If automatic cleanup after quitting Xcode left the app stuck on "Cleaning", that hang is fixed. A cleanup that runs past 10 minutes now stops itself, and the window stays responsive.
A customer with ~50 active Swift, Rust and Node projects on a 256GB Mac told me the archive feature was useless for him. His projects aren't old, they're just huge.
So 1.15.0 adds Project Artifacts: DevCleaner now finds target/, .build/ and node_modules inside projects you're actively working on, shows the size per project, and lets you clean just the regenerable output. Your source never gets touched.
Also new:
Auto Clean (opt-in) that keeps build output in check on a schedule
Archive now moves to Trash instead of deleting
Fixed the excluded-folder dialog
An explanation for why free space sometimes lags after a clean (Time Machine local snapshots)
DevCleaner started as a macOS app with a simple goal: help developers understand where their disk space is going and safely clean up files left behind by development tools.
Build artifacts, caches, dependencies, simulators, package managers and other development data can quietly grow to tens or even hundreds of gigabytes.
Project Hibernation lets you archive projects you are not actively working on, off your disk into a single file, and restore them in one click whenever you need them. It handles dependency reinstall on restore, is iCloud aware, and verifies every archive before touching the original.
I've been iterating on DevCleaner - a Mac menu bar app that scans dev junk (Xcode DerivedData, simulators, node_modules graveyards, Docker/OrbStack/Colima bloat, Homebrew caches, AI tool caches, etc.) and lets you clean safely with risk labels.
The last couple releases ( 1.6.1 + 1.6.2 ) are mostly about project hibernation - archiving dead side projects off your SSD instead of keeping 30 GB on disk because "setting it back up later is annoying."
DevCleaner is a macOS menu bar app that finds and clears the gigabytes your dev tools quietly hoard - build caches, logs, temp files, old SDKs. Version 1.8.0 is our biggest scanner expansion yet, built around how developers actually work in 2026.
AI coding tools, covered. New scanners for Claude Code (telemetry, backups, memory logs), Cursor CLI (browser logs, AI tracking, project metadata, saved plans), Codex CLI, and Cline - the tools flooding your home folder with data you never asked to keep.
When you launch a product as a solo maker, you mentally prepare for the usual challenges: crickets on launch day, low conversion rates, or fighting for early feedback. What you rarely prepare for is a scammer cloning your entire landing page, embedding malware, and trying to hijack your search traffic before you even reach scale.
Here is the story of how DevCleaner went from a tool built out of personal frustration on macOS to a paid utility with global customers - and the weird lessons learned along the way.
The Problem: The Invisible Disk Eater
If you write code on macOS, you know the struggle:
DevCleaner lives in your Mac's menu bar and frees the gigabytes that 22 dev ecosystems quietly hoard — Xcode, Gradle, npm, plus AI apps like Cursor, Claude & Ollama. Every item is risk-rated, so you always know what's safe to delete. Free, no account, 4 MB.
Your Mac was full of Xcode caches while Cursor was still running and holding half of them hostage. DevCleaner 1.10.1 doesn t fight the open app. It cleans around it.
We ve been living in the menu bar for months. This release makes that feel like the product - not a shortcut to a bigger window.
