macOS Disk Housekeeping

Overview

Diagnose → reclaim safe targets → verify. Known-safe cleanup only; never touch personal data. reference/prune.sh automates the whole flow (dry-run by default).

Diagnosis

df -h /System/Volumes/Data        # the REAL usage (df / shows the sealed system snapshot)
du -sh ~/Library/* | sort -rh | head        # usual suspects
du -sh ~/* ~/.[a-z]* 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /       # MSUPrepareUpdate = staged macOS update

Known hogs on this machine (2026-07 findings)

Do NOT delete

• ~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright* — breaks E2E until playwright install
• ~/.cache/codex-runtimes — Codex plugin runtime
• ~/Pictures, ~/Library/Group Containers, Mail — personal data
• leftover ~/.cache/uv after prune — hardlinked into venvs

Gotchas

• rip does not free space. It moves files to /tmp/graveyard-$USER on the same volume. After ripping large targets run yes | rip --decompose and re-check df.
• brew cleanup frees nothing when packages are outdated — it only deletes versions older than the installed-latest. Upgrade first if you want real savings.
• uv cache prune vs clean: prune keeps in-use entries (correct); clean wipes all (pointless — hardlinked files free nothing).

Automation

reference/prune.sh          # dry-run report of known-safe targets
reference/prune.sh --apply  # actually clean them

# Find NEW candidates: large + old + cold, ranked by "storage rent"
# (score = size_GB × idle_days; gates on created>180d AND atime>90d;
#  top hits cross-checked with Spotlight kMDItemLastUsedDate)
reference/clean-large-and-olds.sh                       # scan $HOME, top 20
reference/clean-large-and-olds.sh --root DIR --min-size 50 --top 30

clean-large-and-olds.sh is report-only — review, then rip <paths> + yes | rip --decompose.