Changelog

• Time Machine snapshots in Overview: Local Time Machine snapshots now have their own row under Everything else. It shows how many there are and when the oldest was taken, or says there are none. No size is shown, because macOS doesn't report one for a single snapshot.
• Remove old snapshots: Remove deletes the older snapshots after a confirmation, with no password needed. It always keeps the newest snapshot and the newest one from your last backup, so Time Machine can carry on as normal. Afterwards the row says how many were removed and how much space came back. Snapshots macOS makes for system updates are left alone.
• Know what you're removing: An info button explains what snapshots are and what Remove keeps. The confirmation warns that snapshots may hold the only copy of files changed since your last backup, and links to Disk Utility for anyone who wants to pick snapshots one at a time.

• Safe items are only caches: Safe items are what Clean Safe Items and scheduled cleans take without asking, so every Safe row has been reviewed. Ruby, Android, Stack, Dart and CocoaPods rows now cover only their caches, not installed tools, keys or settings. Maven, the global Gradle cache, NuGet, Cabal, Playwright and iOS Simulators move to Check First. VS Code and Cursor workspace storage, which holds per-project state and chat history, is only offered for projects whose folder is gone, and as Check First.
• Things Purge no longer offers: Password manager and authenticator caches (1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane, KeePassXC, Authy and Yubico), Screen Time, JetBrains Local History, Zed's workspace database, the Finder, Dock, Control Center and System Settings caches, and Spotify's cache while songs are downloaded for offline listening.
• More caches found: Purge now finds pending app update downloads, Electron and Chromium app caches, iPhone and iPad software updates, DaVinci Resolve's CacheClip, Messages preview thumbnails (with Full Disk Access), old Claude Code and Cursor Agent versions, and caches for pnpm, Yarn, pre-commit, Prisma, Expo, pyenv, rbenv, Oh My Zsh and opam. Simulator caches, extra device support files, aerial wallpaper videos, Mail attachment copies, unfinished browser downloads older than a week, Puppeteer browsers and conda caches appear as Check First. Deno and Bun caches, which were found but never shown, now appear.
• Smaller changes: macOS installers are found again, as Check First. Crash Reports is no longer counted and cleaned twice under Application Logs. Old guesses left by an earlier version no longer override the reviewed list, so Adobe's caches are no longer all marked Safe. Old browser framework versions are found for Brave, Edge and Chromium too, and only inside browsers. Purge now keeps a record of each year's cleans on this Mac, and Clear history removes it too, apart from the year's total size. One damaged entry in cleaning history no longer causes the rest of it to be lost.

• Spotlight, Shortcuts and Siri actions: Purge now has three actions in Spotlight (macOS 26 and later), Siri and the Shortcuts app. Scan for Junk runs a scan and tells you how much is safe to clean. Clean Safe Junk moves the Safe items in App Caches and Dev Tools to the Trash, the same as Clean in the menu bar, and leaves Check First items alone. Uninstall an App opens the uninstaller on the app you pick, and nothing is removed until you confirm.
• Check for Updates in the menus: You can now check for updates from the Purge menu and from the menu bar dropdown, so it also works when the Dock icon is hidden. The item greys out while a check is already running.
• Settings with Command-Comma: Settings in the Purge menu now opens the Settings tab, and ⌘, does the same. It brings the window back first if it was closed.
• Smaller changes: The cleaning screen now shows real progress while a large folder such as Telegram media is emptied file by file, instead of staying at zero until the end. The menu bar shows how much has actually moved to the Trash during a clean, and the space freed counts only what reached the Trash. The Purge menu no longer shows a blank row under Quit Purge when opened right after launch.

