Clean up your Mac

Review caches and build output before reclaiming space. Personal data and local AI models stay out of the cleaning list.

See the list before reclaiming space

Mole scans app and system caches, logs, temporary files, developer tools, browsers, cloud clients, and AI coding tools. Each item is listed with its name, path, and size. Easily recreated caches come first; files that take time to download or rebuild are left for you to review.

Mole Clean showing cache categories, measured sizes, and the review action
Clean shows what it found and how large it is before anything leaves the Mac.

Sort data by what it costs to get back

The product grew out of a practical rule described in the story of building Mole for Mac. Every candidate falls into one of three groups:

  1. Regenerable: HTTP and GPU caches, build output, superseded tool versions, and most logs can return automatically.
  2. Expensive to rebuild: package downloads, device support, and local model weights cost time or bandwidth, so Mole does not treat them as routine cleanup.
  3. Irreplaceable: documents, mail, photos, project state, and conversation history never belong in a one-click cleaning list.
Check file sizes and how easily files can be recreated, review the list, then confirm cleanup. Results stay in a local log.

Clean AI build debris, protect AI memory

Coding agents can produce many rounds of target, dist, .next, and DerivedData in a day. One real cleanup recovered 86 GB of build output. Mole can surface that regenerable weight while protecting Ollama and Hugging Face model stores, plus Claude, Codex, and Grok session histories, memories, plans, skills, and generated images. Models remain visible in Analyze so their owners can manage them correctly.

Running apps and protected paths stay out

Caches owned by an open app are skipped. Every removal is checked again against protected paths at execution time, and anything outside the current operation is refused. Full Disk Access expands what Mole can measure under Library; it never disables these checks. File names, contents, and scan results stay on the Mac.

Choose how to remove caches

Caches are permanently deleted by default to free up space. You can change this in Settings to move them to Trash and keep the option to restore them. Ordinary file removal in the other tools also uses Trash, and completed actions are recorded in the local operations log.

Clean when you need to

Mole does not send scheduled cleanup reminders or keep scanning your disk in the background. Open Clean when you need space, review the list, and choose what to remove. Scanning is free, and you can complete two cleanups before purchasing. Download Mole or read which files a Mac cleaner should leave alone.