PureMac
Free, open-source macOS cleaner. CleanMyMac alternative with zero telemetry. Native SwiftUI, scheduled auto-cleaning, Xcode/Homebrew/system cache cleanup. MIT licensed.
Install / Use
npx skills add momenbasel/PureMacInstalls into whichever agent you are using.
README
Install
brew install --cask puremac
Or download the signed, notarized .dmg from Releases and drag PureMac into /Applications. No Gatekeeper warnings, no quarantine workaround.
Build from source
brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/momenbasel/PureMac.git
cd PureMac
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project PureMac.xcodeproj -scheme PureMac -configuration Release \
-derivedDataPath build build
open build/Build/Products/Release/PureMac.app
How it compares
| | PureMac | CleanMyMac | Pearcleaner | Mole | OnyX | |---|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:| | Price | Free | $40+/yr | Free | CLI free / GUI paid | Free | | Open source | Yes (MIT) | No | Source-available¹ | CLI only | No | | Native Mac GUI | Yes | Yes | Yes | Terminal-first | Yes | | No telemetry | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | | No subscription | Yes | No | Yes | — | Yes | | Signed + notarized | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Yes | | App uninstaller + orphans | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | | Trash-only (recoverable) | Yes | Partial | Yes | Partial | No | | Honest about purgeable space | Yes | No | n/a | n/a | n/a |
<sub>¹ Pearcleaner is Apache 2.0 + Commons Clause - source-available but not OSI-approved (you may not sell it). PureMac is true MIT. Comparison reflects publicly documented features as of 2026; corrections welcome via PR.</sub>
Our promise
A Mac cleaner asks for the deepest permission macOS grants - Full Disk Access - and then deletes your files. That demands a level of trust the category has spent twenty years burning. Here's the contract PureMac holds itself to, and you can verify every line of it in the source:
- Trash, never
rm. Everything PureMac removes goes to the Trash viaFileManager.trashItem. If it was wrong, you drag it back. Nothing is shredded or unlinked. - No telemetry, ever. No analytics, no crash reporting, no "anonymous usage stats," no network calls to us. The app doesn't know you exist.
- No fake urgency. No dramatized "47 GB of junk detected!" badge, no red alarm counters, no "your Mac is at risk." We show you neutral facts and let you decide.
- No overpromising. We don't claim to "reclaim purgeable space," "boost RAM," or "speed up your Mac" - things no app can reliably do. See the purgeable-space note below.
- You review before anything is removed. Nothing is auto-deleted. Every item shows its real path with Reveal-in-Finder, and high-risk system paths are hard-excluded in code.
- Auditable. It's MIT. The exact code that decides what gets removed is in
PureMac/ServicesandPureMac/Logic/Scanning. Read it. Fork it. Ship your own.
If PureMac ever adds telemetry, a paywall on core features, or a fear-based scan, it will have become the thing it was built to replace. Hold us to this.
Why this exists
Apple sells base-model Macs with 256 GB SSDs that you can't upgrade. The Mac mini, the Air, every entry-level MacBook Pro - the drive is soldered down. The next storage tier costs more than a midrange Windows laptop. Once you've paid it, every gigabyte you've already bought matters.
Most Mac cleaners are subscription apps that hide their disk usage behind a paywall, ship telemetry by default, and trade on FUD ("47 GB of junk detected!"). PureMac is the opposite:
- One-time install. No subscription, no trial, no account.
- No telemetry. It never phones home. It doesn't even know you exist.
- Open source under MIT. Read the code, fork it, audit it.
- Honest scans. "Junk" means actually-junk: cache directories the OS itself would purge, orphaned files left by apps you've already deleted, broken installer receipts, that 4 GB Xcode DerivedData blob from 2023.
- Real uninstalls. Drag an app, see every preference plist, cache folder, container, launch agent and log file it dropped across your library, remove all of it at once.
What it does
App Uninstaller
Discovers everything in /Applications and ~/Applications, then uses a 10-level matching engine (bundle ID, team identifier, entitlements, Spotlight metadata, container discovery, company-name heuristics, partial path matches) to find every file the app dropped on your disk. Three sensitivity tiers - Strict, Enhanced, Deep - let you choose how aggressive that match is. Apple system apps are excluded from the uninstall list automatically. You can also right-click any app in Finder and choose Services → Uninstall with PureMac to jump straight into its related-files scan.
Orphan Finder
Walks ~/Library and surfaces files left behind by apps that no longer exist on disk. The matcher compares against bundle identifiers and normalized names of every installed app, so a leftover ~/Library/Containers/com.foo.bar from an app you deleted in 2022 shows up clearly.
System Cleaner
Smart Scan runs every category in parallel. Each category is its own deliberate scanner:
- System Junk - system caches, logs, temp files
- User Cache - dynamically discovered, no hardcoded app list
- AI Apps - Ollama and LM Studio logs, caches, opt-in history cleanup
- Mail Files - downloaded mail attachments
- Trash Bins - empties all bins, including external volumes
- Large & Old Files - >100 MB or older than 1 year (never auto-selected)
- Xcode Junk - DerivedData, Archives, simulator caches
- Brew Cache - respects custom
HOMEBREW_CACHE - Node Cache - npm, yarn classic, pnpm content-addressable store
- Docker Cache - images, containers, build cache
On "purgeable space": PureMac shows your APFS purgeable space in the storage breakdown for transparency, but it deliberately does not list it as junk to delete. Purgeable space is reserved and reclaimed by macOS itself - no third-party app can reliably free it, and even the Finder's purgeable figure is known to be inaccurate. Cleaners that claim to "reclaim purgeable space" are overpromising. We'd rather be honest than impressive.
Scheduled Cleaning
Optional. Configurable interval (hourly to monthly), with auto-clean threshold so background runs only fire when there's something meaningful to remove.
Permissions
PureMac needs Full Disk Access to read the locations macOS hides from every app by default - Mail downloads, Safari data, the TCC database, protected app containers. Without it, the cleanup categories miss roughly 70% of what they could find and app uninstalls leave behind everything in ~/Library/Containers.
The first-launch onboarding walks you through granting it with an animated preview of the exact toggle you need to flip. If you skip it, the dashboard surfaces a single-click "Set up" pill. If a cleanup fails because of a permission issue, PureMac opens System Settings, reveals its bundle in Finder so you can drag it into the FDA list, polls the permission state every second, and auto-retries the failed batch the moment you grant access. You never have to re-select anything.
What PureMac does not do:
- It does not collect telemetry, crash reports, or usage analytics.
- It does not require a network connection to operate.
- It does not move data anywhere except the Trash.
Troubleshooting
Launchpad / Dock shows a stale or dull PureMac icon
macOS aggressively caches app icons in LaunchServices. After a Homebrew reinstall or upgrade the Dock and Launchpad can keep showing the old cached icon. PureMac's cask now runs lsregister -f on install to refresh it automatically, but if a stale icon persists, reset the cache manuall
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