# Is it safe to delete Hugging Face models in ~/.cache/huggingface?

- URL: https://moreroom.app/folders/ai-huggingface
- Item: Hugging Face models
- Location: `~/.cache/huggingface/hub` (items inside)
- Verdict: Review first — Might hold something you care about. Look inside before removing it.
- Comes back on its own: yes
- Typical size: 1–200 GB
- Source: MoreRoom rules catalogue (2026-10-17), by Yando Pte. Ltd.

## What is it?

Python libraries such as transformers, diffusers and sentence-transformers, and many local AI apps, download models from the Hugging Face Hub into `~/.cache/huggingface/hub`, one `models--<owner>--<name>` folder per model. Old revisions are kept when a model is updated. Each model ranges from a few MB to tens of GB.

## What happens if you delete it?

A removed model is downloaded again the next time a script or app loads it. That costs time and bandwidth, and gated models need you to be signed in.

## How to remove it properly

Run `hf cache ls` to see what is cached and `hf cache rm model/<owner>/<name>` to delete a model, or `hf cache prune` to remove unused revisions and interrupted downloads. These delete permanently. Older installs use `huggingface-cli delete-cache` instead.

## Before you delete it

Apps that load models fully offline will fail until the model is downloaded again.