Clean up your Mac

Review caches and build output before reclaiming space. Personal data and local AI models stay out of the list, and old AI sessions are removed only from AI Cleanup & Care, after you confirm.

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.

Clean tab showing Earth and the space a scan found, with a button to review the results
After you review the list, Clean reports the space it actually freed.

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 Regenerable: HTTP and GPU caches, build output, superseded tool versions, and most logs can return automatically.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.

In Preview, Clean starts with System Data: local Time Machine snapshots, system caches and logs, old macOS installers and stale wallpaper downloads. App caches include browser and cloud-client caches and app logs; developer, AI, communication and design tools have their own groups. Uninstalled-app leftovers and Trash follow. Other Storage lists backups, local iCloud files, virtual machines and models for separate management, outside the cleanup total.

In Preview, a separate action under Other Storage can reclaim unused space inside a supported Parallels virtual disk through Parallels’ own tool. Shut down the VM normally first; suspended or running VMs are not eligible. Review the estimate and confirm separately. The action keeps the VM and its files, does not join bulk cleanup, and must finish without interruption.

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.

Old sessions are a different decision, so they get a page of their own. In Preview, when this Mac holds AI tool data, a far Moon appears on the Clean page and leads to AI Cleanup & Care: Codex sessions past a 15 to 120 day window, Claude Code sessions whose project folder is gone, cleanable worktrees, superseded CLI builds, and command-line tools unused for 30 days. Caches and old versions start checked, sessions and tools wait for you, and any single Codex session can be unchecked. A Codex session is copied to the Trash before Codex's own command removes it, so its index stays consistent. The test of nearly 30 AI tools shows what each one leaves behind.

The Preview’s retention setting applies separately to Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode and Devin: 15, 30, 90 or 120 days, or never clean, with 120 days as the default. Sessions used in the last 24 hours stay out, and worktrees with unique changes or commits are retained. Ollama models unused for a month are a separate, unchecked choice removed through ollama rm; running models and libraries whose ownership cannot be confirmed are withheld. Other model stores stay out of this action.

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.