Can I delete the iOS DeviceSupport folder?

What is in it

When you connect an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV or Vision Pro to a Mac with Xcode, Xcode copies the operating system's binaries, with their symbols, from the device. Apple explains that those symbols are specific to the OS release, and to the device's model and processor, so a phone on iOS 26 and the same phone on iOS 26.2 need different ones. Each update you install on a device you develop with adds another folder, and the old ones stay.

They are kept in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode, one folder per kind of device:

• iOS DeviceSupport (iPhone and iPad)
• watchOS DeviceSupport
• tvOS DeviceSupport
• visionOS DeviceSupport

To list every version folder by size, largest last:

du -sh ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/*DeviceSupport/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

Which folders to keep

• Keep the folder for the OS version each device you debug on is running now.
• Keep a version you still need to read crash reports from. Xcode uses these symbols to name the system frameworks in a crash report from that OS version.
• Delete the rest: versions your devices have long since updated past, and devices you no longer have.

Nothing in these folders is your work. Your apps, projects and archives are elsewhere, so the worst a mistake costs is copying a version again.

Delete the old versions

1. Quit Xcode.
2. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder and type ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport.
3. Each folder is named after an OS version and its build, sometimes with a device model. Drag the ones you don't need to the Trash, then empty it.

To clear every iOS version at once in Terminal on macOS 15 or later, moving them to the Trash:

trash ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/"iOS DeviceSupport"/*

Do the same in the watchOS, tvOS and visionOS folders if you have them.

Getting a version back

Connect a device running that version and Xcode copies the symbols again by itself. To do it from Terminal instead, with the device unlocked and connected, give it the device's name as Finder or Xcode shows it:

xcodebuild -prepareDeviceSupport -destination "name=Your iPhone"

Apple Watch symbols can be downloaded by version without a paired watch. This is Apple's own example, for watchOS 26.3 (23S618); the version and build are on the watch in Settings → General → About:

xcodebuild -prepareDeviceSupport -platform watchOS -osVersion 26.3 -buildVersion 23S618

Where the app comes in

Both editions of RefreshYourMac measure iOS Device Support: all four folders, each version folder on its own row so you can keep the ones you still use. It is rated Safe for auto removal, and the app says that Xcode copies them again the next time that device is plugged in, which takes a few minutes. A scheduled clean skips it while Xcode is running. The download edition also measures iPhone Support Caches, the caches Apple's CoreDevice service keeps for installing to and debugging on a device, which are rebuilt when a device next connects. The Mac App Store edition sees these folders once you allow it your Developer folder. For the rest of Xcode's folders, see Xcode archives, DerivedData and old simulator runtimes.