What is Application Support on Mac? Can you delete it?
Do not delete Application Support. It holds the data your apps depend on, and removing it can erase libraries, saved work and settings. What you can remove are the folders left behind by apps you have uninstalled.
Where it is
~/Library/Application SupportWhat it is
~/Library/Application Support is where apps keep the data they need between launches: databases, message history, browser profiles, game saves, plug-ins, downloaded content and licence information. Unlike a cache, much of it cannot be recreated.
It grows as you use your apps, which is expected. It also grows for a less useful reason: dragging an app to the Trash does not remove its folder here, so data from apps you no longer have stays on disk.
A few apps also keep large caches or old versions of themselves in this folder. Those can sometimes be cleared, but only if you know what the specific app stores there.
How big it gets
Commonly tens of GB, with a handful of apps accounting for most of it.
How to shrink it the right way
- Run the command below to list the twenty largest folders. It only measures, it deletes nothing.
- For each large folder, work out which app it belongs to. The folder is normally named after the app or its developer.
- If the app is still installed, reduce its data from inside the app, for example by removing old projects, downloads or chat history.
- If the app is long gone, quit anything related, move its folder to the Trash, and wait a few days before emptying the Trash in case something turns out to need it.
du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/* | sort -hr | head -20What happens afterwards
Removing a folder for an app you no longer have frees its space with no other effect. Removing a folder for an app you still use resets that app, and can delete data that is not stored anywhere else.
How Diskzy handles it
Diskzy shows app data as a named part of System Data so you can see which apps take the most. Its Uninstall tab removes an app together with the support files it left behind, with guards so files shared with another app are not touched.
Related guides
- Caches~/Library/Caches
- iPhone and iPad backups~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
- Logs~/Library/Logs
- Docker.raw~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/vms/0/data/Docker.raw
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