Xcode.app got smaller in Beta 5! If you install the Apple-Silicon-only variant, it weighs 2.85GB less.
For context, Apple announced a series of optimizations at WWDC 25. This .app size reduction is shipped in Beta 5 now.
Results in a nutshell
- Apple-Silicon-only Xcode 26 Beta 5 shaves ≈22% off the .xip download and ≈25 % off the on-disk install size.
- Apple says iOS and watchOS runtimes will see similar savings; tvOS already shows ~25 %.
There are two download URLs provided for Xcode now, one that contains native code for both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, and one for Apple Silicon only:
This XIP archive is already 22% smaller. When uncompressing the archive, the difference becomes 25%. And even the universal app is smaller than Xcode 16.4 because Metal toolchain was unbundled in 26.0 Beta 1.
Simulator runtimes
What about simulator runtimes though? In the WWDC video, Apple also hints at optimized runtimes.
Xcode 26 already displays the “architecture variant” of each runtime, but as of Beta 5, some runtimes are still “Universal”.
Opening both variants of Xcode.app side-by-side, we can see the size difference of the tvOS 26 runtime: 4.83 GB vs. 3.62 GB.
So, Xcode 26 Beta 5 is out, and good news: it's gotten noticeably smaller! For most people on Apple Silicon, the app's download size is down by about 22%, and it takes up roughly 25% less space on your drive.
Apple talked about making things more efficient at WWDC 25, and you can really see that work paying off here. We're also seeing similar space savings with tvOS runtimes, and it looks like iOS and watchOS runtimes will get the same treatment soon.