• Clean Safe Items from the Overview: The one-click clean is back, as a Clean Safe Items button in the Overview header. It moves the same items as the menu bar and the scheduled clean: the Safe items in App Caches and Dev Tools. Before anything moves, a popover shows how much comes from each category next to that category's total, with a Review link that opens the tab with exactly those items selected.
• Select All picks Safe items first: On the All filter the checkbox now reads Select All Safe and ticks only Safe items. If you want the rest too, a link next to it adds the Check First items and shows how many there are and how much space they take. The confirmation lists Check First items at the top so they're easy to spot and untick.
• Projects you're working on stay off the list: Developer Projects used to judge a project's age by the date on its build or node_modules folder, which only changes when you reinstall dependencies. A project you work on every day could look stale and get cleaned. Purge now looks at the project's own files and its Git activity. It also hides any project a terminal, dev server or editor is working in, or that Git has locked, even with Show all on.
• Orphaned Git worktrees from every agent tool: Dev Tools has a new Orphaned Git Worktrees row, marked Check First. It lists worktrees left behind by Cursor, Codex, Conductor, T3 Code and Claude Code, but only once their repository no longer lists them. A worktree Git still uses is never shown, however old it is. Before, Cursor worktrees were offered whenever Cursor didn't have them open.
• Exclude folders from Large Files: Large Files now follows your Excluded from scans list and skips those folders entirely, so the scan is faster too. Right-click a row to exclude the file or its folder, or use Add folder… in Settings to exclude a folder before it ever shows up. An exclusion applies right away in every tab, and every clean checks the list again before moving anything.
• Docker Desktop is now Check First: The Docker Desktop row was marked Safe, so Clean Safe Items and scheduled cleaning could pick it up. That folder is Docker's virtual disk, with every image, container and volume in it. It is now Check First, and its description says to quit Docker Desktop first and to use docker system prune to free space without losing volumes.
• A more consistent look: Every screen now uses the same colors, text styles and buttons. Grays are a little warmer and light mode is softer. Caches without a brand icon show an icon for their kind. iOS Simulator rows now say when the device was last used and what deleting it removes, instead of wrongly saying Xcode would download it again.
• Smaller changes: The cleanup screen no longer switches to dark mode while it runs. The installer window no longer cuts off the bottom of its background. After a clean of 2 GB or more, or when your lifetime total passes 100 GB and then every 50 GB, the cleanup screen may mention the Buy Me a Coffee link. It appears at most once a week and stops for good once you've opened any coffee link.

• An Overview of the whole disk: Purge now opens on an Overview that splits your disk into what it finds: App Caches, Dev Tools, Large Files, installed apps and leftovers from deleted apps, plus everything else and free space. Used, free and total come straight from the volume, so they match System Settings, and a file two categories both find is counted once. Each row shows its size and one fact worth acting on, like how much is safe to clean or how many apps you haven't opened in 90 days. Clicking App Caches or Dev Tools opens that tab on its safe items, already selected, so Clean Selected moves exactly the amount the row showed.
• Scan Everything, one step at a time: Scan Everything (⇧⌘R) scans every category, and Purge does the same when you open it. Scans now run strictly one after another, so the Mac stays responsive, and opening a tab moves its scan to the front. Stop halts the queue, and a category that didn't finish shows its last figure, dimmed, until it scans again.
• Scans first, asks later: Purge no longer asks for Full Disk Access before it has shown you anything. It scans what macOS leaves open, lets you clean that, and then asks, with a real "Not now". Without access, App Caches and Dev Tools still work, Large Files and the uninstaller say what they need, and Purge never touches Desktop, Documents, Downloads, iCloud Drive, other apps' data, or Apple's music and TV caches. Grant access later from any "Look deeper" button and the places it unlocks are scanned right away.
• Choose how Purge runs: New installs run on demand. There is no menu bar icon and closing the window quits Purge. Turn on Keep Purge in the menu bar in Settings to keep it running after the window closes, with Launch at login and Hide Dock icon. Updating from an earlier version keeps the menu bar, so nothing changes unless you choose.
• A simpler sidebar: Tabs are grouped into Clean and Review, and each shows its size or a spinner while it scans. The storage card is now one line saying how much is already in the Trash, the space a clean frees once you empty it in Finder. The one-click Clean button moved off the sidebar: select what to clean on a tab, or open a tab from its Overview row with the safe items already selected.

• Deleted-app reviews tell you when they stop working: If you turned on Review leftovers when an app is deleted, Purge now checks that its background watcher is running whenever Purge opens or comes to the front. If macOS has switched the watcher off under Login Items, or the watcher has stopped, a notice in the sidebar says reviews are paused and offers the fix: Open System Settings or Restart Watcher. Settings shows the watcher's state under the toggle, and turning the option on takes you straight to Login Items when macOS asks for approval.

