Claude Code kept four copies of itself, and 577 MB of old sessions

Claude Code updates itself often, and the native installer keeps the previous builds next to the current one. Each is a complete, self-contained executable of around 200 MB.

Versions

Four versions is 820 MB, and only one of them runs. The others are there so an update can be rolled back.

Sessions

~/.claude/projects held 577 MB: one folder per project directory, with a transcript file per session. They are what claude --resume reads. The rest of ~/.claude was small: skills 11 MB, plugins 7 MB, file history 7 MB.

Check yours

claude --version
du -sh ~/.local/share/claude/versions/* ~/.claude/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

# Largest projects by transcript size
du -sh ~/.claude/projects/* | sort -h | tail

What is safe to remove

• Every version folder except the one claude --version reports. The updater downloads what it needs.
• Transcripts for projects you are done with. Remove that project's folder under ~/.claude/projects. You lose the ability to resume those sessions, nothing else.
• Not ~/.claude/settings.json, your skills, or your plugins, which are configuration rather than cache.

For transcripts there is also a setting: cleanupPeriodDays in ~/.claude/settings.json controls how long session files are kept before Claude Code removes them itself.

The Codex CLI makes the same kind of mess in different folders, measured in Codex CLI taking up space. The editors are in AI coding tools taking up space.