Pearcleaner

Status: Maintained
Version: 3.3.2
Download · Commits

An open-source 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!

Features

100% Swift
Small app size (~2MB)
Quick file search, can be made instant by enabling Instant Search in settings which caches all the apps and files on startup
Reverse search for finding remaining files from already uninstalled applications
Sentinel monitor helper that can be enabled to watch Trash folder for deleted apps
Sentinel monitor is extremely small (210KB) and uses ~2mb of ram to run in the background and file watch
Mini mode which can be enabled from Settings
Can drop apps to uninstall directly on the Pearcleaner Dock icon itself or the drop target in the app window
Will differentiate between regular apps and Safari web-apps with a "web" label next to each item in the list
Will differentiate between regular apps and wrapped 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
Menubar option
Optional Homebrew cleanup
Custom auto-updater that pulls latest release notes and binaries from GitHub Releases (Pearcleaner has to run from /Applications folder for this to work because of permissions)

Screenshots

Mini Mode

Leftover File Search

Settings

Requirements

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 might need to open this with right click-open since I don't have a paid developer account.

Homebrew

Since I don't have 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:

brew install alienator88/homebrew-cask/pearcleaner

Thanks

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

huymd / Pearcleaner