• Review leftovers when an app is deleted: Turn this on in Settings under Deleted Apps, and a small background watcher notices when an app leaves Applications or ~/Applications, even while Purge is quit. That covers a drag to the Trash in Finder, brew uninstall, and deleting from System Settings. Purge then opens with just that app's leftovers. Nothing moves until you confirm, and whatever you confirm goes to the Trash. Only files inside your home folder that match the app's identifier start ticked. Anything outside it is listed unticked, and a leftover another installed app also uses is not listed at all. App updates, including brew upgrade and apps that update themselves, do not open a review. It is off by default, and macOS may ask you to approve the watcher in System Settings the first time.
• Size comparisons you can picture: The space Purge has freed is now compared with things that take up room on a Mac, like screenshots, Slack, Chrome, Photoshop, macOS updates, Xcode, and a base MacBook Air. The line reads "That's room for…", counts round down so the claim is always true, and nothing shows for less than 5 MB. The onboarding celebration uses the same comparisons.

• Find unused Cursor agent folders: Dev Tools now lists finished Cursor agent checkouts under ~/.cursor/worktrees, and leftover temp or empty-window folders under ~/.cursor/projects. A folder stays off the list if a window is open on it, a process is still using it, git has it locked, or its temp workspace still exists. Settings, login, real project folders, and chat history are left alone. These rows are Check First and start unticked.
• Skip a browser framework the running app still uses: A Chromium update can leave the open browser running from an older framework while Current already points at a newer one. Cleaning that loaded folder breaks the browser until you quit and relaunch it. Purge hides a framework version a live process is still executing from. If the browser is running and Purge cannot tell which version that is, every leftover stays hidden. After you quit, older versions can show up again. The row says to quit and relaunch first, and that the browser deletes leftover versions itself when it comes back.
• Sort installed apps by when you last opened them: The uninstaller can order apps by the last time you opened them. Apps with no recorded open stay in the list, labeled Not opened, and sort after every app that has a date. Install date is no longer a sort. macOS does not keep a reliable first-install date for apps you dragged in.
• Show an uninstaller item in Finder: Right-click an app tile, a list row, a leftover, or a row in the review sheet and choose Show in Finder. One location opens directly. Several become a submenu, largest first, so Finder does not open a window for every parent. Copy Path is on the same menu.
• Show the uninstaller before sizes finish: Apps appear immediately with a Spotlight size, then the real bundle and leftover totals fill in. The list stays alphabetical until those totals are done, so it does not jump around while it measures. Size sort turns on after that. A list view sits next to the grid, with checkboxes, and the layout you pick is remembered.
• Find Application Support folders from removed apps: Leftovers now includes folders sitting directly in ~/Library/Application Support whose names are full bundle identifiers, such as com.docker.install. They still have to pass the ownership, deletion, and staleness checks, and they stay Check First and unticked. Even with Show all, a folder touched in the last 30 days stays hidden.
• Scans use less memory: Same results as before, with a tighter ceiling. Folder sizing no longer stacks extra disk-usage processes on the ones already running, and Large Files thumbnails are size-capped and dropped when memory gets tight.

• Leftovers: Purge now finds leftovers from apps you no longer have installed. The caches, containers, and app data that stay behind in your Library after an app is removed are grouped under a new Leftovers view in the App Uninstaller tab, with their item count and total size. Each is matched to its app by identifier, marked Check First, and never selected for you, and a review step confirms before anything moves to the Trash.
• App tiles: When the app list finishes measuring each app's full size, the tiles now glide into their new order instead of jumping.

• Locked apps: Purge can now remove apps that macOS installs as root-owned, like Microsoft Teams, which previously failed with a dead-end "couldn't be removed." An opt-in secure-removal helper, set up once in Settings, moves the locked bundle and its leftovers to the Trash. After setup there is no per-uninstall password prompt, and Purge never falls back to the old "could not verify this script" system dialog.
• Full footprint: Removing an app now selects everything it leaves behind by default. Every matched leftover, its caches, preferences, containers, saved state, and logs, starts ticked, and you untick anything you want to keep. Each app tile and the Uninstall button now show the app's real total footprint, the bundle plus all matched leftovers, rather than a smaller high-confidence subset.
• Shared files: A leftover that another installed app still uses is now held back instead of removed. When two apps share support files, the shared items arrive unticked and disabled, labeled as kept and still in use, so uninstalling one app cannot break another.

