Spotify's cache is not the same thing as your downloads
One of them comes back for free and one costs you your offline music. Where each lives, and the setting that caps the cache for good.
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Mac storage, explained.
What fills your disk, where it hides, and what is safe to remove. Every guide gives you a way to check it on your own Mac.
iCloud Drive files are on your Mac until you evict them
Turning on iCloud does not free space by itself. What Optimise Mac Storage actually does, and how to force files back to the cloud.
Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive keep a full local copy by default
Every sync service downloads everything unless told otherwise, and each keeps its own cache on top. How to make files online only in each one.
Docker's disk file only shrinks after you prune what is inside it
The virtual disk grows with every image, layer and volume and never shrinks on its own. What each prune command removes, and which one deletes data.
VS Code's own folder grows with every workspace you ever opened
Extensions, per workspace state and cached data build up in three folders. Which is safe to clear and what you lose from each.
JetBrains IDEs keep a cache folder per version, forever
Caches, indexes and logs live outside the app, in a folder per IDE per version. Where they are and which ones belong to versions you removed.
Maven's local repository keeps every version of every dependency
The .m2 folder grows with every build and nothing removes old versions. What is safe to delete, and the plugin that does it precisely.
Conda keeps a package cache and a full copy per environment
Each environment can be gigabytes, and the package cache holds every tarball ever downloaded. What conda clean removes and what it does not.
Ruby keeps every gem version, and every Ruby you installed
Gems accumulate per Ruby version, and version managers keep each Ruby in full. The commands that clean both, and what breaks if you get it wrong.
A git repository can be larger than the code it holds
History, packfiles and old branches accumulate in .git. How to find the heavy repositories, shrink them safely, and spot a large file in history.
A virtual machine keeps growing even when the guest is empty
VM disk files expand as the guest writes and rarely shrink back. Where each app stores them, how to reclaim the space, and what snapshots cost.
Logs and crash reports: usually small, occasionally enormous
macOS keeps logs in four places and rotates most of them. When one grows to gigabytes it means something specific, and that is the useful signal.