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!

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

100% Swift
Small app size (~3MB)
Quick file search
Reverse search for finding remaining files from previously uninstalled applications
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 option
Can drop apps to uninstall directly on the Pearcleaner Dock icon itself or the drop target in the app window
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
Will differentiate between regular apps and Safari web-apps with a "web" label and also iOS apps with an "iOS" label next to each item in the list
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
New feature alert on app startup
Can update app conditions remotely for finding more files for unique apps, therefore not requiring new app updates/releases
Optional Homebrew cleanup
Custom auto-updater that pulls latest release notes and binaries from GitHub Releases (Pearcleaner should run from /Applications folder to avoid permission issues)

Screenshots

Themes

Mini Mode

Finder Extension

Leftover File Search

Settings

Requirements

Note

MacOS 13.0+ (App uses a lot of newer SwiftUI functions/modifiers which don't work on any OS lower than 13.0)

Open Pearcleaner first time by right clicking and selecting Open. This adds an exception to Gatekeeper so it doesn't complain about the app not being signed with an Apple Developer certificate

Full Disk permission to search for files and also Accessibility permission to delete/restore files

Getting Pearcleaner

Releases

Pre-compiled, always up-to-date versions are available from my releases page. You will need to open Pearcleaner the first time with right click -> Open since it's not signed.

Homebrew

Without a paid developer account, I can't submit to the main Homebrew cask repo. You can still add the app via Homebrew by tapping my homebrew repo directly:

brew install alienator88/homebrew-cask/pearcleaner

Thanks

Much appreciation to Freemacsoft's AppCleaner and Sun Knudsen's app-cleaner script

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

README.md

Pearcleaner

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