CleanR

The open source Mac cleaner, optimizer, and malware scanner.
Created and licensed by Apex Studio LLC. A free, open source alternative to CleanMyMac, built with Swift 6 and SwiftUI.

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Screenshots · Features · Installation · Comparison · Architecture · Contributing

Install with Homebrew (tap, until the cask is merged into homebrew-core):

brew tap coldrazer/cleanr && brew install --cask cleanr

Or grab the latest DMG. It is notarized by Apple, so it just opens, no right-click, no warnings, no Terminal.

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Why CleanR?

A full-featured Mac cleaner should not cost a yearly subscription or ask you to trust a black box with deep access to your files. CleanR gives you the whole toolkit with source available for inspection.

• Free and open source. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no "upgrade to Pro", no nag screens. Licensed under Apache 2.0: you may use, modify, and distribute CleanR under its terms.
• Zero telemetry. No analytics, no crash reporter, no trackers, no server to phone home to. And you do not have to take our word for it, verify it yourself in two commands.
• Every major CleanMyMac tool, in one app. 22 modules across cleanup, protection, performance, applications, and disk insight, plus a menu-bar widget.
• Safe by design. Trash-first deletion, a protected-paths blocklist, symlink and TOCTOU guards, and a SafetyGuard that validates every path. It is built to never lose your data.
• Signed builds and open source. Official signed builds are verified by your Mac at launch, and the source is open for inspection under Apache 2.0.
• Built with Lemonade. Smart Scan's code was first drafted with Lemonade running locally, then refined with other AI models. See docs/lemonade-smartscan.md.

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Screenshots

Smart Scan — one click checks junk, threats, performance, apps, and large files before anything is touched.	System Junk — caches, logs, language files, and other reclaimable space, reviewed item by item.
Maintenance — built-in macOS upkeep tasks, with advanced tasks clearly marked before they run.	Settings — appearance, language, menu-bar widget, and exclusions. No account, no telemetry toggles to hunt for.

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Features at a glance

🧹 Cleanup Smart Scan (one click) System Junk (16+ categories) Mail Attachments Trash Bins Project Junk (build folders) Disk Hogs (Docker, simulators) Clean History (one-click Restore)	🛡️ Protection Malware Removal Privacy (browsers) Browser Extensions Saved Wi-Fi Permissions Overview	⚡ Performance Optimization (login items) Maintenance (system tasks)
📦 Applications Uninstaller (+ Reset to Defaults) Unused Apps Extensions (panes, plug-ins) Updater	🗂️ Files Space Lens (disk treemap) Large & Old Files Duplicates (+ Consolidate) Shredder	📊 Menu Bar Live CPU / memory / disk / battery Network, uptime, swap Actionable recommendations

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Features in detail

🧹 Cleanup

Module	What it does
Smart Scan	One click runs cleanup, protection, and performance modules together with live progress, then shows exactly what it freed per module
System Junk	16+ scan categories: user and system caches, logs, language files, broken preferences, broken login items, document versions, iOS backups, Xcode junk, package-manager / IDE / AI-tool caches, deleted-user leftovers, and Universal Binary thinning (finds fat Mach-O binaries carrying both arm64 and x86_64 and rewrites them to your native arch via lipo, honoring Cancel)
Mail Attachments	Finds cached attachments from Apple Mail, Outlook, and Spark
Trash Bins	Empties the Trash across every location, including external drives
Project Junk	Finds regenerable build folders across your projects: node_modules, .next, dist, Rust and Maven target, Gradle build, Python virtualenvs, and CocoaPods Pods. A folder only counts when the files next to it confirm the project type, and dist and Pods only when your .gitignore names them. Everything goes to the Trash
Disk Hogs	Shows how much space Docker and Xcode simulators take. Prunes stopped containers, dangling images, and dangling build cache (each behind a confirmation), and deletes unavailable simulators and old simulator runtimes. Docker volumes and the newest runtime for each platform are never touched
Clean History	Lists your recent cleans (the last 30 days, up to 20) and puts a whole clean back from the Trash in one click. The history stays on your Mac in ~/Library/Logs/CleanR/clean-history.json, readable only by your user account, and is never sent anywhere

