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Android SDK is huge

The Android SDK grows with every emulator image, NDK and build-tools version Android Studio downloads: 20–50 GB is common, and most of it is versions nothing uses anymore.

npx diskdiet scan --only android
npx diskdiet clean --only android

diskdiet removes, from the SDK (ANDROID_HOME, or Android Studio's default location):

  • system images (system-images/<api>/<variant>/<abi>) not changed for 30 days that no emulator uses: it reads every AVD's config.ini and always keeps the images they point at;
  • older NDK versions (ndk/<version>): the newest always stays;
  • older build-tools versions: the newest always stays.

Your emulators (AVDs) themselves are never touched. If a project needs a removed NDK or build-tools version, Gradle or Android Studio downloads it again; a removed system image comes back from Device Manager or the SDK Manager.

Tip

npx diskdiet clean --only android --older-than 7d removes more; --all removes every unused image and every NDK and build-tools version but the newest.