No. McLeaner inspects first, explains findings, and keeps operations reversible through backups.
The open-source system auditor for macOS.
No black boxes. No silent deletions. No compiled binaries.
Just Bash.
Files are backed up, never deleted. Revert anytime.
Dry-run by default. See exactly what will happen.
Auditable source code. No hidden binaries.
Most "Mac Cleaner" tools are dangerous. They hide what they do behind shiny buttons and "Rocket" animations. They act too quickly, deleting caches and files that might be critical, often without a way back.
McLeaner is for people who don't trust cleaners. We believe you shouldn't have to trust a black box with your filesystem.
No silent deletions. No app uninstallation. No background agents. No "optimization" voodoo.
Identify startup items, orphans, large caches, leftovers, and permission boundaries. Then ask you what to do.
Designed to identify what is running, lingering, or consuming space.
Inspect LaunchAgents and Daemons. See exactly how many seconds they add to boot time. Disable nothing without consent.
Find launchd configuration files that refer to binaries that no longer exist on your system.
Find config files and caches from apps you deleted months ago. We don't uninstall apps; we bury the dead.
Nothing is deleted. Everything is moved to a timestamped backup folder. Restore with a single command.
Find Intel-only (x86_64) binaries running on Rosetta that are draining battery on your Apple Silicon Mac.
Generate versioned JSON outputs to track system drift. Perfect for diffing state over time.
How we ensure you never break your system.
Running
bash mc-leaner.sh
changes nothing. It only inspects and reports. You must
explicitly add
--apply
to move any files.
We do not use
rm -rf. Files are moved to a timestamped safe folder. If something
breaks, simply restore using
--restore-backup
or move them back manually.
Critical system paths and Enterprise Security tools (EDR, MDM) are hard-coded to be skipped. We don't touch what we shouldn't.
Install from the latest release. No installation wizards.
bash mc-leaner.sh --explain
Every flag comes with a reason. We don't just say 'Clean this.' We tell you 'This plist points to a binary that doesn't exist.'
bash mc-leaner.sh --mode startup-only
Don't need a full audit? Check just your startups or disk usage in milliseconds.
Practical answers before you run your first audit.
No. McLeaner inspects first, explains findings, and keeps operations reversible through backups.
Use the latest GitHub Release script. The quick start command on this page always points to the latest release.
Yes. McLeaner is open source, auditable, and maintained publicly on GitHub.
Stop guessing what's running on your machine. Start auditing.
Get Latest Release