Finds the digital junk your apps left behind — and lets you actually do something about it.
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Because apparently I needed another side project, I started building a Mac cleaner app.
You install an app, use it for two weeks, then forget it exists. Months later you find its icon in Launchpad and its config files silently hoarding disk space across seven Library folders. Mac Cleaner finds all of it.
Built as an AI-assisted development experiment. Turns out I needed a Mac cleaner more than I needed sleep.
Fair warning: this is a side project, not a Serious Open Source Product™. There's no roadmap, no support contract, and no plan beyond "it scratches my itch." It's open source because there was no reason for it not to be. If it's useful to you too, great — that's a happy accident.
Download the latest .dmg from the Releases page, open it, and drag Mac Cleaner into Applications.
The app is not code-signed or notarized (that needs a paid Apple Developer account), so macOS will refuse to open it on first launch. To get past Gatekeeper:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Mac Cleaner.app"Only do that for software you trust. If you'd rather not, build it from source instead — same app, your own machine.
Builds are Apple Silicon (arm64) only for now. On Intel Macs, run from source.
Browse installed applications, open one, and see everything it owns before deciding to remove it — the bundle plus every file it scattered around your system. Pick what goes and what stays, then remove the lot in one pass.
Scan any installed app and see every file it left behind:
- Application Support — config files, databases, state
- Preferences —
.plistfiles haunting your system - Caches — gigabytes of stuff you forgot existed
- Containers & Group Containers — sandboxed app leftovers
- Logs — debug output from that one time you ran the app once
- Saved Application State — window positions for windows that no longer exist
Each file gets a confidence score (high/medium/low) so you know what's definitely safe to nuke and what might need a second look.
Even after you delete an app, its files stick around like a bad houseguest. This mode scans your Library directories for leftovers from apps that are no longer installed — so you can clean up what uninstalling forgot.
Cache folders. Log directories. Saved state from apps you opened once in 2019. This mode lists everything in your system junk directories so you can pick and choose what to delete.
List installed formulae, see which ones are outdated (current vs. latest version), and upgrade individual packages without leaving the app.
Grant the macOS permissions the scanners need, and set scan behavior and safety defaults.
This app deletes things off your machine, so the rules are strict on purpose:
- Trash, not
rm. Every removal goes to the Trash, so you can put it back. - Whitelisted paths only. Removal is allowed from
/Applications,~/Applications, and Library subdirectories. Nothing else is touchable. - Nothing happens without confirmation. Every deletion requires an explicit yes.
You need Node.js 20+ and npm. That's it.
git clone https://github.com/bragabriel/mac-cleaner.git
cd mac-cleaner
npm install
# The real desktop app (Electron + filesystem access)
npm run dev:desktop
# Just the frontend in a browser (mock data, no system access)
npm run devUse dev:desktop for the actual experience — app scanning, residue detection, real file operations.
Use dev if you just want to tinker with the UI. It uses mock data and won't touch your system.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm run start:desktop |
Launch Electron without the dev server |
npm run dist:mac |
Build a .dmg into release/ |
npm run lint |
Type-check the codebase |
npm run test |
Run unit tests |
npm run test:smoke |
End-to-end test against the real filesystem |
React 19 · TypeScript · Vite 6 · Electron 37 · Tailwind CSS v4 · Vitest
Got an idea? Found a bug? Just want to prove you can write better code than an AI? Pull requests are open — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Be creative, have fun, and don't break anything important.
MIT © Gabriel Braga
If this saved you from manually digging through ~/Library, drop a ⭐
— it tells me someone actually uses this thing.