Hidden folders AI coding tools leave on your Mac

Every AI coding tool keeps a hidden folder in your home folder, and some grow to gigabytes. Here's what each one holds and what you can clear without breaking the tool.

How to see them

In Finder, open your home folder and press ⌘⇧. (Command-Shift-Period) to show hidden folders. Or in Terminal:

du -sh ~/.claude ~/.codex ~/.gemini ~/.cursor ~/.vscode

The folders

Folder	Tool	What grows	On our Mac
~/.claude	Claude Code	Session transcripts	938 MB
~/.codex	OpenAI Codex	Session logs and databases	2.7 GB
~/.gemini	Gemini CLI and Google's Antigravity editor	Mostly Antigravity's data	3.6 GB
~/.vscode	VS Code	Installed extensions	2.7 GB
~/.cursor	Cursor	Installed extensions	5 MB
~/.npm, ~/.cache	npm, uv, Hugging Face and other tools	Download caches and models	23 GB and 34 GB

Measured on our own Mac on 2 October 2026. Yours will be different, but the pattern is usually the same.

The rule of thumb

• Session history and logs: safe to clear. You lose the ability to resume or look back at old sessions. Use the tool's own command or setting when there is one.
• Settings, sign-in, plugins and extensions: keep. Deleting them signs you out or resets the tool.
• Caches: safe. Tools download what they need again.
• Quit the tool first. Several of these tools write to databases while they run.

Tool by tool

Claude Code: ~/.claude

Claude Code deletes transcripts older than 30 days by itself, and claude project purge clears one project. Keep settings.json, plugins/ and ~/.claude.json. Full guide to ~/.claude.

OpenAI Codex: ~/.codex

Codex keeps a log of every session, in folders by date, and they stay until you remove them. Keep config.toml and auth.json. Full guide to ~/.codex.

Gemini CLI and Antigravity: ~/.gemini

Gemini CLI keeps its settings, history and temporary files here. On our Mac, though, most of the space was in folders named antigravity, antigravity-ide and antigravity-backup, which belong to Google's Antigravity editor. Manage them from Antigravity. If you've stopped using Antigravity, those folders are leftovers.

VS Code and Cursor: ~/.vscode, ~/.cursor

These are mostly the extensions you installed. Remove the ones you don't use from the editor's Extensions view rather than deleting the folder, which would remove every extension at once. Their caches and window state live separately, in ~/Library/Application Support/Code and ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor.

The Claude desktop app

The Claude app keeps its own data in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude, including a Linux virtual machine for Cowork in a folder called vm_bundles: 11 GB on our Mac. It's app data, so leave it alone if you use Cowork.

Developer caches

~/.npm and ~/.cache are usually the biggest of all, and almost everything in them downloads again when needed. Is it safe to delete ~/.npm and ~/.cache?

How Macaroom handles it

Macaroom names these folders under Developer & AI tools and says what each one is. It marks them Manage in app and won't let you select them, because deleting the wrong part can sign you out or reset a tool. Caches such as ~/.npm, and models in ~/.cache/huggingface, are marked Rebuildable and can be cleared.

Related guides

• What's in ~/.claude, and what's safe to delete?
• What's in ~/.codex, and what's safe to delete?
• Where Ollama and LM Studio keep models on Mac