The piles and the safety rules

What it does

Underbrush recognises common space hogs and puts each one in a pile.

Pile	What's in it	What Underbrush does
Safe to clear	Temp folders, browser and app caches, package caches (npm, NuGet, pip, Gradle, Yarn, Cargo, Go), build output (bin/obj, node_modules, build, target), shader caches, crash dumps, error reports, the Recycle Bin or Trash	Ticked for you. Apps rebuild or re-download these.
Your call	Downloads, Android emulators, Docker and WSL disks, iOS simulators, Xcode archives, AI models, Maven, VS Code workspace data, Teams and Zoom data	Shown with size and last change. You decide. Never ticked for you.
Cloud	OneDrive, iCloud Drive and other synced folders	Made online-only, never deleted. The files stay in the cloud and download again when you open them.
Leave it	Windows or macOS, installed apps, app settings, the page and hibernation files, installer caches, Windows.old	Never cleared. Where there's a proper way to shrink it, the description says so.
Unsorted	Everything else, including your own files	Never cleared. Look through it in Explore.

Build output only counts when the project file sits next to it: node_modules beside package.json, bin and obj beside a .csproj, and so on. A folder that happens to be called build on its own is left alone.

The safety rules

These run every time, whether you use the one-click button or the Clean up list.

• Recent files stay. Files written in the last 3 days are skipped. Files that are open or locked are skipped too.
• Builds come first. Package caches and build output wait while MSBuild, npm, pnpm, yarn, cargo, gradle, xcodebuild or swift-build is running. Try again when the build has finished.
• Your code is never touched. A git repository is never cleared. If one sits inside a cache or temp folder, Underbrush clears around it and leaves the repository whole.
• Small decision files are kept. In render and media caches, small .json and .txt files (under 1 MB) are kept and the big media files go.
• Cloud files are never deleted. They're made online-only instead.
• You see it first. Every clear shows the list and the total before anything happens.

Troubleshooting

• Something you need is in Safe to clear: untick it in Clean up. Underbrush remembers your choice.
• A pile looks wrong for a folder: tell us at [email protected] with the folder's name and what it belongs to.

Related

• Clean up
• Explore
• Space not freed