Is it safe to delete /opt/anaconda3?
App-owned data. Data an app owns. The consequence is spelled out, and it is never picked for you.
- What it is
Anaconda Distribution's base install (its own Python, conda and the packages it came with) and the conda environments made inside it. Anaconda's macOS graphical installer “installs Anaconda Distribution into /opt/anaconda3 in your file system”.
- Made by
- Anaconda Distribution (Anaconda-Navigator com.anaconda.io)
- If you remove it
- This is the base install and the environments made inside it.
- Removing it breaks those environments and conda itself: anything that runs conda, or a Python from here, stops working until Anaconda is installed again, and an environment made inside it is lost unless it was exported first.
- How it comes back
- Spaceific never moves this folder.
- Installing Anaconda again from Anaconda's own installation page brings back the base install, but not your environments: they come back only from an export made beforehand with conda's own command, as conda's documentation on managing environments describes.
The proof
- Verified by
- vendor documentation: Anaconda, “macOS graphical installer” (https://www.anaconda.com/docs/getting-started/anaconda/install/mac-gui-install), read 7 Nov 2026, “installs Anaconda Distribution into /opt/anaconda3 in your file system”; conda, “Managing environments”, section “Sharing an environment” (https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/stable/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html), read 7 Nov 2026, “Export your active environment to a new file”.
- On this Mac on 6 Nov 2026 (Step R-0): owned by the user, on the Data volume, installed by Anaconda's package installer (io.continuum.pkg receipts); no file in it was opened.
- Checked on
- macOS 26.6.2, Anaconda-Navigator 2.6.6
- Catalogue
- Spaceific's rules.json 1.5.0, 10 Nov 2026. The whole file.
Related
- npm cache
~/.npm/_cacache - npm global
~/.npm-global - Cargo registry
~/.cargo/registry - rustup toolchains
~/.rustup/toolchains - pip cache
~/Library/Caches/pip - pnpm store
~/Library/pnpm/store - Homebrew cache
~/Library/Caches/HomebrewNo rule yet - conda
~/.condaNo rule yet - swiftpm
~/.swiftpmNo rule yet - Every rule
Spaceific shows this rule for this folder in the app, checks it again at the moment you act, and moves only to the Trash, with Put Back. What Spaceific is.