Developer mode

The first interactive run asks one question:

Are you a developer on this machine?

The first interactive run asks one question:

Are you a developer on this machine?

The answer is saved in %USERPROFILE%\.windowsweep\config.json. It decides how sections 1, 2, 3 and 5 treat the caches that make a developer's day fast, and whether sections 4, 17 and 20 run at all. The desktop window carries the same answer as a switch, on Home and in Settings, and passes it to this same engine - see Desktop app.

Developer mode on

• Package-manager, build-tool and test-runner caches are pruned by the idle gate: a file goes only when its newest timestamp is --days old (default 100). A package you installed last month stays cached.
• • Versioned tool caches (Cypress, Playwright, Gradle distributions) keep their newest version whenever the idle gate is running. --purge-all replaces the gate with a full clear, and the newest version goes with the rest.
• Docker removes dangling layers, build cache idle for the window, and images no container uses that are older than the window. Volumes are never touched.
• • Section 17 scans your project roots for build artefacts in projects nobody touched for the window. It never scans a whole drive. It never enters .git, AppData or a toolchain folder. What it finds is a list you pick from, item by item, and --yes does not answer that prompt. Section 17 is in the Rebuilds tier, so what you pick is deleted rather than recycled: a node_modules folder is rebuilt by its package manager, never restored from a copy.
• Toolchains stay protected in every mode: nvm, Volta, corepack, global npm/pnpm/bun/deno packages, cargo and go binaries, the Android SDK.

Developer mode off

• Sections 1, 2, 3 clear their caches completely - there is no work to keep warm.
• Section 5 runs docker system prune -a -f (volumes still untouched).
• Sections 4, 17 and 20 are skipped with a note.

Flags

Flag	Effect
--developer / --not-developer	Override the saved answer for this run
--forget-developer	Ask the question again on the next interactive run
--purge-all	Clear the cache targets completely even in developer mode. From a console it asks you to type purge once per run; in batch runs --yes is the confirmation
-d N, --days N	Move the idle window (a lower number is more aggressive)

A non-interactive run with no saved answer (a Scheduled Task on a fresh machine, --json) defaults to developer mode on, the conservative choice, and says so.

Why 100 days, and why "newest of the three timestamps"

Windows keeps last-access times off on most volumes, so the tool takes the newest of last-write, last-access and creation time as the "last touched" estimate. That can only make a file look fresher than it is, never older, so a mistake keeps a cache entry instead of removing one. The 100-day default matches the sibling tools for Linux and macOS; an entry a project needed in the last three months is the kind a developer misses.

Being more aggressive, and what it costs

A shorter idle window removes caches a project may want next week; --purge-all removes all of them, newest version included. Neither is free, and neither reaches anything the chokepoint refuses.

windowsweep --scan                                  # sizes first
windowsweep --dry-run --profile dev --days 30       # see what a 30-day window would take
windowsweep --profile dev --days 30 --yes
windowsweep --only 1 --purge-all --yes              # empty the package caches entirely

Last Updated: 2026-09-07