Pearcleaner

Status: Maintained
Version: 3.7.5
Download · Commits

A free, source-available and fair-code licensed 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!

Table of Contents:

License | Features | Screenshots | Issues | Requirements | Download | Thanks | Other Apps

License

[!IMPORTANT] Pearcleaner is licensed under Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause. This means that you can do anything you'd like with the source, modify it, contribute to it, etc., but the license explicitly prohibits any form of monetization for Pearcleaner or any modified versions of it. See full license HERE

Features

• 100% Swift
• Small app size (~3MB)
• Quick file search
• Leftover file search for finding remaining files from previously uninstalled applications
• Sentinel monitor helper that can be enabled to watch Trash folder for deleted apps to cleanup after the fact(Extremely small (210KB) and uses ~2mb of ram to run in the background and file watch)
• Mini mode which can be enabled from Settings
• Menubar option
• One-Shot Mode
• Can drop apps to uninstall directly on the Pearcleaner Dock icon itself or the drop target in the app window
• Optional Finder Extension which allows you to uninstall an app directly from Finder by right click > Pearcleaner Uninstall
• Theme System available with custom color selector
• Will differentiate between regular apps and Safari web-apps with a "web" label and also 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
• Condition builder to easily include or exclude files from searches when file names don't match the app name/bundle id very well
• Export app file list search results
• Optional Homebrew cleanup
• Include extra directories to search for apps in
• Exclude files/folders from the leftover file search
• Custom auto-updater that pulls latest release notes and binaries from GitHub Releases (Pearcleaner should run from /Applications folder to avoid permission issues)

Screenshots

Themes

Mini Mode

Finder Extension

Leftover File Search

Condition Builder

Settings

Issues

[!WARNING]

• When submitting issues, please use the appropriate issue template corresponding with your problem HERE
• For issues with unrelated files being found or not enough files being found, try the new Condition Builder (Hammer icon next to uninstall button) before submitting an APP bug
• Templates not filled out with the requested details will be closed. Unfortunately I don't have the time to act as help desk support asking for all the missing information. Help me help you 🙂

Requirements

[!NOTE]

• MacOS 13.0+ (Most functions might work on a Beta OS, but I will not support bugs for these until they are out of Beta channel.)
• 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

Thanks

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

Other Apps

Pearcleaner - An opensource app cleaner with privacy in mind

Sentinel - A GUI for controlling gatekeeper status on your mac

Viz - Utility for extracting text from images, videos, qr/barcodes