Pearcleaner

Status: Maintained (Bi-weekly release cadence)
Version: 4.0.2
Download · Commits

A free, source-available and fair-code licensed Mac app cleaner inspired by Freemacsoft's AppCleaner and Sun Knudsen's Privacy Guides post on his app-cleaner script. This project was born out of wanting to learn more on how macOS deals with app installation/uninstallation and getting more Swift experience. If you have suggestions I'm open to hearing them, submit a feature request!

Table of Contents:

Translations | License | Features | Screenshots | Issues | Requirements | Download | Thanks | Other Apps

Translations

If you are able to contribute to translations for the app, please see this discussion: #137

License

Important

Pearcleaner is licensed under Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause. This means that you can do anything you'd like with the source, modify it, contribute to it, etc., but the license explicitly prohibits any form of monetization for Pearcleaner or any modified versions of it. See full license HERE

Features

• Orphaned file search for finding remaining files from previously uninstalled applications
• Development environments file/cache cleaning
• Sentinel monitor helper that can be enabled to watch Trash folder for deleted apps to cleanup after the fact(Extremely small (210KB) and uses ~2mb of ram to run in the background and file watch)
• Mini mode which can be enabled from Settings
• Menubar icon option
• CLI support
• Drag/drop applications support
• Optional Finder Extension which allows you to uninstall an app directly from Finder by right click > Pearcleaner Uninstall
• Theme System available with custom color selector
• Differentiate between regular, Safari web-apps and mobile apps with badges like web and iOS
• Has clean uninstall menu option for the Pearcleaner app itself if you want to stop using it and get rid of all files and launch items
• Export app bundles for migrating apps and their cache to a new system
• Export app file list search results
• Optional Homebrew cleanup
• Include extra directories to search for apps in
• Exclude files/folders from the orphaned file search
• Custom auto-updater that pulls latest release notes and binaries from GitHub Releases (Pearcleaner should run from /Applications folder to avoid permission issues)

Screenshots

Issues

Warning

• When submitting issues, please use the appropriate issue template corresponding with your problem HERE
• Beta versions of macOS will not be supported until general release

Requirements

Note

• MacOS 13.0+ [Non-beta releases]
• Full Disk permission to search for files
• Accessibility permission to delete/restore files
• Automation permission to control Finder and Terminal

Getting Pearcleaner

Releases

Pre-compiled, always up-to-date versions are available from my releases page.

Homebrew

You can add the app via Homebrew:

brew install pearcleaner

Thanks

• Much appreciation to Freemacsoft's AppCleaner and Sun Knudsen's app-cleaner script
• DharsanB for sponsoring my Apple Developer account

Other Apps

Pearcleaner - An opensource app cleaner with privacy in mind

Sentinel - A GUI for controlling gatekeeper status on your Mac

Viz - Utility for extracting text from images, videos, qr/barcodes