Your Mac quietly fills up with cache and junk you never see and never asked for. Purge finds it, marks what is safe, and clears it in one click.
[!NOTE]
Files and folders go to the Trash by default, and Purge never empties the Trash, so you can put them back until you empty it yourself. Deleted permanently: iOS simulators and simulator runtimes, through Xcode's simctl; Xcode's optional Metal Toolchain, through xcodebuild -deleteComponent (Xcode downloads it again when a project needs it); Time Machine local snapshots, through tmutil (Purge keeps the newest and the one from your last backup); the Apple Intelligence models on macOS 27, which Apple's asset service releases and Purge can download again; command-line tools and Homebrew cask apps that their package manager uninstalls, when you choose that in the review sheet. Docker Desktop's folder goes to the Trash. Purge does not run docker system prune.
You do not need to understand any of it to use it. But if you ever want to check, every item carries a plain-language explanation and a safety label, so nothing gets touched that you cannot see and verify first.
Features
Overview
- Where your space went: one bar for the whole disk. Used, free and total come straight from the volume, so they match System Settings. App Caches, Dev Tools, Large Files, installed apps and leftovers from deleted apps each get their own segment, and the rest is shown as everything else
- A row per category with its size and share of the disk. Click one to open its tab
- Everything else opens too. Click the row and a page shows what it holds: four figures for what you can do about the space, over a map where each group is a frame with its biggest folders drawn inside, sized by space and coloured by kind. The kinds are space you free in another app (Photos, Mail, Steam, the Trash), your own files (projects, documents), what Purge leaves alone because it doesn't consider it safe to delete (caches off its list, app data no installed app claims), and what macOS manages. Point at a tile to name it, and click it to see what it is, with Show in Finder or the owning app's own way to free it. It is read only: nothing on it moves a file
- Scan Everything (⇧⌘R) scans every category, one at a time so the Mac stays responsive. When you open Purge it does the same on its own. Large Files, the app list and leftovers need Full Disk Access. Without it Purge still scans App Caches and Dev Tools, and skips the places macOS protects, such as sandboxed apps' caches
- Each byte is counted once: an app's cache folder counts under App Caches, not again under the app
- Hidden in System Data: a card under the categories for space macOS counts as System Data. Its Time Machine snapshots row is where you remove local snapshots, and on macOS 27 it also holds the Apple Intelligence models
- Apple Intelligence models (macOS 27, Apple silicon): the on-device models macOS files under System Data, with no switch to remove them. Remove releases them through Apple's asset service and installs a profile, which you approve once, so they don't download again. Download Again asks you to remove the profile in System Settings, then asks macOS for the sets Purge removed, in your Siri language. The size shown is Apple's figure; Purge records what the disk really gave back
App Caches
Scans ~/Library/Caches, sandbox container caches (these need Full Disk Access), and common system junk:
- Per-app cache folders with friendly names, brand icons, and a plain-language explanation if you want to read it
- System Junk like application logs, crash reports, macOS installers, and leftover macOS update files
- Large media caches from creative apps like Premiere Pro and After Effects
- Duplicate cache locations for the same app merged into a single row
- Results stream in as they are found
Dev Tools
Five groups in one view:
- Global dev tool caches: Xcode (Derived Data, Archives, DeviceSupport), Homebrew, npm, pnpm, Yarn, CocoaPods, Gradle, the Dart and Flutter pub cache, Docker Desktop, VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains, Cargo, Terraform, and more
- iOS Simulators: every simulator that is shut down, one row each. A running simulator is listed so its space is counted, but it can't be selected
- Simulator Runtimes: one row per runtime that
simctl reports as deletable
- Xcode Components: Xcode's optional Metal Toolchain (about 900 MB), removed with
xcodebuild -deleteComponent when a full Xcode lists it as installed
- Developer projects:
node_modules, Python virtual environments, Rust target, Flutter build output, Xcode Pods, Android .gradle, and other artifacts grouped by project
Simulators, runtimes and Xcode components are always Check First. They are deleted permanently, not moved to the Trash, and their section headers say so.
In Settings → Cleaning, choose Projects count as stale after (1 month to 2 years, or Show all) to control which projects appear. Age is measured from the last time anything in the project changed, including git activity, not from the date on node_modules or target. A project in use right now, with a terminal or dev server running inside it or a git command in progress, never appears.
Git worktrees made by AI coding tools (Cursor, Codex, Conductor, T3 Code, and Claude Code) appear under Orphaned Git Worktrees only once their repository no longer lists them. A worktree Git still uses never appears however old it is, and neither does one a terminal or agent is working inside.
Large Files
Find space-hogging personal files without digging through folders:
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
