary. This isn’t a directory; it’s a file of kind Xcode Project. Delete away!
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode
After going through and cleaning my disk with old things that I didn't need anymore, I came across the iOS DeviceSupport folder in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode which was taking nearly 20 GB.
A similar question has been asked before, but since then many things have changed and I would like an up-to-date answer.
As long as I have the version I use for testing, can I delete the older/unused versions without breaking anything?
The ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport folder is basically only needed to symbolicate crash logs.
You could completely purge the entire folder. Of course the next time you connect one of your devices, Xcode would redownload the symbol data from the device.
I clean out that folder once a year or so by deleting folders for versions of iOS I no longer support or expect to ever have to symbolicate a crash log for.
More Suggestive answer supporting rmaddy's answer as our primary purpose is to delete unnecessary file and folder:
Delete this folder after every few days interval. Most of the time, it occupy huge space!
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
All your targets are kept in the archived form in Archives folder. Before you decide to delete contents of this folder, here is a warning - if you want to be able to debug deployed versions of your App, you shouldn’t delete the archives. Xcode will manage of archives and creates new file when new build is archived.
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives
iOS Device Support folder creates a subfolder with the device version as an identifier when you attach the device. Most of the time it’s just old stuff. Keep the latest version and rest of them can be deleted (if you don’t have an app that runs on 5.1.1, there’s no reason to keep the 5.1.1 directory/directories). If you really don't need these, delete. But we should keep a few although we test app from device mostly.
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport
Core Simulator folder is familiar for many Xcode users. It’s simulator’s territory; that's where it stores app data. It’s obvious that you can toss the older version simulator folder/folders if you no longer support your apps for those versions. As it is user data, no big issue if you delete it completely but it’s safer to use ‘Reset Content and Settings’ option from the menu to delete all of your app data in a Simulator.
~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator
(Here's a handy shell command for step 5: xcrun simctl delete unavailable )
Caches are always safe to delete since they will be recreated as necessary. This isn’t a directory; it’s a file of kind Xcode Project. Delete away!
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode
Additionally, Apple iOS device automatically syncs specific files and settings to your Mac every time they are connected to your Mac machine. To be on safe side, it’s wise to use Devices pane of iTunes preferences to delete older backups; you should be retaining your most recent back-ups off course.
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Source: https://ajithrnayak.com/post/95441624221/xcode-users-can-free-up-space-on-your-mac
I got back about 40GB!
I wrote a small command-line utility based on the great answer by #JamshedAlam for those who are tired of deleting the contents of those folders manually. Check it out here if you think it would help you.
Yes, you can delete data from iOS device support by the symbols of the operating system, one for each version for each architecture. It's used for debugging.
If you don't need to support those devices any more, you can delete the directory without ill effect
I have built a Swift app. I added all libraries in Project -> Target -> Link binary with Libraries. I added external frameworks such as Parse to the project too.
I then selected all frameworks under the project and created a group folder called Frameworks.
I have observed/recorded three issues:
When I run ls -l in shell, the Frameworks folder is not actually there
Only frameworks such as Parse & Bolts are actually listed under the project. Other frameworks (e.g. QuartsCore, CoreGraphics etc.) are not listed anywhere with the ls -l command
If I try to archive the project, because the Frameworks folder is not 'there' as far as xcode is concerned, the SwiftFolder is not created (which would result in the app being rejected)
Surely it should be a straight forward process. What am I missing?
Apologies in advance for the fact that my code works yet I cannot solve such a simple problem!
1: A group in Xcode is not a file system folder, it's an in-app Xcode-specific construct. You can add file system folders to Xcode, but they are different and distinct from groups.
2: iOS frameworks will not be visible in your project folder as their location is managed by Xcode. They are added/linked to your app bundle at compile time.
3: Is your app failing validation/being rejected? Sounds like it could be a separate issue, everything else you're seeing sounds normal.
Only one thing worked - Shenzhen (failed on first attempt due to space issue). Here is what you need to do:
Go to Shenzhen on github, download, run and send apple the bill ;)
In case you are wondering, before I tried Shenzhen again, I actually tried the following:
Created a "Hello World" Single View Swift application in xcode. Added all the libraries and used the xcode archive facility to see if it generates the Payload and SwiftFolder. It failed on both.
I downloaded xcode 7.1 (beta) and tried again. This time I got the Payload folder but still no luck with SwiftFolder. So don't waste time on xcode 7.1 for this.
Called apple dev support (and yes, you are likely to be billed for this) - was transferred between three call centres (English spelling - sorry) and finally submitted the issue.
In reference to Problems adding Projects to Workspace in Xcode 4, has anyone found a way of including the same project in several workspaces and having them open in Xcode 4 simultaneously?
For example, I have a project which builds a static library. I want to include that project in a workspace with a Mac app project, and in a workspace with an iOS app project.
It's a known limitation of the current Xcode 4 that it cannot reference the same project several times simultaneously in different workspaces. This has been reported, and Apple knows about it. However, it is not clear whether this is going to be fixed. The only way to increase the likelihood of Apple fixing it is for you to file a bug report.
One way to work around the limitation is to work as if Xcode couldn't open more than one workspace at a time. So for each of your workflow scenario, you simply create one workspace that contains all the projects you might be lead to work on in this scenario.
This leads to unnecessary workspace multiplication, but after all, this is not a big deal.
More critically, that's yet another case where Xcode 4 works hard to prevent the user from adopting a multi-window work style. I encourage you to file a bug report for this too, as feedback from WWDC indicates that Apple didn't find complaints about that loud enough to fix it.