How to Reclaim Hundreds of GB on Windows by Cleaning JetBrains IDE Files

1. C Drive Red Alert

IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) warned of low disk space; after cleaning with a tool, the drive remained red.

2. Identify the Culprit

Using SpaceSniffer, the author discovered that JetBrains family applications occupied about 65 GB on the C drive.

3. Clean Directories

Default JetBrains directories are C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\JetBrains on Windows and ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains on macOS. Deleting old version folders freed significant space, but keep the newest version's configuration to avoid loss.

If you use JetBrains Toolbox, you can also clean residual directories via its settings.

4. Relocate IDE Configuration, Plugins, and Cache

4.1 In Toolbox you can set custom locations for JVM options.

4.2 Without Toolbox, edit ${INSTALL_DIR}\bin\idea.properties to define the following paths:

idea.config.path

idea.system.path

idea.plugins.path

idea.log.path

Example:

idea.config.path=d:/work/idea/caches/trunk-config
idea.system.path=d:/work/idea/caches/trunk-system
idea.plugins.path=d:/work/idea/caches/trunk-plugins
idea.log.path=d:/work/idea/caches/trunk-logs

Uncomment these lines and adjust the directories as needed.

5. Open‑Source E‑Commerce Project Reference

The mall project is an open‑source SpringBoot + Vue + uni‑app e‑commerce system (≈60 K GitHub stars) that can be deployed with Docker. It includes full order flow, product, cart, coupon, membership, and payment features.

Project URL: https://github.com/macrozheng/mall

A comprehensive video tutorial (≈40 hours, 105 episodes) provides a complete Java technology‑stack experience and guides independent project development.