• Storage
  • Logs

The largest log folder was not in Library/Logs. It was 329 MB inside one app

~/Library/Logs held 13 MB. The real logs were inside apps' Application Support folders and Homebrew. Measured: 329 MB from one app alone.

4 min read

Advice about log files points to ~/Library/Logs and /var/log. Those are where macOS and well-behaved apps write. Many apps, particularly Electron ones, write their logs inside their own Application Support folder instead, where no cleanup guide looks.

Log folderSize
~/Library/Application Support/Devin/logs329 MB
/opt/homebrew/var/log231 MB
~/Library/Application Support/Antigravity/logs21 MB
~/Library/Logs13 MB
~/Library/Application Support/Kiro/logs7 MB

One app's logs were 25 times the size of the folder meant for logs. Editors built on VS Code keep a dated folder per session, and nothing removes old sessions.

Find yours

find ~/Library/Application\ Support -maxdepth 3 -type d \( -iname logs -o -iname log \) 2>/dev/null \
  | while read d; do du -sh "$d"; done | sort -h | tail

du -sh ~/Library/Logs /opt/homebrew/var/log 2>/dev/null

Clearing them

  • Quit the app first. An open log file is still being written to.
  • Delete the contents, not the folder. Some apps fail to start if the folder is missing.
  • Homebrew service logs grow while a service runs; stop it with brew services stop before clearing. See the Homebrew var folder.
# With the app quit
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Devin/logs/*

System logs are a separate story, in system logs taking up space. The rest of an agent editor's data is in AI IDE app data.

Related: sysdiagnose files taking up space on Mac.

Common questions

Where do Mac apps store their logs?

macOS and many apps use ~/Library/Logs. Electron and VS Code based apps often write to a logs folder inside ~/Library/Application Support instead.

Is it safe to delete app log files?

Yes, with the app quit. Logs are diagnostics only. Delete the contents rather than the folder itself.

Why are my app logs so big?

Some apps keep a log folder per session and never remove old ones. On the Mac measured one app had 329 MB of them.

Does macOS clean up app logs automatically?

It rotates its own system logs, but logs inside an app's Application Support folder are up to that app, and many never remove them.

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