I built a disk cleaner that tells you where your gigabytes actually went

siva — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 15:26:56 +0000

If you've ever gotten the "your disk is almost full" warning and thought "that can't be right, my files aren't that big" — you're right. It's almost never your files. It's the invisible stuff: years of app and package caches, Docker layers from projects you deleted, WSL virtual disks that never shrink on their own, local AI models you pulled once to try something and never touched again, and ordinary Windows clutter piling up quietly.

I got tired of hunting these down by hand, so I built Sparewise — a free Windows disk cleaner for everyone, with deep insight for developers and local-AI users: https://sparewise.app

What it finds

Sparewise scans your drive and breaks down usage by category, so you can see exactly where the gigabytes went:

Developer caches — npm, pip, Cargo, and more
Local AI models — Ollama, LM Studio, and Hugging Face models, listed one by one so you can spot the ones you forgot about
AI coding-tool caches — the leftovers from your AI-assisted workflow
Docker and WSL virtual disks — the ones that silently balloon and never shrink
Project and build folders — node_modules, target, dist, and friends
Editor caches and ordinary Windows clutter

Safety first, always

This was the part I was most careful about. Scanning changes nothing. You get the full picture first, and Sparewise asks before cleaning anything up. Removed items generally go to the Recycle Bin or an undo window, so if you ever nuke something you wanted, you can restore it. (The one exception is Windows Disk Cleanup, which is irreversible by nature — that's called out clearly in the app.)

Privacy

No account. No telemetry. Nothing about your PC is sent anywhere — the whole thing runs locally.

Install options

Microsoft Store — the signed build, easiest path
Direct installer from sparewise.app (not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may flag it — the Store build is the signed one; release checksums are published)
Portable ZIP — no install at all
npx sparewise — for the terminal-inclined

Windows 10/11, x64 and ARM. Free to use.

What's next

I'm actively working on it and I'd love to hear what's eating your drive that Sparewise doesn't find yet. Drop a comment — I read everything.

What was filling my 1 TB drive: developer and AI tools, not my files

siva — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:17:43 +0000

My laptop has a 1 TB drive, and one day Windows told me it was nearly full. I hadn't saved anything big. So where did it all go?

When I finally measured it, very little of it was "my files". Most of it was stuff developer and AI tools leave behind and never clean up:

What	Size on my PC
Docker Desktop's disk	77 GB
VirtualBox machines	36 GB
Hugging Face model cache	32.5 GB
Recycle Bin	18 GB
npm, pip, uv, Gradle and other caches	15+ GB

Why this happens

Package caches (npm, pip, uv, Gradle, NuGet, Cargo...) keep every version you ever downloaded. They are safe to clear: the tool downloads again what it needs.
AI models from Ollama, LM Studio and Hugging Face are several GB each. It's easy to try five models and forget four of them.
Docker and WSL disks (.vhdx files) grow but never shrink by themselves, even after you delete images or files inside them.
Editors and AI coding tools (VS Code, Cursor, Claude, Copilot) keep caches that rebuild by themselves.

What's safe to remove

The rule I ended up with: only remove what comes back by itself. A cache that the tool rebuilds on demand is safe. Your projects, documents, photos, and anything that exists only on this PC are not, no matter how big.

Some quick wins, by hand:

npm cache clean --force
pip cache purge
docker system prune        # read what it lists first
ollama list                # then: ollama rm <model you no longer use>

For WSL and Docker disks, deleting files inside them is not enough; the .vhdx has to be compacted (with diskpart or Optimize-VHD) before Windows gets the space back.

The tool I built for it

Doing this by hand every few months got old, so I built Sparewise, a free Windows app:

It shows the drive in parts: what rebuilds itself, what can be downloaded again, Windows itself, and what exists only on this PC.
It only offers to clear things that rebuild themselves, each with a tested rule.
Nothing is deleted permanently. Everything goes to the Recycle Bin or an undo window.
It also explains a slow PC honestly (a nearly full drive, memory that is really short, a program growing for days), with no "RAM booster" tricks.
It's an MCP server too, so Claude, Codex or Cursor can answer "why is my drive full?" and free space, only within limits you set.

No account, no telemetry. Download: https://sparewise.app

What fills your drive? I'm curious whether it's the same suspects for everyone.

DEV Community: siva