/dev/trouble
Eric Roller's Development Blog

Folders to exclude from Time Machine backups

- Posted in macOS by

Time Machine can be configured to exclude folders from your backups (see System Settings > General > Time Machine > Options). I usually exclude these:

  • /Library/Caches
  • ~/Library/Caches
  • ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator
  • ~/Library/Developer/XCPGDevices
  • ~/Library/Developer/XCTestDevices
  • ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
  • ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DocumentationCache
  • ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport
  • ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/tvOS DeviceSupport
  • ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/watchOS DeviceSupport
  • ~/Library/Logs/CoreSimulator

Also, if you need to make space to be able to install Xcode or a macOS update, you can delete the contents of the above folders (assuming you no longer need old device SDKs).