• Uninstall apps and the files they leave behind: A new Uninstaller tab removes an installed app along with its caches, preferences, containers, saved state, logs, and login helpers. Pick one or more apps, review exactly what will be removed with a safety label on each item, and it all moves to the Trash in one pass. Matching is strict, so removing one app cannot sweep in files shared across a vendor's other apps.
• Clear a whole tab of duplicates in one action: Duplicates has a new Keep one of each button. It suggests a copy to keep in each set and marks the rest for the Trash, and you can move the keeper to a different copy before you confirm. Nothing is removed until you review it.
• Set your own automatic cleaning interval: Scheduled cleaning adds a Custom interval, so you can set a repeat in days, weeks, or months instead of only weekly, monthly, or every three months.
• Redesigned Clean Selected confirmation: The review sheet that opens before a Clean Selected delete has been reworked, so what you picked is clearer to read before you confirm.

• Dev Tools: Purge now finds leftover build files for 23 kinds of project, up from 6. Elixir and Erlang, Maven, Gradle, sbt, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Haskell, Zig, OCaml, CMake, Swift packages, Terraform, Godot, Unity and Unreal are all recognized now, along with the folders Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro and Angular leave behind and the caches kept by pytest, mypy, ruff and tox. Every row names the command that brings the folder back. This release also fixes a crash when scanning a second time, where starting a new scan while results from an earlier one were still on screen could quit Purge.
• Safety: Many of the new folders have ordinary names like bin, obj, vendor and Library, so Purge no longer decides anything from a folder's name alone. A folder is offered only when the directory holding it is provably a project of the matching kind, proven by a real project file sitting beside it, so your own folders that happen to share those names are never listed. Unity, Unreal and Terraform go a step further and are listed as Check First rather than Safe to Clean, shown for review but never removed by one-click or scheduled cleaning, and a Terraform folder holding infrastructure state is not offered at all.
• Onboarding: Size comparisons now measure against computing history rather than photos and hours of video, so a result reads as "82x the original DOOM" or "19 CDs". They appear on the results screen, after a scan finishes, and against your lifetime total in About.

• Menu bar: New menu-bar-only mode. Two toggles in Settings, under Startup, let Purge launch at login and hide its Dock icon so it runs from the menu bar only. When both are on, a login launch starts windowless, and opening Purge again from the menu bar icon or Finder brings the window back. With the Dock icon hidden the app menu is gone, so ⌘Q no longer quits Purge; use Quit from the menu bar dropdown instead.
• Large Files: Duplicate badges now count copies from the row's own point of view. A pair of duplicates used to show "2 copies" on both rows, which overstated by one; each row now reads "1 other copy" (or "3 other copies"), with the full group total moved into the tooltip.

• Large Files: Purge now groups byte-identical files it finds during a scan, so the same video saved under two names reads as one set instead of two unrelated space hogs. Each group shows how many copies exist and how much keeping one would free. Nothing is called a duplicate without a full content match, and Purge never picks which copy survives.
• Updates: Purge now checks for a new version once a day and opens the update window when one is available. This is a change from earlier versions, which only checked when you asked from the About screen. Nothing is downloaded or installed without your confirmation, and you can turn the check off in Settings, under Updates.
• App Caches and Dev Tools: Right-clicking a row now offers Show in Finder and Copy Path, so you can see exactly what a row would delete. Rows covering several folders get a submenu listing each location with its size, largest first.
• Accessibility: Show in Finder and Copy Path are now available to VoiceOver users, who cannot produce a right-click.
• Safety: Paths under a home folder with a similar name no longer abbreviate wrongly, which could label a menu item with a folder that does not exist.

• Search in Large Files. A search field in the controls row filters the list as you type. Terms match against the file name, the folder it sits in, and its source label, and multiple words each have to match somewhere, so "house dragon" finds both "House.of.the.Dragon.mkv" and "House of the Dragon.mkv".
• Scanning and tab switching are smooth. All four scanners now do their filesystem work off the main thread, and the per-row work SwiftUI repeated on every render is done once instead. Opening Large Files for the first time went from a 1.15 second freeze to 84 milliseconds, tab switching from 136 to 33 milliseconds at the 95th percentile, and onboarding step transitions no longer drop frames.
• Large Files leaves project folders alone. It was listing individual files out of node_modules, Pods, DerivedData and Gradle build output, none of which are files you chose to keep, and deleting one of them out of a dependency tree only breaks the install. Dev Projects already offers those folders whole, which is where deleting them actually reclaims space.