🛡️ Protection

Module	What it does
Malware Removal	Signature-based scanning at 3 depths (Quick / Balanced / Deep): launch agents and daemons, browser extensions, and known adware/malware patterns (curated list, not an antivirus, and it says so)
Privacy	Cleans Safari, Chrome, and Firefox history, cookies, and cache, with time filters. Safari bookmarks are never touched
Browser Extensions	Lists the extensions installed in Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, and Firefox. Chromium and Firefox extensions you installed yourself can go to the Trash while that browser is closed; ones installed by policy or by the browser itself are shown but left alone. Safari extensions link to Safari's settings
Saved Wi-Fi	Lists your preferred wireless networks and forgets the ones you pick
Permissions Overview	A read-only, by-app view of which privacy (TCC) grants each app holds, the angle System Settings does not give you. Every action deep-links to System Settings, which owns the toggles

⚡ Performance

Module	What it does
Optimization	Manage login items and launch agents with per-item enable/disable
Maintenance	System tasks: free RAM, run maintenance scripts, verify the startup disk, rebuild Launch Services, reindex Spotlight, flush DNS, thin Time Machine snapshots. Tasks are tagged by severity, "Run Safe Tasks" is sequential, and the admin password is asked once

📦 Applications

Module	What it does
Uninstaller	A pattern-matching engine that finds every associated file across 17+ Library subdirectories (including apps nested in vendor subfolders). Complete removal, Reset to Defaults (wipe an app's caches and preferences while keeping the app), and unused-app detection
Unused Apps	Finds apps you have not opened in 3, 6, or 12 months, using Spotlight's last-used date, sorted by size. Running apps are never listed, and when Spotlight has no usage data it says so instead of guessing. One click hands an app to the Uninstaller
Extensions	Review third-party preference panes, Internet Plug-Ins, and Safari extensions. User-installed panes and plug-ins can go to the Trash
Updater	Checks installed apps for updates via their own Sparkle appcast feeds (reads version info only, sends nothing about you)

🗂️ Files

Module	What it does
Space Lens	Squarified-treemap visualization of disk usage with drill-down navigation
Large & Old Files	Finds files over 50 MB, sorted by size and last access date
Duplicates	Progressive detection (size grouping, partial SHA-256, full hash, inode verification), plus a Consolidate mode that reclaims space with APFS copy-on-write clones without deleting a single copy
Shredder	Secure file erasure with standard, permanent, and secure-overwrite modes

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘R	Start a scan in the current module
⌘K	Clean the current selection (when results are showing)
⌘1 to ⌘9	Jump to the first nine sidebar modules
⌘,	Open Settings

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How CleanR compares

	CleanR	CleanMyMac	Pearcleaner	PureMac	OnyX	Mole
Price	Free	$39.95/yr	Free	Free	Free	Free (CLI)
License	✅ Apache 2.0	Proprietary	✅ Fair-code	✅ MIT	Proprietary	✅ MIT
Telemetry	❌ None	⚠️ Yes	❌ None	❌ None	❌ None	❌ None
Native GUI app	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌ CLI (paid GUI separate)
Smart Scan (one-click)	✅	✅	❌	➖ Partial	❌	➖ Interactive CLI
System Junk (16+ categories)	✅	✅	➖	✅	➖ Limited	✅
Universal Binary thinning	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Malware scanner	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Browser privacy cleaner	✅	✅	❌	❌	➖	❌
Uninstaller with leftover detection	✅	✅	✅ Focus	❌	❌	✅
Duplicate finder (+ consolidation)	✅	➖	❌	❌	❌	❌
Disk treemap visualizer	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	➖ Analyzer
Menu bar system monitor	✅	✅ Menu	❌	❌	❌	❌
Maintenance scripts	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅ Strong	➖
Notarized by Apple	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	N/A
macOS version	14+	13+	13+	13+	varies	varies

CleanMyMac is a great product, and the people who want a polished, supported experience should happily pay for it. CleanR is for everyone who would rather inspect the source and pay no subscription.

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Interface languages

Choose System, Deutsch, Français, Русский, 简体中文, 繁體中文, or English in Settings → Interface Language. German, French, and Traditional Chinese translate static interface strings; interpolated messages retain the English wording and plural rules for now (Traditional Chinese falls back to Simplified). The main window and menu-bar widget share the language preference.

Installation

Homebrew

CleanR ships a cask in this repository (Casks/cleanr.rb) and a tap that is kept in sync with every release, so install it from the tap:

brew tap coldrazer/cleanr && brew install --cask cleanr

Once the cask is merged into homebrew-core the tap is no longer needed and plain brew install --cask cleanr works; the app's own update check covers both cases.

