Why is Claude using so much storage on my Mac?

What we measured

On one of our MacBooks, Claude took 13.08 GB in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude, and 10.22 GB of that was a single folder, vm_bundles. Claude Code's ~/.claude added 2.8 GB, 2.61 GB of it old session transcripts. People on Reddit and Apple's forums report the same 10–13 GB. macOS counts all of it as System Data, which is why it's hard to find. What System Data is

Measure yours

Quit Claude, then run:

du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail
du -sh ~/.claude/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail

Nothing here deletes anything.

vm_bundles: the big one

Claude desktop downloads a small Linux virtual machine so it can run code and tasks in a sandbox, isolated from your Mac. That image lives in vm_bundles (sometimes claude-code-vm or claudevm.bundle).

• Safe to delete? Yes, with Claude quit. Nothing of yours is inside.
• The catch: if you use the features that need it, Claude downloads it again on its next launch, so you only gain the space if you don't use them.

Cache and Code Cache: always safe

Cache, Code Cache and GPUCache in the same folder are ordinary app caches, usually a few hundred MB. Delete them with Claude quit; Claude rebuilds what it needs.

Claude Code: ~/.claude/projects

Claude Code saves every conversation as a file so you can resume it, one folder per project. A long session can pass 100 MB. Deleting a project folder only means you can't resume those sessions. Keep ~/.claude/settings.json, CLAUDE.md and any skills, agents or commands folders: they're your setup.

To stop it growing, add this to ~/.claude/settings.json, which tells Claude Code to delete sessions older than the number of days you choose:

{ "cleanupPeriodDays": 14 }

Uninstalling Claude completely

Move Claude from Applications to the Trash, then remove ~/Library/Application Support/Claude, ~/Library/Caches/com.anthropic.claudefordesktop (if present) and its preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences. App leftover finder

The other AI tools

Claude is rarely alone. On the same Mac, Gemini / Antigravity (~/.gemini) used 5.31 GB, Codex (~/.codex plus ~/.cache/codex-runtimes) 5.6 GB, and Cursor 3.56 GB. Check any folder · Hidden folders in your home

Where Tidy Mac fits

Tidy Mac names Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and local AI models inside System Data, shows their real size, and moves what you pick to the Trash with Undo. It also has an MCP server, so you can ask Claude itself what's filling your disk.