Fixes and refinements

• The "couldn't be cleaned" panel now checks before it explains. It only says macOS protects a file when the file is actually immutable or marked by System Integrity Protection, and anything it cannot explain says so and offers a retry.
• Files that can never be moved to the trash, including ones whose folder is locked, are left out of Large Files rather than offered and then failed.
• Items skipped for safety reasons now report the actual reason they were skipped.

What's new

Locally downloaded AI models in Large Files. Purge now detects and reports models from Ollama and LM Studio, which were previously hidden in system directories. The scanner understands Ollama's content-addressed storage and reference counting, so you see one row per model named the way you installed it, with only the reclaimable bytes counted. Partial deletions are recoverable: if a model deletion stalls, the row stays listed so you can retry.

Fixed launch freeze on Xcode systems. Purge 1.2.9 stalled instantly at launch for users with Xcode installed. The DevScanner subprocess deadlocked: it called xcrun simctl without draining the pipe, and once output exceeded the kernel buffer, both the app and the child process hung. All subprocess handling now goes through a ProcessRunner that polls stdout and stderr safely on the calling thread and enforces timeouts with SIGTERM escalation.

Improved trash size accuracy. Trash measurement now accounts for iCloud Drive and correctly aggregates across multiple trash directories. The reported trash size is now reliable even on complex setups.

Fixes and refinements

• Moved Spotlight and other items with visible, immediate impact (search index rebuilds, sync reverification, history loss) from Safe to Check First for better user confidence.
• Enhanced deletion safety policy with identity cache protection and additional authentication-related guards.
• Fixed header background rendering in the Settings view.
• Improved bottom padding for the Select All row in the scan tab.

The sidebar summary is rebuilt. It used to be a disk bar with a single Safe to Clean line under it. There are now two cards: Storage, with a used and free bar, and a reclaimable card that leads with Safe to Clean, shows how much is sitting in the trash, and gives the combined total underneath. The clean button names the exact amount it will move instead of reading "Clean Safe Items".

Full Disk Access is handled in one place. When access is missing, the whole window waits on a single screen rather than each tab prompting separately. It continues on its own once you turn Purge on in System Settings. Large files is covered by the same gate, and the menu bar says when access is needed.

Fixes and refinements

• Cleaning during the first run no longer shows two success screens. The onboarding celebration had the standard clean summary waiting underneath it. Only the celebration appears now.
• Account and identity caches, including the Passwords, AuthKit, Apple ID and Apple Pay containers, are never offered for cleaning. Removing them caused repeated login keychain password prompts afterwards.
• Cleaning says "moved to trash, not yet reclaimed" rather than reporting space freed, since nothing is reclaimed until the trash is emptied. Cleanup history records the same distinction.

Exclude folders from scans. Pick a folder in the scan results and Purge will leave it out of future scans. Excluded folders are listed in Settings with their current size, and excluding only ever narrows what Purge looks at, never widens it.

Cleanup history, now viewable. Open any past clean from Settings to see what was moved to the trash and what was skipped, along with the space freed and the item count.

Calmer onboarding. It now appears only on a fresh install, not after an update. The flow is shorter, and its animations respect the reduced motion setting.

Fixes and refinements

• Telegram media cache detection is more reliable across different account setups.
• Tapping anywhere on a row now toggles it across more of the app.
• The large files action button now reads "Delete Selected".

Improvements

• Large files list now responds to a tap anywhere on the row, not just the checkbox. selection state reads correctly for voiceover too.
• Deletion now runs off the main thread, keeping the app responsive during large cleans.

Fixes

• Reworked how updates are handled so the update check no longer hangs. Manual "check for updates" now works reliably.

Whats new:

• Telegram media cache is now detected, often tens of gigabytes of auto-downloaded photos and videos
• Adobe media caches are now found, including the Premiere and After Effects media cache and Camera Raw, not just the small ones
• Refined the scan list layout
• Items that can't be safely cleaned no longer appear in scans

What's New:

• Purge is now notarized by apple. no more gatekeeper warning on first open, the app just opens.
• Added automatic update checks. purge now tells you when a new version is out and updates in place, no manual download needed.
• Removed the funding bar from the about screen.
• Removed the time readout that showed after a clean finished.