It is notarized by Apple, so it launches from Spotlight or Applications with no warnings and no extra steps.

Other ways to install (one-line script, DMG, build from source)

One-line installer

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coldrazer/CleanR/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest DMG, verifies its code signature and Gatekeeper assessment, and installs the app to /Applications. Read the script first if you would rather not pipe it straight into a shell: it is in this repository at scripts/install.sh.

DMG download

Grab the latest DMG from Releases and drag CleanR to your Applications folder.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/coldrazer/CleanR.git
cd CleanR
swift build
swift test                     # run the full 1,088-test suite
bash scripts/build-dmg.sh      # build a local DMG (unsigned)

Requires the Swift 6 toolchain (Xcode 16+).

Homebrew core?

The cask currently lives in this project's own tap (coldrazer/cleanr). A pull request to add it to homebrew-core is on the roadmap; until that merges, brew install --cask cleanr without the tap fails with Error: Cask 'cleanr' is unavailable.

Granting Full Disk Access

A few modules (Mail Attachments, Privacy, Malware) need Full Disk Access to scan protected areas:

1. Open System Settings, Privacy & Security, Full Disk Access
2. Click + and add CleanR.app
3. Restart CleanR

Uninstalling

Homebrew install:

brew uninstall --zap --cask cleanr

DMG or manual install (also handles a Homebrew install):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coldrazer/CleanR/main/scripts/uninstall.sh | bash

Both remove CleanR plus its preferences, caches, logs, and database under ~/Library.

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Signed, notarized, and yours to trust

CleanR is code-signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple. That matters more for a cleaning app than for almost anything else you install, because you are about to give it deep access to your files, and you deserve to know that what runs on your Mac is genuinely ours and untampered with. All of this is enforced by your own Mac, not just promised by us:

• Apple has scanned it. Every release is submitted to Apple and checked for malware before it ships.
• It cannot be tampered with. The signature is a cryptographic seal over every file; change a single byte and macOS refuses to open it.
• It is provably from us. The signature is tied to our Apple Developer identity, so no one else can ship something your Mac accepts as CleanR.
• It just works. No Gatekeeper warnings, no right-click-to-open, no Terminal.

Put together with source available for inspection, this is a chain of trust you do not take on faith: you can inspect the code, Apex Studio LLC signs official releases, Apple verifies them, and your Mac re-checks the seal every time you open the app.

Verify no telemetry yourself

Do not take our word for it. Both the source and the running process are checkable.

1. Search the source for networking APIs

rg -n 'URLSession|NSURLConnection' Sources --glob '*.swift'

You should only ever see two network paths, both optional and both read-only:

• Sources/CleanRKit/UpdateChecker.swift: the optional CleanR update check (turn it off in Settings)
• Sources/CleanR/Modules/Updater/UpdaterModule.swift: the user-driven check of other apps' Sparkle feeds when you open the Updater

There is no analytics, crash reporter, or tracker SDK anywhere in the codebase.

2. Watch the live process

lsof -i -P -n | grep -i 'CleanR\|CleanR\|CleanR' || echo "no network sockets"

Expected: no established connections while you are only cleaning locally. Little Snitch or LuLu make the same check visual.

3. Inspect the binary you actually installed

The source and the signed binary are different artifacts, so the strongest check runs against the app on your disk, not this repo. After brew install --cask cleanr:

APP="/Applications/CleanR.app/Contents/MacOS/CleanR"

# Networking classes the binary imports (only URLSession appears):
nm -u "$APP" | grep -iE 'URLSession|NWConnection|CFSocket' | sort -u

# Every URL compiled into the binary (only the two update endpoints are fetched):
strings -a "$APP" | grep -iE 'https?://' | sort -u

Expected: the only networking class is _OBJC_CLASS_$_NSURLSession, and the only fetch endpoints are api.github.com/repos/coldrazer/CleanR/releases/latest and formulae.brew.sh/api/cask/cleanr.json. The other github.com/coldrazer/CleanR links and the buymeacoffee.com/cleanus support link just open in your browser. No trackers, no analytics hosts, nothing else. Re-run it after any update; it always describes the exact build you are running.

