Mole
🐹 Clean, uninstall, analyze, optimize, and monitor your Mac. Free open-source CLI, plus a native Mac app.
💡 This repo is the free open-source CLI (
mo). Prefer a native app? Mole for Mac is a separate download: cleanup, app management, maintenance, disk maps, and live status in one lightweight, VoiceOver-ready app. One license covers 2 Macs with free updates and a 14-day refund.brew install moleinstalls the CLI only.
Features
- All-in-one CLI toolkit: Combines CleanMyMac, AppCleaner, DaisyDisk, and iStat Menus style workflows in a single terminal binary
- Deep cleaning: Removes caches, logs, leftovers, and orphaned app data to reclaim gigabytes of space
- Smart uninstaller: Removes apps plus launch agents, preferences, and hidden remnants
- Disk insights: Visualizes usage, finds large files, rebuilds caches, and refreshes system services
- Live monitoring: Shows real-time CPU, GPU, memory, disk, and network stats
Quick Start
Mole requires macOS 12 or newer and supports both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.
Install via Homebrew
brew install moleIf Homebrew no longer supports your macOS version, use the script below instead.
Or via script
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bashMole is built for macOS. An experimental Windows version lives in the windows branch.
Run
mo # Interactive menu
mo clean # Deep cleanup + already-uninstalled app leftovers
mo uninstall # Remove installed apps + their leftovers
mo optimize # Refresh caches & services
mo analyze # Visual disk explorer (or 'mo analyse')
mo status # Live system health dashboard
mo purge # Clean project build artifacts
mo installer # Find and remove installer files
mo touchid # Configure Touch ID for sudo
mo completion # Set up shell tab completion
mo update # Update Mole
mo update --nightly # Update to latest unreleased main build, script install only
mo remove # Remove Mole from system
mo --help # Show help
mo --version # Show installed versionPreview safely
mo clean --dry-run
mo uninstall --dry-run
mo optimize --dry-run
mo purge --dry-run
mo installer --dry-run
mo history
mo history --json
mo clean --dry-run --debug # Preview + detailed logs
mo optimize --whitelist # Manage protected optimization rules
mo clean --whitelist # Manage protected caches
mo purge --paths # Configure project scan directories
mo analyze /Volumes # Analyze external drives only
mo analyze /private/tmp # Review user-owned temporary directoriesSelections made with mo clean --whitelist persist in ~/.config/mole/whitelist.
Other install options
To install a specific release, pass any tag from the releases page, with or without its leading V. To track the development branch instead, pass main:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash -s -- 1.51.0
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash -s -- mainmain installs unreleased code from the default branch, so expect rough edges. latest still works as a legacy alias for main; despite the name it does not install the newest stable release.
The script normally installs to /usr/local/bin, which may ask for an administrator password. Install into a user-owned directory if you want future mo update runs to stay password-free:
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --prefix "$HOME/.local/bin"
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"Add the same PATH export to ~/.zshrc or your shell profile for new terminals. Mole updates the installation you invoked, so it keeps using this directory. Commands that change system-owned files may still request administrator access.
Prefer a walkthrough? Watch the Mole tutorial video by PAPAYA 電腦教室.
Safety
Mole can remove files, so it validates paths, protects shared and system-owned locations, and asks for confirmation when an action needs it. When Mole cannot prove an item is safe to change, it skips or refuses it.
clean,uninstall,purge,installer, andremovecan delete files. Review them with--dry-runfirst, and add--debugwhen needed.- Run Mole without
sudo; it requests administrator access only when needed. mo analyzemoves selected items to Trash after confirmation.- Cleanup activity is recorded in
~/Library/Logs/mole/operations.log; review it withmo historyor disable it withMO_NO_OPLOG=1. - Protect caches with
mo clean --whitelist, or maintenance items withmo optimize --whitelist.
Review SECURITY.md and SECURITY_AUDIT.md for reporting guidance, safety boundaries, and current limitations.
Features in Detail
The examples below are shortened. Available items, sizes, and skip reasons depend on your Mac.
