A Free and Open Source macOS System Cleaner

 

Storage space is cheap these days. Unless you’re a Mac user. Sooner or later you’ll get a notification saying that “Your disk space is critically low”.  When that happens your first instinct should be to go throught the installed apps and delete all the apps that you didn’t use in, let’s say, at least 2-3 weeks. App detox is always a good idea, phone included, even if you’re not low on space. Next take a look at your downloads folder. Usually there’s a bunch of stuff over there that you don’t need anymore. Like .dmg files.

But you can also get quite a bit of space back if you delete cache and logs files, as well as email and iMessages attachments. Especially if run on the same Mac for a few years now and you’ve never wiped it clean to start fresh.

You can easily delete those files manually, if you know where to look ( usually in ~/Library/ ), but sometimes it’s nice to have an app that automates this process. One of those apps is Clean-Me. Free and open source.

Before we get started you should know that cache and log files are created on your computer for a reson. Cache files allow a program to start faster and run certain tasks faster. If you delete them, next time you’ll open that program it needs to recreate the cache file. It’s safe to delete them. Just don’t freak out if next time you open a program, it will start a bit slower than usual.

Also if your log files are huge, that usually indicates that a program or even your system spits out errors and maybe you should investigate before deleting.

 

To install Clean-Me, open your terminal and install it via Homebrew with brew install --cask clean-me

 

Now all you have to do is open Clean-Me, click Analyze, turn On what you want to delete and click Clean. It’s that simple. The app will have a light theme or dark theme based on your macOS settings.

You can also click on the folder icon next to each option to go to the exact path and see what files are going to be deleted and if you’re unsure of what any of the options will delete just hover your mouse cursor over the On/Off slider and you’ll get a pop-up with the option’s description.