Are shoe cleaners intended for removing polish too?

I like keeping my shoes polished and before each polish, I like to clean dirt off it. I use a shoe cleaner made for dress shoes but when I wipe it off with a rag, alot of what comes off is the polish. Do the manufacturers intend for this to happen? I have not seen dedicated cleaners made to remove wax, or else I'd use it before using the general cleaner. Am I missing something?

no its working right. The idea behind removing wax is that you strip the shoe down to its leather, so it can breathe, before you apply a fresh, scuff-free, non-sullied layer of wax. You don't have to strip the wax before each polishing, though, its very taxing on the leather. Build-up of wax polish is what's called "antiquing".

If you just wanna get rid of dirt, use a wet rag.

you can also use a clean dry soft rag as well.
just use it to buff off all the dust and light crud.

the leather conditioner is not corrosive enough to take off polish in my experience.
my heavily polished shoes when i drop a droplet or two on a clean rag and buff my shoes the polish is not stripping . a fast and consistent buffing for about two minutes with some conditoner lotion can also be used as a regular spot shine to your shoes. if you find your polish coming off alot from the application of lotion you may have 1 applied polish incorrectly or 2 have a different grade of lotion condtionoer. or 3 maybe pressing too hard when buffing.

one thing is even with the above 3 all covered, you may find your soft rag darkening or blackening after buff with conditioner
due to
a day of walking in the shoes will make the crease areas microscopically crack the applied polish atop, thus coming off or cleansing off onto the rag.

How can I tell if what I am removing is dirt and not polish? I mean when you are wiping down your shoes, it's a fine line between the two. There isn't a hard fast limit that goes from removing dirt to removing polish.

dirt is grey brown something like that and you can tell the texture is a medley. polish is either pure dark brown or black and consistent in little tiny speckles but
you will always buff off some polish due to wearings making some of the polish flake off and just sitting on the uppers.

Thanks for all your help!