What is ~/.cache on Mac, and is it safe to delete?

Where it is

What it is

~/.cache is a hidden folder in your home folder. It is not created by macOS. It comes from a Linux convention that many command-line and developer tools follow on the Mac too, instead of using ~/Library/Caches.

Each tool makes its own subfolder. Common ones are huggingface for models and datasets, uv for Python packages, pre-commit for hook environments, torch for model weights and puppeteer for downloaded browsers.

It grows silently, because the folder is hidden in Finder and the tools rarely clean up after themselves.

How big it gets

From a few MB to tens of GB. Machine learning models are usually what makes it large.

How to clear it by hand

1. Run the command below to list each subfolder by size. It only reads sizes.
2. For each large one, decide whether you still use the tool. Folders for tools you no longer use can go to the Trash.
3. Where a tool has its own clean command, prefer it. For example, uv cache clean empties the uv cache.
4. Think twice about model folders such as huggingface. Deleting them is safe, but the models download again the next time your code asks for them.
5. To look at the folder in Finder, choose Go, then Go to Folder and enter ~/.cache. Pressing Shift, Command and Period shows hidden files.

du -sh ~/.cache/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

What happens afterwards

Each tool fills its folder again when you next use it. Expect slower first runs and large downloads for anything that fetches models, browsers or packages.

How Diskzy handles it

Diskzy's Clean up tab treats the parts differently: the uv cache is ticked, while the Hugging Face cache is listed unticked because the models would download again. The rest is visible on the disk map.

Related guides

• Hugging Face cache~/.cache/huggingface
• Caches~/Library/Caches
• pip cache~/Library/Caches/pip
• Conda package cache~/miniconda3/pkgs (or ~/anaconda3/pkgs)