Docker.raw taking up space on your Mac? What to do
Docker Desktop stores its images, containers and volumes inside one virtual disk file, Docker.raw. It grows as you pull and build, and it does not shrink by itself.
What it is
Everything a compiler or a package manager wrote so it would not have to do the work twice: Xcode DerivedData and Archives, node_modules directories, __pycache__, .gradle, Rust target/ directories, and the virtual disk Docker Desktop stores its images in.
What it is for
It makes the second build faster than the first. On a developer's Mac it is usually the single largest reclaimable category, and none of it is source code: every byte is reproducible from a repository and a build command.
Is it safe to delete?
Yes for the build outputs, which Broza moves to quarantine; the next build recreates them. The Docker virtual disk is the exception: Broza only reports its size and points at docker system prune, because shrinking that file is Docker's job, not a file manager's.
How Broza handles the Docker disk image
Broza reports Docker.raw with its allocated size on disk, as an inform-only finding. It never calls the Docker daemon and never moves or deletes the file: shrinking it is Docker's job. Instead it points at docker system prune and Docker Desktop's disk settings.
Check it on your Mac
Broza is a free, open-source command-line tool. Every command below is read-only except clean, and clean is a dry run until you add --apply.
broza explain build-cache docker system pruneNot installed yet? Install Broza with Homebrew, the installer script, or Cargo.