This Is the Best Free Mac Cleaner I Have Found.
There are numerous apps on the market that claim to “clean up” your Mac—for a fee. Some offer a subscription, others require a significant upfront cost, but most offer the same few features: clearing caches and logs, completely uninstalling apps, and monitoring system health. All of these apps tend to be somewhat cluttered with unnecessary features, excessive animations, and graphics.
Mole, a free, open-source, terminal-based program, is the complete opposite of these apps. Running exclusively from the command line, Mole is visually appealing, yet it integrates a wide range of tools that can free up space on your Mac’s hard drive while ensuring smooth system operation.
First, you’ll need to install Mole. The easiest way to do this is with Homebrew , which is probably what any Mac user interested in a terminal-based app should do. Alternatively, there’s a Mole installation script on the download page .
To use the app, simply type “mole” in Terminal and press Enter. You’ll be presented with five main tools: Cleaner, Uninstaller, Optimizer, Analyzer, and Status. (You can also type “mole” followed by the tool you want—more on that later.)
The first command, Clean, scans your hard drive for cache and temporary files and then deletes them. The app explains what it does at each step, and you can always perform a dry run with the command mole clean --dry-run to get a general overview before touching any system files.
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The second utility, “Uninstall,” displays a list of applications installed on your computer and shows how much space they’re taking up. You can select any number of applications using the space bar, then press Enter to completely remove them. This removes not only the application itself but also all associated files, including its settings.
The third tool, “Optimize,” performs a number of routine maintenance tasks, such as clearing the DNS cache, optimizing databases, and refreshing Finder. I find this useful when my Mac freezes for no apparent reason.
The fourth tool, “Analyze,” lets you see which folders are taking up the most space on your hard drive—useful if you’re trying to free up disk space on your Mac . You’ll see a list of folders and how much space they’re taking up. Open a folder to see detailed information about the folders and files within. Using this tool, I was able to find many large files, some of which I no longer needed.
The last tool, Status, is a simple dashboard with statistics including CPU, memory, and hard drive usage, along with an animated ASCII-style cat. It’s simple.
Everything is very easy to use, and instructions are usually displayed on the screen indicating what to do next. It’s worth noting that most of these tools can be run directly from the terminal, without the start menu. For example, you can type mole clean to run the cleaner, or mole status to open the control panel. You can learn more on the project’s Github page .