Hey there, noob is here! 
I am using Arduino IDE
Version: 2.3.6
Date: 2025-04-09T11:22:51.016Z
CLI Version: 1.2.0
Installed on MacBook Air M1, MacOS Sequoia.
Issue: My Arduino IDE (or related files) is using almost 10 GB of disk space. I have installed some common board packages (e.g., ESP32, ESP8266) and some libraries.
Questions:
Thank you so much
Regards,
nug
10GB is about right
$ pushd ~/Library/Arduino15/ && du -h -d 2 && popd
~/Library/Arduino15 ~
390M ./staging/libraries
3.1G ./staging/packages
3.4G ./staging
308K ./libraries/SD
288K ./libraries/Servo
48K ./libraries/Stepper
1.9M ./libraries/Firmata
308K ./libraries/Ethernet
20K ./libraries/Arduino_BuiltIn
20K ./libraries/Mouse
184K ./libraries/TFT
68K ./libraries/LiquidCrystal
112K ./libraries/Keyboard
3.3M ./libraries
3.4G ./packages/esp32
453M ./packages/esp8266
1.7G ./packages/arduino
2.2G ./packages/m5stack
546M ./packages/teensy
842M ./packages/Seeeduino
18M ./packages/builtin
9.2G ./packages
0B ./tmp
13G .
The libraries you install actually go in the libraries subdirectory of your sketchbook. The ones in Arduino15 are just some default ones.
staging contains the downloaded zips from which packages and libraries are unpacked. these are temporary and you can delete them.
Mine is a lot bigger but I have a lot of boards installed. Since the Mac came with 1TB of SSD I am not the least bit concerned.
Was going to say that if you have the ESP32 core installed, then that will account for at least 2GB of that. Well looking at Ken's stats, make that 3.4Gb. Looking at my installation, its 4.7Gb! I also knew the Arduino board package was getting pretty big, but didn't realise it was almost up to 2Gb nowdays. Quite a bit smaller on mine, but the rp2040 package is taking up quite a chunk. Looks like I have quite a bit in staging as well on mine, but yes, seems like 10Gb is looking pretty normal....
$ du -h -d 2
6.0G ./staging/packages
120M ./staging/libraries
6.2G ./staging
3.9M ./cache/downloads.arduino.cc
3.9M ./cache
18M ./packages/builtin
350M ./packages/esp8266
541M ./packages/teensy
4.7G ./packages/esp32
1.5G ./packages/rp2040
1.1G ./packages/arduino
56M ./packages/MightyCore
83M ./packages/MiniCore
8.2G ./packages
4.0K ./tmp
15G .
Thank you all for the replies! I definitely wasn't expecting the Arduino15 package folder to take up so much space.
At least I can save up my 4.4GB.
Thanks
Regards,
nug