What Is the .hermes Folder on Your Mac, and Can You Delete It?

Usually, but it dependsDiskmack safety tier: Caution

~/.hermes

The hidden .hermes folder in your home directory belongs to the Hermes AI agent, a local AI assistant that runs on your Mac. If you use Hermes, don't delete this folder: it holds your sign-in, settings, skills, and scheduled jobs. If you tried Hermes once and moved on, the whole folder is yours to reclaim, often several gigabytes.

What it is

When the Hermes agent installs itself, it sets up camp in ~/.hermes and keeps everything there: the agent's own runtime (a bundled copy of Node and its core program, which accounts for most of the size), language-server binaries it uses to read code, downloaded skills, a local state database, caches, and the personal parts: your auth token, your configuration, and any scheduled jobs you've set up. On a Mac that uses Hermes regularly, the folder commonly sits between 2 and 4 GB, with the agent runtime alone making up the bulk of it.

One thing this folder is not: React Native's Hermes JavaScript engine. The name collision trips people up constantly. Meta's Hermes engine compiles JavaScript for React Native apps and lives inside each project's node_modules folder (and inside the apps that ship it), not in a dot-folder in your home directory. If you searched for .hermes expecting build artifacts from a React Native project, this folder is a different animal entirely, and deleting it won't free anything a React Native build created.

Is it safe to delete?

It depends on one question: do you still use the Hermes agent? If yes, leave the folder alone. Deleting it signs you out, erases your settings and custom skills, removes any scheduled jobs the agent runs for you, and forces the multi-gigabyte runtime to re-download on next launch. The space comes back within days anyway once the agent reinstalls its runtime, so you'd be trading real setup work for temporary room.

If you no longer use Hermes, or tried it once and forgot about it, the folder is entirely deletable. Nothing else on your Mac depends on it. Uninstall or delete the Hermes app itself first if it's still around, then remove ~/.hermes and the gigabytes come back for good. Diskmack labels this folder caution for exactly this reason: it can't know whether you still use the agent, so it makes you decide instead of sweeping it away.

How to check its size

In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (Cmd+Shift+G), paste ~/.hermes and press Return. Press Cmd+I on the folder to see its size. If Finder can't find it, the agent was never installed for this user.

In Terminal:

du -sh ~/.hermes

The ~ expands to your home folder. For a breakdown of what's biggest inside, run du -sh ~/.hermes/* and expect the agent runtime to dominate.

How to clean it

Decide whether you still use the Hermes agent. If you do, stop here.
Quit Hermes if it's running (check the menu bar and Activity Monitor for hermes processes).
In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder, enter ~/.hermes, and move the folder to the Trash.
Empty the Trash when you're confident you won't want your old settings and skills back.

Want space without losing your setup? Delete only the cache subfolders inside ~/.hermes (cache and audio_cache) and keep everything else. Your sign-in, settings, and skills survive; only the regenerable parts go.

Will it come back?

If you keep using the agent, yes: the runtime, caches, and state rebuild themselves, and the folder returns to roughly its old size within days. If you've stopped using Hermes and removed the app, the folder stays gone. A fresh ~/.hermes appearing when you didn't expect it means something launched the agent again, usually a leftover login item or a reinstalled app.

Common questions

Is this the same Hermes as in React Native?

No. Meta's Hermes is a JavaScript engine that React Native apps ship with, and its files live inside each project's node_modules or inside the built app. The ~/.hermes folder in your home directory belongs to the Hermes AI agent, an unrelated tool that happens to share the name.

Why is .hermes several gigabytes?

The agent bundles its own runtime so it doesn't depend on whatever Node version your Mac has, and that runtime plus language-server binaries make up most of the size. Your actual settings, skills, and state are a tiny fraction of it.

Will deleting .hermes log me out of the agent?

Yes. Your auth token lives in the folder, along with your configuration and scheduled jobs. Deleting it means signing in again and rebuilding your setup from scratch, so only do it if you're done with the tool.

Can I free space from .hermes without losing my setup?

Yes. The cache subfolders inside it (cache and audio_cache) are safe to empty while keeping the rest; the agent rebuilds them as needed. The big win, the bundled runtime, only goes away by removing the whole folder, and it comes back the next time the agent runs.