Note: on a non-sandboxed Developer ID app like this one, network access is not gated by an entitlement, so this symbol and string inspection, not codesign --entitlements, is the real check. The same guard runs in CI on every change (scripts/check-network-surface.sh).

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Architecture

CleanR
├── CleanR          Main SwiftUI app (22 modules)
├── CleanRKit       Shared framework (models, constants, protocols)
├── CleanRHelper    XPC privileged helper (LaunchDaemon for root ops)
└── CleanRMenu      Menu-bar monitor (independent process)

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Swift 6 with strict concurrency
UI	SwiftUI + AppKit hybrid
Concurrency	Actors, TaskGroup, async/await, @Sendable
Database	GRDB.swift (SQLite) with WAL mode
File scanning	URLResourceKey prefetching on APFS
Incremental updates	FSEvents with historical replay
Privileged ops	SMAppService + NSXPCConnection
System stats	Mach APIs (host_processor_info, vm_statistics64, proc_pidinfo)

Safety model

CleanR is designed to never cause data loss:

• Protected-paths blocklist: /System, /usr, /bin, /sbin, and Apple system apps are untouchable, with macOS firmlinks canonicalized so symlink-redirect detection does not false-positive on legitimate system paths
• Pre-scan cleanability filter: items the current process could not trash (root-owned children of system caches, data-vaulted ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.* dirs) are dropped at scan time so they never appear as cleanable
• Trash-first deletion: every removal goes to the Trash by default, and a dry-run mode previews without touching anything
• TOCTOU prevention: symlinks are re-resolved immediately before deletion
• Excluded Folders: pick folders in Settings that scans skip entirely, and SafetyGuard additionally refuses to delete anything under them
• Chunked, cancellable cleanup: large selections split into 5k-item chunks honoring cancellation between chunks, and scans return to idle within about a second when you hit Cancel
• In-app activity log: every error during a clean is logged with its full path, viewable and copyable from the post-clean screen, auto-pruned after 30 days
• Kernel-enforced XPC gate: the privileged helper uses NSXPCListener.setCodeSigningRequirement so the kernel itself rejects any connection whose code signature does not match the app's identifier and team

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Tests

swift test

The XCTest suite has 715 tests and treats SafetyGuard and CleaningEngine (the death-and-life files) as must-be-perfect: adversarial coverage of symlinks, path traversal, NULL bytes, SIP, protected apps, file-count caps, TOCTOU, and idempotence, plus integration coverage of dry-run / trash / permanent cleaning, the scan state machine, every System Junk category, the treemap math, the uninstaller matching engine, duplicate detection, appcast parsing, and full end-to-end fixture-to-clean cycles. Fixtures (withTempHome, withFakeApp, withFakePlist) keep every test off your real home directory.

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Contributing

CleanR is open source software created by Apex Studio LLC and licensed under Apache 2.0. Contributions are welcome: fork the repository, make your change, and open a pull request. By submitting a contribution, you agree that it may be included in CleanR under the terms stated in LICENSE.

License

Apache 2.0

CleanR was created by Apex Studio LLC and is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE. You may use, modify, and distribute CleanR under the terms of that license.

Third-party components remain under their own licenses. See NOTICE.md and the license texts in LICENSES/.

Acknowledgments

Inspired by the open-source Mac utility community:

• Pearcleaner: app uninstaller patterns
• Mole: cleanup categories
• Tencent Lemon Cleaner: modular architecture
• Squarified Treemap algorithm by Bruls, Huizing, and van Wijk (2000)

Support and sponsors

CleanR is free and stays free: no paid tier, no ads, no tracking. If it saved you from a cleaner subscription, you can buy me a coffee ☕. It keeps the releases signed, notarized, and coming.

Sponsor slot

CleanR has one sponsor slot, shown right here. Around 9,000 people visit this repository every month, and the app has been downloaded more than 76,000 times, mostly by developers and Mac power users.

• One sponsor at a time, so your name is not lost in a wall of logos.
• Vetted. Developer tools, privacy and security products, and Mac apps that respect their users. No cleaners or "optimizers", no crypto, no affiliate VPN deals, nothing that tracks people.
• Never inside the app. CleanR has no ads and no telemetry, and no sponsor changes that.

This spot is open. Become the sponsor →

Star History

CleanR is free software built by the community, for the community.
If it saved you from a subscription, a ⭐ helps others find it, and a coffee ☕ keeps it going.