Most Mac cleanup advice is a long list of unrelated tips with no order to them, which means people do the easy ones (empty the Trash) and skip the ones that would actually matter (Xcode's DerivedData, a Docker disk image, three years of iOS backups). Order matters here because each step either reveals what the next step should look at, or it doesn't matter until you've done the earlier ones. This routine takes about 30 minutes on a typical developer's Mac and follows a specific sequence: quick wins first, developer caches next, then a map of what's left, because that's the only reliable way to find what a checklist won't predict for your particular machine.

Step 1: Check your starting point (2 minutes)

Open Apple menu → About This Mac → More Info → Storage Settings and note the Available figure. Everything else in this routine is measured against that number — without it, you won't know whether the routine actually worked.

Step 2: Empty the Trash properly (2 minutes)

Finder's Trash doesn't free space until you empty it, and items deleted from within apps (Photos, Mail, Xcode) often go to app-specific trash locations that Finder's Empty Trash doesn't touch. Empty Finder's Trash first, then check Photos' own Recently Deleted album and Mail's Trash mailbox — both hold onto deleted items for 30 days by default and both count toward your used space until purged.

Step 3: Clear Downloads (5 minutes)

Open ~/Downloads in Finder, switch to list view, and sort by size. Installers (.dmg, .pkg) you've already used, duplicate downloads (file.zip, file (1).zip, file (2).zip), and anything older than a few months you don't recognise can go straight to the Trash. This folder is the single most reliable source of easy, low-risk space on almost every Mac.

Step 4: Clear Movies and screen recordings (5 minutes)

~/Movies accumulates QuickTime screen recordings, iMovie exports, and downloaded video — all of which are large individually. Screen recordings in particular pile up silently because Cmd+Shift+5 saves each one to the Desktop or ~/Movies by default and it's easy to forget they're there. Sort by size the same way you did with Downloads.

Step 5: Developer caches, if you're a developer (8 minutes)

This is the step most cleanup guides skip because it only applies to some readers, but it's where developers recover the most space by far.

# Xcode build products — safe, Xcode rebuilds on next compile
rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/*

# iOS simulators for OS versions you no longer have installed
xcrun simctl delete unavailable

# npm cache — verifies and prunes corrupted entries
npm cache verify

# pnpm store — removes packages no project references anymore
pnpm store prune

# Homebrew's downloaded bottles and outdated versions
brew cleanup --prune=all

If you use Docker Desktop, open Troubleshoot → Clean / Purge data, or run docker system prune -a --volumes from a terminal if you're comfortable confirming what it will remove first — this command deletes anything not currently in use by a running container, so check the summary it prints before confirming.

Step 6: Check local snapshots (3 minutes)

Time Machine takes hourly local snapshots on the Mac itself, and these count as used space until macOS decides to reclaim them or a real backup completes. List them:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

If you see several days' worth and you're not actively troubleshooting something, delete the older ones:

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2026-08-01-090000

Plugging in your Time Machine drive and letting a backup finish achieves the same result automatically, since Time Machine prunes local snapshots once the real backup is current.

Step 7: iPhone/iPad backups you don't need (2 minutes)

If you've ever backed up a device to this Mac through Finder, check ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ via Finder → [device] → Manage Backups. Each backup is typically 5–15GB, and it's common to find two or three you forgot existed, especially from a phone you no longer own.

Step 8: Open a storage map for what's left (3 minutes)

At this point you've cleared everything a generic checklist can predict. What remains is specific to your Mac — a forgotten project with a stale node_modules, a video export buried three folders deep, an old virtual machine disk. None of that is visible from a checklist because it's different for every machine.

A visual storage map draws every folder as a rectangle sized by actual disk usage, so the largest thing on your drive is also the most visually obvious. Open one, glance at the top few items, and act on anything you don't need.

What to expect

On a developer's Mac, steps 2–7 typically recover somewhere between 15GB and 60GB depending on how long it's been since the last cleanup, with DerivedData and Docker's disk image usually the two largest single contributors. On a general-purpose Mac, expect 5–20GB, mostly from Downloads, Movies, and Trash. Step 8 is where the genuinely surprising finds tend to live — the folder nobody expected to be 20GB.

Adjusting the routine to your actual setup

Not every step applies to every Mac, and skipping the ones that don't is the right call rather than a shortcut you should feel bad about. If you don't use Xcode, step 5's Xcode-specific commands are irrelevant — run only the package manager cleanup lines that match tools you actually have installed. If you've never connected an iPhone to this particular Mac, step 7 will simply find nothing, which takes seconds to confirm rather than minutes to work through.

The reverse is also true: some readers will have additional categories worth adding to their own version of this routine — a large Photos library with obvious duplicates, a set of virtual machine disks, or a folder of old client work worth archiving rather than deleting outright. Treat the eight steps here as the common baseline, not an exhaustive list, and add whatever's specific to how you actually use the machine.

Why the order specifically matters

Running these steps out of sequence doesn't just cost you a little efficiency — a few genuinely depend on earlier ones. Checking your starting Available figure before anything else is what lets you confirm the routine worked at all; skip it and you're left guessing whether 20 minutes of clicking actually freed anything. Clearing Downloads and Movies before checking developer caches matters less for dependency reasons and more for momentum — the earliest steps are the easiest, and finishing them first makes it more likely you'll continue through the harder ones rather than stopping partway.

The storage map genuinely does need to come last. Running it first, before you've cleared the predictable clutter, means it's showing you Downloads and Trash alongside whatever's actually unique to your Mac, which makes the specific finds harder to spot in the noise.

Where VolumeLens comes in

We built VolumeLens for exactly step 8 — the part of a cleanup routine that a checklist can't do for you because it depends on your specific files. It scans your drive locally with no network code, shows every folder sized by real disk usage rather than nominal file size, and its only action is Move to Trash after you've reviewed exactly what's included. If you run this routine monthly, VolumeLens turns the last three minutes into the most productive part of it.