A monthly Mac routine in fifteen minutes, from the keyboard

SweepyMac has eleven modules, and nobody needs all of them every week. What most Macs need is a short, boring routine done regularly, rather than a long one done in a panic when the disk fills up. This is ours. It takes about fifteen minutes once a month, and every step has a keyboard shortcut.

The shortcuts, first

Two shortcuts carry the whole routine:

• ⌘R scans whatever screen you are on.
• ⌘1 to ⌘9 jump between modules: Smart Scan, Mac Health, Cleanup, Protection, Performance, Battery, Applications, Files and Space Lens, in that order.

Disk and Cloud Cleanup do not have number shortcuts; they are in the sidebar and in the Go menu.

1. Scan and clean (⌘1, ⌘R)

Start with Smart Scan. It sweeps user caches, application logs and saved app state, and lists what it found by category. Open the cards you are curious about, untick anything you want to keep, and press Clean. A result bar confirms what was freed and offers Undo.

Once a month, also open Cleanup (⌘3, ⌘R). It finds the same conservative categories plus two that start unticked: developer caches and the leftovers of apps you deleted more than sixty days ago. If a project has just shipped, the developer caches can go. If you are not coming back to an app, its leftovers can too.

2. Check the score (⌘2)

Mac Health sums up the Mac in one score out of 100, built from storage, memory, battery and startup items. Read the recommendations, not just the number. Each one is a sentence with a button: disk almost full, memory under pressure, battery worn down, too many login items, or a restart after fourteen days of uptime. Fix the ones that apply, then press Re-check. A check that cannot read its data is skipped, never quietly marked as fine.

3. Look for threats (⌘4)

Protection has two tabs. On Malware, press Update to fetch the latest definitions, which are signature-checked before use, then Scan now. The scan checks launch agents and daemons, file contents by hash and byte pattern, code signatures on launch items, cron jobs and browser extensions. It runs only when you ask, and it complements macOS's own protection rather than replacing it.

On Privacy, decide whether to clear any browser's cache, history or cookies. Quit the browser first. Every row starts unticked, one per browser profile, and what you clear goes to the Trash.

4. Glance at the hardware (⌘5, ⌘6)

Performance shows live CPU, memory and disk meters, and three maintenance chores that would otherwise need Terminal: free up memory, flush the DNS cache, and run macOS's periodic maintenance scripts. It also lists your login items. If something you no longer use starts at login, disable it; its file goes to the Trash with Undo.

Battery is a ten-second check on a laptop: maximum capacity, cycle count and the condition macOS reports. Nothing here changes anything; it is there so a replacement decision is made with real numbers.

5. Find what is taking the room (⌘8, ⌘9)

This is where most of the space usually is, and where a monthly look pays off most.

In Files (⌘8), the Large & Old tab takes a folder, a minimum size from 10 MB to 2 GB and an age. Point it at your home folder with a floor of 500 MB and an age filter, and look at what comes back. The Duplicates tab finds byte-identical files of 1 MB or more and keeps the oldest copy of each set for you.

Space Lens (⌘9) maps a folder as bubbles sized by space, live while it measures. Click into the biggest bubble, then the biggest one inside that. Within three clicks you usually find the forgotten download or old project that explains the full disk.

6. Hand space back to iCloud (Cloud Cleanup)

If you use iCloud Drive, open Cloud Cleanup from the sidebar. It removes the local copies of iCloud Drive files you have already downloaded. The files stay in iCloud, the Finder still lists them, and opening one brings it back. Only fully uploaded files are touched. It is the one cleaning step that deletes nothing at all.

7. Uninstall what you stopped using (⌘7)

Sort Applications by size and look for apps you have not opened in months. Uninstalling here takes the app's preferences, caches, containers and launch agents with it, which dragging to the Trash does not. It all goes to the Trash with Undo, except for apps owned by the system or installed from the App Store, which need an administrator password and offer Open Trash instead.

8. Then, a few days later, empty the Trash

Everything above went to the Trash. That is deliberate: it gives you a few days to notice that something you needed was in a cache folder after all. When you are sure, use the Trash card in Cleanup to empty it. It is one of only two permanent actions in the whole app, and it asks first.

Between months

The routine is monthly; a quick Smart Scan once a week keeps the gap small. The storage gauge at the bottom of the sidebar is the best prompt: when it starts to look full, ⌘1, ⌘R.

The user guide covers every module in more detail, and SweepyMac's page has a walkthrough video with a chapter for each step above.