Clean
mo clean reviews known-safe caches, logs, temporary files, developer artifacts, and leftovers from apps that are no longer installed. Use mo clean --dry-run to preview eligible paths, and mo clean --whitelist to protect caches you want to keep.
$ mo clean
Clean Your Mac
⚙ Apple Silicon | Free space: 219.0GB
➤ User essentials
✓ User app cache · 18 items, 2.4GB
✓ User app logs · 7 items, 12.8MB
✓ Trash · emptied, 9 items
➤ App caches
✓ App Store cache · 8 items, 248.5MB
➤ Browsers
✓ Safari cache · 24 items, 642.1MB
✓ Chrome cache · 31 items, 1.2GB
➤ Developer tools
✓ npm cache · cleaned
◎ pnpm cache · skipped (pnpm busy)
======================================================================
Cleanup complete
Tracked cleanup: 4.5GB | Items cleaned: 97 | Categories: 4
Free space: 223.5GB (+4.5GB)
======================================================================
Uninstall
mo uninstall removes an installed app together with related files that Mole can tie back to that app. It keeps shared data when another installed copy still uses it. Use mo uninstall --dry-run to review the plan. If the app is already gone, use mo clean to look for leftovers.
$ mo uninstall
Select Apps to Remove 1/3 selected
➤ ● Photoshop 2024 4.20GB | 2mo ago
○ IntelliJ IDEA 2.80GB | 3d ago
○ Premiere Pro 3.40GB | 2w ago
Files to be removed:
✓ Photoshop 2024, 12.80GB
✓ /Applications/Adobe Photoshop 2024/Adobe Photoshop 2024.app
✓ ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop 2024
✓ ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Photoshop.plist
======================================================================
Uninstall complete
Removed 1 app, freed 12.80GB: Photoshop 2024
======================================================================
Optimize
mo optimize runs bounded maintenance for supported Finder, network, database, and macOS services. Tasks that are unnecessary, unsafe at the moment, or unavailable are skipped with a reason. Use mo optimize --dry-run to preview the pass and mo optimize --whitelist to exclude tasks or path patterns.
$ mo optimize
Optimize
⚙ System 18/32 GB RAM | 616/926 GB Disk | Uptime 6d
PERFORMANCE DIAGNOSIS
✓ No sustained high-CPU bottleneck detected
➤ DNS & Spotlight Check
→ DNS cache flushed
→ Spotlight index verified
➤ Finder Cache Refresh
→ QuickLook thumbnails refreshed
→ Icon services cache rebuilt
➤ Database Optimization
◎ Close these apps before database optimization: Safari
➤ Disk Health
→ Disk verify skipped (set MOLE_ENABLE_DISK_VERIFY=1 to enable)
======================================================================
Optimization Complete
Applied 3 optimizations
14 unchanged | 3 skipped | 1 unavailable
======================================================================
Path patterns work too, so you can keep a long-lived mounted disk image around, for example /Volumes/mail, without it showing up as a detach candidate.
Analyze
mo analyze opens a terminal disk explorer. It supports arrow keys and Vim navigation, filtering, multi-selection, Finder preview, and confirmed moves to Trash. External drives are skipped from the default overview; inspect them with mo analyze /Volumes or a specific mount path. Use mo analyze /private/tmp to review user-owned temporary files without turning them into automatic cleanup targets.
A size ending in + contains measured bytes from a partial scan; unknown means the size could not be measured. Results cut short by temporary failures such as timeouts do not replace complete cached measurements, and a later refresh can recover the missing data. Folders macOS will not let the terminal read stay partial until access changes. The terminal list keeps the 30 largest entries, so an unreadable entry may fall outside that list; the total still indicates a partial scan. Directory JSON output includes all scanned entries.
mo analyze --json /path includes scan_status on the result and each entry: complete, partial, or unavailable. Numeric sizes contain measured bytes; a zero with unavailable does not mean an empty directory. Partial scans still exit successfully, so automation should inspect scan_status. Completeness applies within Mole's existing scan exclusions and does not promise an atomic filesystem snapshot.
