User guide

Getting started

Three promises run through the whole app: what it removes goes to the Trash first with an Undo, nothing is sent anywhere, and it is built with SwiftUI rather than Electron.

Install

Open the installer, which copies the app into Applications and verifies its signature. If SweepyMac is already running, quit it first. The app is notarized by Apple, so it opens normally; an older preview build needs a right-click, then Open, the first time.

Full Disk Access

On first launch SweepyMac asks for Full Disk Access once, so it can scan every corner of your Mac instead of macOS asking about one folder at a time. Turn on SweepyMac in System Settings, and choose Quit & Reopen if macOS asks. You can skip it, and a banner on the scanners offers it again.

Your trial

A three-day free trial covers the full app. The licence badge at the bottom of the sidebar shows the state, and your licence key activates it beyond that.

Scan, review, act

Nothing is removed until you tick items and confirm. After a clean, a result bar reads “Freed X” with Undo, and the files stay in the Trash. An orange triangle means some folders could not be read, so a list may be incomplete.

Smart Scan and Mac Health

Smart Scan

Sweeps user caches, application logs and saved app state in one pass and totals what can be reclaimed. Opt-in categories and the malware check are deliberately left out. Underneath: tiles for storage, memory, battery and health, and recommendations that jump to the module that fixes them.

The health score

A ring from 0 to 100: 85 and above is Excellent, 70 to 84 Good, 50 to 69 Fair, below 50 Needs attention. It is computed from storage, memory, battery and startup items.

Recommendations

Written as sentences, each with a button: disk almost full (90 percent used or under 8 GB free), memory under pressure, battery worn down (under 80 percent capacity), too many login items, and a restart after 14 days up. A check that cannot read its data is skipped, not reported as fine.

Cleanup

What it finds

User Caches, Application Logs and Saved App State come pre-selected. Developer Caches (Xcode DerivedData, npm, Gradle, Cargo and similar) and App Leftovers (support files of apps no longer installed and untouched for 60 days) are listed but start unticked.

Never touched

Xcode Archives, iOS DeviceSupport, Docker images and Apple's own items are never offered. Cleanup only touches your own user folders, so it needs no administrator password.

The Trash card

Shows what is in the Trash and offers Empty Trash. It is the one irreversible action on the screen and asks first.

Protection

Privacy

Clears cache, history and cookies for Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Chromium, Firefox and Safari (cache only, since macOS protects the rest), one row per profile. Quit the browser first. Nothing is pre-selected and what you clear goes to the Trash.

Malware

An on-demand scan of launch agents and daemons, file contents (SHA-256 hashes and byte-pattern rules), code signatures on launch items, cron jobs and browser extensions. Results show a severity, how it was detected and a corroborated badge when several signals agree.

Removing a finding

User-level items move to the Trash with Undo. System-level items can be revealed in Finder or removed with an administrator password, which permanently deletes them and asks separately.

Definitions and honesty

Definitions update over the air and are signature-checked, and a failed check keeps the old ones. Locations only root can read are listed as not scanned. This is an on-demand scanner, not real-time antivirus, so it sits beside macOS's own protection.

Performance and Battery

Live system card

CPU, memory and disk bars, network throughput, free memory, cores, load, battery temperature, thermal state and uptime, refreshed every three seconds.

Maintenance

Free up memory, flush the DNS cache and run macOS's daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts. Each needs administrator rights: install the background helper to run them silently, or enter your password each time.

Login items

Lists the launch agents in your own Library. Disabling one moves its file to the Trash, restorable with Undo. System agents and daemons are shown read-only.

Battery

Charge, status and time remaining, maximum capacity, charge cycles, macOS's own condition verdict, temperature and power source, read straight from macOS and read-only. A desktop Mac says no battery was detected.

Applications and Files

Uninstall completely

Lists apps from Applications with icon, version and size, searchable and sortable. Opening one shows the app plus its leftovers in your Library (Application Support, caches, preferences, containers, launch agents and more), each selectable. Everything goes to the Trash with Undo.

Apps that need a password

Apps owned by root and App Store apps need the standard macOS administrator prompt. These are not one-click undoable in the app, so the bar offers Open Trash instead.

Large & Old

Pick a folder, a minimum size from 10 MB to 2,000 MB and an age. It skips hidden files, app and library bundles, your Library folders and iCloud files that are only online, so scanning never triggers a download.

Duplicates

Finds byte-identical files of 1 MB or more by comparing size, a partial hash and then a full SHA-256. The oldest copy of each set is kept and the rest pre-selected. Hard links and APFS clones are labelled as freeing no space.

Space Lens, Disk and Cloud Cleanup

Space Lens

A live bubble map of a folder, sized by space used. Click a bubble to drill in, right-click to select for removal or reveal in Finder, and review everything selected before it goes to the Trash. Your home folder, system locations and external drives cannot be removed as a whole.

Disk

A read-only overview: a storage bar and a treemap of Applications, Photos, Movies, Music, Downloads, Documents, Desktop, App Data and System & Other. Nothing is deleted from here, and an unmeasurable remainder is folded into System & Other.

Cloud Cleanup

Removes the local copies of iCloud Drive files you have already downloaded. They stay in iCloud and download again when opened. Only fully uploaded files are touched, and the result reports what was actually freed. It is not Trash-based, so there is no Undo, only opening the file again.

Safety and shortcuts

What can be undone

Cleanup, Smart Scan, Files, Space Lens, Applications, the privacy cleaner, user-level threats and login items all go to the Trash with Undo. Cloud Cleanup keeps files in iCloud. Empty Trash and removing system-level threats cannot be undone and each asks separately.

Keyboard

⌘R scans the current screen, and ⌘1 to ⌘9 jump to Smart Scan, Mac Health, Cleanup, Protection, Performance, Battery, Applications, Files and Space Lens. Disk and Cloud Cleanup are in the sidebar and the Go menu.

Licence

A three-day trial, then a licence key. A licence covers as many Macs as the plan you bought (1, 2 or 5): use Deactivate this Mac from the licence badge to move it. The app keeps working for seven days offline after its last check.

Privacy

No account and no telemetry. Scans run on your Mac and the results stay there. The one thing it fetches is its malware definitions file.