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Quotenfrau

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 6, 2011
502
32
Hi

"app-cleaner" is now a crap software, but there is an open alternative (almost Open Source)

"app-cleaner" was very long freeware, now comes more complete crap UI and the software costs. Fortunately, there is an alternative from GitHub.

Look at the screenshot of "app-cleaner" crap.

Screenshot 2025-04-08 at 02.48.57.pngScreenshot 2025-04-08 at 02.48.07.pngScreenshot 2025-04-08 at 02.48.00.png

That's the open alternative:


A free, source-available and fair-code licensed mac app cleaner

itsalin.com/appInfo/?id=pearcleaner

Code:
brew install pearcleaner
 
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"app-cleaner" was very long freeware, now comes more complete crap UI and the software costs.
I think you are confusing two products. App Cleaner and Uninstaller has always been a paid app. You may or may not like the look and feel, but it has somewhat more functionality than the free product AppCleaner.

Regarding Pearcleaner, I found its cleaning a bit over enthusiastic when I tried it.
 
There are already several threads about this, that mention PearCleaner and other alternatives

Uninstall apps on your Mac
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/uninstall-apps-on-your-mac.2424781/
Uninstalling an app... doesn't remove it all?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/uninstalling-an-app-doesnt-remove-it-all.2444150/
Unable to delete apps
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unable-to-delete-apps.2447670/
Best Mac app cleaners to use?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/best-mac-app-cleaners-to-use.2443188/
 
It removed stuff it shouldn't?
When testing Pearcleaner, I did some trial uninstalls to see what it wanted to remove. With a couple of apps (I forget which) it wanted to remove files which I judged to belong to other apps. From memory it was file names which looked to be part of the app, but in folders which were definitely not.
 
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This "App Cleaner and Uninstaller" belongs to a suite which main app is "MacCleaner Pro".

Be careful if you use 3rd-party cloud storage like in my case Proton Drive. Everything on that drive was saved offline and uploaded when I got that app. The offline files were stored in the hidden user library "/Users/username/Library/Cloud Storage".

Maybe a day later when everything got uploaded it showed me purgeable space of about 560GB that looked harmless to remove, although I did not really understand the description.

Screenshot 2025-04-09 at 00.47.15.png



I clicked on "Review to Clean up" and after that all my about 500GB Proton Drive offline Data was gone. I still saw all files, but they were only available online.

Screenshot 2025-04-09 at 00.48.34.png

Now I just leave the 112GB just alone. It's the same purgeable amount also Finder is showing and the Proton content was also always included there. Same for Disk Utility.
An by the way the complete offline data from Proton wasn't counted in System Settings / General / Storage. It was just free storage as if it doesn't exist offline.

I don't know if it's some kind of protection or a bug, but you can't just put files in an empty folder with the same proton account name and location and identical content to prevent downloading everything again.
Even if you remove the Proton Drive app and everything that belongs to it with such an uninstaller before and make a clean install where just the files are in the right folder on first launch of the Proton Drive app.
It somehow gets confused and you better close the app remove the data and download everything again or delete everything online and upload it again.

This was very annoying because my Internet is not very fast. And it happened even a second time with more data, because the first time I thought it's Proton's fault and the app just deleted everything when finished uploading. But I did not find a setting or information for that and the support told me it's not standard behavior of deleting everything offline when the upload is finished. Otherwise you get double uploads, non-working uploads and non-working downloads, but not for everything.

I think it took me several days to download maybe half of it and I was still angry on Proton and just deleted everything online and thought about not using it at all. Alone the thing that I can't copy the whole data on my second before installing Proton Drive. It some does not work that way.

I am also still not sure if it's the cleaner app's fault or macOS that just marks data as purgeable only because it's also available online or Proton put the files in the wrong location.
I lately moved them out of there and put them in my user folder. I can't use the Proton app with just choosing a different location for the offline data, but at least it's listed as real data now and nothing will purge it.
 
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I think “App Cleaner & Uninstaller” never went free (I bought it few years ago). OP refer to appcleaner which is a different one.
 
That's the open alternative:

A free, source-available and fair-code licensed mac app cleaner

itsalin.com/appInfo/?id=pearcleaner

Code:
brew install pearcleaner

Danke. :)

I somehow overlooked that Pearcleaner when I first was here. The UI is really aesthetic. I downloaded the other apps too.
 
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thanks for the feedback. I knew there were still some users who prefer the software of GitHub and Co.
 
Another happy user of AppCleaner here. Many moons ago there was AppZapper (from memory) but it was trial limited to 5 free zaps before having to pay.
 
Your Mac doesn't need regular maintenance. Perhaps if you're regularly installing and then deleting large numbers of applications, then you might need to look through the Library folders (Application Support and Containers); but only a few apps leave more than a few Kb.
 
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