$ mo analyze
Analyze Disk (302.1GB free)
Select a location to explore:
▶ 1. ████████████████████████ 47.9% | Home 75.4GB
2. ███████████ 22.0% | User Library 34.6GB
3. ███████ 14.2% | Applications 22.4GB
4. █████ 10.7% | System Library 16.9GB
5. ███ 5.2% | Old Downloads (90d+) 8.2GB >3mo
Status
mo status is a read-only dashboard for hardware, system pressure, disk activity, network traffic, power, and processes.
$ mo status
Mole Status Health ● 92 MacBook Pro · M4 Pro · 32GB · macOS 26
⚙ CPU ▦ Memory
Total ████████████░░░░░░░ 45.2% Used ███████████░░░░░░░ 58.4%
Load 0.82 / 1.05 / 1.23 (8 cores) Total 18.7 / 32.0 GB
Core 1 ███████████████░░░░ 78.3% Free ████████░░░░░░░░░░ 41.6%
Core 2 ████████████░░░░░░░ 62.1% Avail 13.3 GB
▤ Disk ⚡ Power
Used █████████████░░░░░░ 67.2% Level ██████████████████ 100%
Free 156.3 GB Status Charged
Read ▮▯▯▯▯ 2.1 MB/s Health Normal · 423 cycles
Write ▮▮▮▯▯ 18.3 MB/s Temp 58°C · 1200 RPM
⇅ Network ▶ Processes
Down ▁▁█▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▇▆▅▂ 0.54 MB/s Zombies 3 · Chrome (4242) ×3
Up ▄▄▄▃▃▃▄▆▆▇█▁▁▁▁▁ 0.02 MB/s Code ▮▮▮▮▯ 42.1%
Proxy HTTP · 192.168.1.100 Chrome ▮▮▮▯▯ 28.3%
The health score combines CPU, memory, disk capacity, SMART status, I/O, thermals, battery state, and uptime, with color-coded ranges. Press k to toggle the cat, c to cycle the number of CPU cores shown, or q to quit. Display preferences are saved.
JSON, NDJSON, and process alerts
mo analyze --json ~/Documentsreturns a one-time disk report as JSON.mo status --jsonreturns a one-time status snapshot as JSON.mo status | jq '.health_score'switches to JSON automatically when output is piped.mo status --watch --interval 2sstreams newline-delimited JSON from a warm collector.mo history --jsonreturns cleanup activity as JSON.
$ mo analyze --json ~/Documents
{
"path": "/Users/you/Documents",
"overview": false,
"entries": [
{ "name": "Library", "path": "...", "size": 80939438080, "is_dir": true }
],
"large_files": [
{ "name": "backup.zip", "path": "...", "size": 8796093022 }
],
"total_size": 168393441280,
"total_files": 42187
}
$ mo status --json
{
"host": "MacBook-Pro",
"health_score": 92,
"cpu": { "usage": 45.2, "logical_cpu": 8 },
"memory": { "total": 34359738368, "used": 20078972109, "used_percent": 58.4 },
"disks": [],
"process_collected_at": "2026-08-29T12:30:00Z",
"process_stale": false,
"zombie_count": 3,
"zombie_parents": [
{ "pid": 4242, "name": "Google Chrome for Testing", "count": 3 }
],
"zombie_parents_complete": true,
"uptime": "3d 12h 45m"
}
Zombie diagnostics are read-only and do not affect the health score or terminate processes. Before
Mole has a successful process sample, process_collected_at, process_stale, zombie_count, and
zombie_parents_complete are omitted and zombie_parents is null. Later fast/watch snapshots
reuse the latest successful sample with its original process_collected_at and set
process_stale: true; a live process sample sets it to false. A count of 0 means Mole measured
no zombies. Parent summaries contain at most three known owners;
zombie_parents_complete: false means attribution was unavailable, incomplete, or truncated.
Status also supports read-only alerts for processes that stay above a CPU threshold. Use --proc-cpu-threshold, --proc-cpu-window, or --proc-cpu-alerts=false to tune or disable them.
Purge
mo purge finds rebuildable project artifacts such as node_modules, target, .build, build, and dist. It groups artifacts by project and permanently deletes only the items you confirm. Artifacts with file activity in the last 7 days, or activity Mole cannot verify, are unselected by default. Mole uses fd when available and falls back to find. Directories containing deployment keypair files, nested Git repositories, or Git-tracked files are protected. Non-interactive runs require mo purge --yes; use mo purge --dry-run to review the candidates first.
