Is it safe to delete the %USER_HOME%/.gradle and %USER_HOME%/.AndroidStudio3.1 folder in Android Studio?

Question

These two folders take up significant space on my hard disk

• %USER_HOME%/.gradle
• %USER_HOME%/.AndroidStudio3.1

Can they be safely deleted? If not, what subfolders can I safely delete?

Answer 1

Well, it's "safe" in that it won't blow up your computer. But the .gradle folder is a dependency cache - every library your app needs is going to need to be stored there in order for you to actually build / test / run your code. It's to be expected that it'll take up a lot of space. You might get some mileage out of deleting it and re-downloading the dependencies, especially if there are a lot of old dependencies in there that you're not using it, but by virtue of your work it's going to get re-created and start filling back up again.

The Android Studio folder is a bit similar - it's not a dependency cache in that lots of different things aren't going to get installed there, but it's still necessary for you to actually build your code. If you delete it you're just going to have to reinstall things there to get your code to work.