This release makes Purge usable without ever opening the main window, adds a way to see exactly what it's allowed to touch, and finishes off a few flows that felt half-done.

Menu bar, now the fast path

• Scan and clean straight from the menu bar without opening the app. The popover stays open while it works and moves through checking, ready, cleaning, and cleaned in place, so you always see what's happening.
• It scans on launch and reuses that result for up to an hour, so opening the menu shows a current number instead of rescanning every single time.
• New branded menu bar icon that adapts to light and dark.

See exactly what Purge can touch

• The About screen now has an allowlist summary: what Purge is allowed to clean, and what it never touches, including personal files, protected app data, and anything that would need admin access. It's generated from the same safety rules the cleaner actually uses, so it always reflects real behavior, and it links out to the full list in the repo.

Safe by default

• App caches and dev tools now open on the Safe to Clean view. The first thing you see is only the stuff that's safe to remove, and the deeper items are still one filter away when you want them.

Cleaning history

• Purge now keeps a record of recent cleanups in Settings, including what it removed and what it deliberately skipped, so you can look back at what actually happened on each run.

Large files

• The large files screen now has a proper finished state instead of leaving you unsure whether the scan was still going, plus thumbnails so you can tell what a file is at a glance.

Scheduled cleaning

• Reworked the scheduling so automatic cleaning runs more reliably, with a notification you can clean directly from.

Under the hood

• Removed analytics and telemetry from the app entirely.
• Added an MIT license and a security policy to the repo.

Everything still goes to trash by default, not permanent delete. As always, if you spot a gap in the safety rules, that's the feedback I most want.

No notes were written for this release.

No notes were written for this release.

No notes were written for this release.

What's New

• System Sache Scanning: Purge can now reach deeper macos cache folders like /library/caches and leftover system updates (needs full disk access), so it finds more junk and gets you more space back.
• Cleaned By Purge: A new stats card in the about tab shows everything purge has freed for you over time

What's Better

• Way Faster Scans: Scans that used to take minutes now finish in seconds.
• Trash by default: Purge moves files to the trash instead of deleting them for good, so nothing is ever truly gone. Empty your trash to reclaim the space.

No notes were written for this release.

No notes were written for this release.

What's new in Purge v1.1.0:

• All-new onboarding: First launch now walks you through permissions, background preferences, and your first scan in a clean full-screen flow. You'll see exactly what Purge found and clean it right from setup.
• Smarter scanning: The app no longer freezes during scans. Scanning now runs entirely in the background with a dedicated loading screen, rotating tips, and a progress bar. Results appear instantly when the scan completes.
• Duplicate entries fixed: Apps with cache files in multiple locations (like Arc/Dia) now appear as a single combined row with the total size, instead of confusing duplicate entries.
• AI identification removed: Purge no longer uses AI to identify unknown cache folders. In practice, AI identification was slow, inconsistent, and occasionally misclassified folders, creating false confidence in results that weren't always accurate. Everything Purge shows you is now backed by a hand-curated local database of known cache folders, which means faster scans, more reliable safety tags, and no network calls. If a folder isn't in the database, Purge leaves it alone rather than guessing.

First public release of Purge, a Mac cache cleaner that actually explains what it is deleting.

What's in this release

App Caches

• Scans your Mac's cache folder and identifies every app with a friendly name
• Four safety tags: Safe to Clean, Check First, Do Not Delete, and Not Sure
• AI identification for unknown cache folders using OpenRouter
• Filter by safety tag and sort by size or date

Dev Tools

• Detects node_modules, Xcode DerivedData, Docker, Python environments, Rust build folders and more
• Groups cleanup targets by project so you know exactly what belongs where

Settings

• Scheduled automatic cleaning for safe files
• AI identification with your own OpenRouter API key

Installation

See the README for installation instructions including how to get past the macOS security warning.

Known limitations

• Not yet on the Mac App Store so macOS will show a security warning on first launch
• Automatic updates not yet available, check this page for new releases

Feedback

Found something miscategorised or broken? Open an issue or email [email protected]