Use Page Up/Down or h/l to move a page, [/] to jump between projects, and X to skip a project and advance. / searches project paths and artifact names; n finds the next match without changing selections. Enter opens the final path review. Reported space is an estimate; unmeasured artifacts and incomplete scans are identified explicitly.
Purge example output
$ mo purge
Purge Project Artifacts
Select Artifacts to Purge
6.00GB, 2 selected
➤ ● ┌ ~/Projects/website 3.80GB | node_modules | 28d
○ └ ~/Projects/website 186MB | dist | <1d
● ┌ ~/Projects/rust-app 2.20GB | target | 2mo
○ └ ~/Projects/rust-app 22MB | dist | <7d
======================================================================
Purge complete
Estimated space freed: 6.00GB | Items: 2 | Free: 223.5GB
======================================================================
Custom Scan Paths
Run mo purge --paths to configure scan directories, or edit ~/.config/mole/purge_paths directly:
~/Documents/MyProjects
~/Work/ClientA
~/Work/ClientBWhen custom paths are configured, Mole scans only those directories. Otherwise, it uses defaults like ~/Projects, ~/GitHub, ~/dev, and supported agent worktree containers. Discovery does not save an incomplete result. Artifact scans reach six levels below each configured root; add a nearer root for deeper projects. Purge removes rebuildable artifacts inside worktrees, never the worktrees themselves.
Installer
mo installer finds DMG, PKG, MPKG, ISO, XIP, and installer ZIP files in Downloads, Desktop, Homebrew caches, iCloud, Mail, Telegram, and other supported locations. Each item shows its size and source before removal. Use mo installer --dry-run to preview the plan. Discovery has a cumulative time limit. If a scan or metadata probe fails or times out, Mole discards the list and exits without selecting files; corrupt and unreadable ZIP archives are skipped. Symlinked scan roots are supported, but symlinks beneath them are not followed. Selected files are checked again against their confirmed identity at the deletion boundary.
Installer example output
$ mo installer
Select Installers to Remove, 3.83GB, 5 selected
➤ ● Photoshop_2024.dmg 1.20GB | Downloads
● IntelliJ_IDEA.dmg 850.6MB | Downloads
● Illustrator_Setup.pkg 920.4MB | Downloads
● PyCharm_Pro.dmg 640.5MB | Homebrew
● Acrobat_Reader.dmg 220.4MB | Downloads
○ AppCode_Legacy.zip 410.6MB | Downloads
======================================================================
Installers cleaned
Removed 5 installers, freed 3.83GB
======================================================================
Quick Launchers
Raycast and Alfred setup
Install five launchers for Clean, Uninstall, Optimize, Analyze, and Status:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/Mole/main/scripts/setup-quick-launchers.sh | bashThe script adds Raycast commands and, when Alfred preferences are present, matching Alfred workflows with the keywords clean, uninstall, optimize, analyze, and status.
Raycast needs one manual setup:
- Open Raycast Settings > Extensions > Script Commands.
- Add
~/Library/Application Support/Raycast/script-commandsas a script directory. - Run Reload Script Directories in Raycast.
The launchers auto-detect Terminal, iTerm2, Alacritty, kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, Hyper, WindTerm, and Warp. Set MO_LAUNCHER_APP=<name> to choose one; you can also run Mole directly in Kaku.
Community Love
Thanks to everyone who helped build Mole. Go follow them. ❤️
Real feedback from users who shared Mole on X.
Support
- Getting Mole for Mac is the most direct way to support Mole's development.
- If Mole helped you, give it a star, share it, or open an issue or PR.
- I have two cats, TangYuan and Coke. If you think Mole delights your life, you can feed them canned food 🥩.
These lovely people already did 🐱
License
Mole is open source under GPL-3.0; see LICENSE. A version you modify and share stays under the same license. If you fork Mole into another product, please give it a different name and credit Mole as the source.
Mole for Mac is a separate proprietary app. Mole is here for the long run.
