Cleaner by Ciro Cesar Maciel

A Mac cleaner that shows you everything before it deletes anything.

One of six free, open-source Mac apps by Ciro Cesar Maciel.

Watch the 1-minute video

Every rule it cleans by is in one readable file, rules.json. Nothing is deleted on the spot: whatever you remove waits 7 days in a quarantine and goes back where it was with one click. A native Swift app for macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon, with no network code at all.

Português

Install

curl -fsSL https://blob.ciromaciel.click/tools/cleaner/install.sh | bash

The script downloads the latest .dmg, copies Cleaner to /Applications and opens it.

Prefer the disk image? Download Cleaner-macos.dmg. Open it and drag Cleaner to Applications. It is signed with Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS opens it with no warning.

For a complete scan, turn on Cleaner in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access. Without it, macOS hides the Trash, Mail and app containers, and Cleaner tells you so instead of pretending.

Why another Mac cleaner

The well-known cleaners ask you to trust a "junk" number. Cleaner shows you how it gets that number:

• The rules are public. rules.json lists every folder Cleaner looks at, why it is safe to clear and what is excluded. If a rule is wrong, you can read it, and you can send a fix.
• Nothing disappears. Removal moves items to a quarantine batch that remembers each original path. Restore is one click; after 7 days the batch empties itself.
• Removal takes a 3-second hold. No accidental clicks.
• It says what it can't do. When macOS refuses a file, Cleaner tells you why: the item belongs to the system and needs your password, or it is protected and no password would help.

What it does

Screen	What it does
Overview	One scan for everything: space you can free, disk, apps, startup items, quarantine
Cleanup	Applies the rules in rules.json: app caches, logs, Trash, old installers, Xcode, developer caches, Mail downloads
Uninstaller	Lists apps with size and last use, then removes the app and its leftovers in 38 places, .pkg receipts included
Disk map	Measures a whole folder in parallel and lets you walk into the biggest parts
Startup	Turns LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons on and off without deleting the file
Quarantine	Batches with their original paths: restore with a click, emptied after 7 days
Menu bar	CPU, memory, network, disk and battery, live, plus how much you can free right now

The rules

Eight rules today. Each one says what it is, why it is safe (in Brazilian Portuguese and in English), how risky it is and whether it is on by default:

{
  "id": "app-caches",
  "title": "Caches de aplicativos",
  "why": "Arquivos temporários que cada app recria sozinho quando precisa.",
  "titleEn": "App caches",
  "whyEn": "Temporary files each app recreates by itself when it needs them.",
  "risk": "low",
  "mode": "children",
  "paths": ["~/Library/Caches"],
  "exclude": ["com.apple.*", "CloudKit", "FamilyCircle", "GeoServices", "click.ciromaciel.cleaner", ".*"],
  "skipRunningApps": true,
  "defaultOn": true
}

The other seven are logs, trash, installers, xcode-derived-data, dev-caches, xcode-device-support and mail-downloads. A new rule or a better exclusion is the most useful contribution you can make.

Build it yourself

You need the Xcode Command Line Tools. Xcode itself is optional.

git clone https://github.com/ciro-maciel/cleaner.git
cd cleaner
scripts/build.sh                 # dist/Cleaner.app
open dist/Cleaner.app

The illustrations on each screen come from a licensed gallery and ship only in the official build; a build from this repository draws the Tabler icon of each screen instead. To use your own, drop 560 × 560 PNGs into Resources/Illustrations.

scripts/build.sh signs with a Developer ID Application certificate when your keychain has one (the official build does). Otherwise scripts/signing-identity.sh creates a local signing certificate once: with it, Full Disk Access survives each rebuild; without it, the build is signed ad hoc and macOS asks again every time.

Tests run against your own Mac without changing it:

CLEANER_NO_ADMIN=1 dist/Cleaner.app/Contents/MacOS/Cleaner --selftest   # reads only; quarantine runs in a temp folder
dist/Cleaner.app/Contents/MacOS/Cleaner --uninstall-test                # fakes an app with every leftover, removes, checks, restores
dist/Cleaner.app/Contents/MacOS/Cleaner --screenshots /tmp/shots        # captures every screen

Limits

• Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or newer only.
• The interface is in English and Brazilian Portuguese, following the Mac's language.
• Items protected by System Integrity Protection stay where they are. That is macOS working as intended.
• No duplicate finder, no malware scan and no app updater.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, especially for rules.json. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT. Fonts and icons keep their own licenses: see NOTICE.

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More from Ciro Cesar Maciel

I build software on my own, with a team of AI agents, and open what I can. Six native Mac apps, all free, MIT, signed and notarized by Apple, in English and Brazilian Portuguese: Cleaner, the Mac cleaner that shows you everything before it deletes anything (this one) · Screenshots, capture, annotate and record the screen, with nothing leaving your Mac · Speech to Text, dictation by shortcut, with Whisper running on your Mac · Assistant, Claude Code by voice · Windows, snap windows into place with a shortcut or by dragging them to the edge · Text to Speech, select text in any app and hear it read aloud.

Beyond the apps: free tools for the browser, books, and Infrastructure, the infrastructure AI agents already know how to run.

Follow along. Follow @ciro-maciel for the next open-source apps, click Watch → Custom → Releases above for every new version, and see how it is all made on YouTube and at ciromaciel.click.