01 / SCAN
Walks the tree, counts honestly
Your home folder, the whole startup volume, or any folder you pick. Sizes are the blocks actually occupied on disk — not the logical numbers naive tools inflate.
Coming soon
FreeSpace
Native macOS disk cleaner
What's eating your disk — and what's safe to delete.
One plain sentence per item: what it is, what breaks if it goes. You tick the boxes, it moves to the Trash.
macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · Signed and notarized by Apple
Not out yet. Pricing and release date to be announced.
How it works
Find. Explain. You decide.
02 / EXPLAIN
A sentence under every finding
Not "cache, 2.8 GB", but what it is and what happens if it goes. A built-in rule base decides what may be offered at all; the model writes the explanation and answers your follow-up questions.
03 / DECIDE
You tick. It goes to the Trash
Nothing is removed without an explicit confirmation, and the only destination is the Trash. Undo puts it back in one click. The volume frees up once the Trash is emptied — there's a button for that too.
What you get
Two modes.
No guessing.
Analyzers show you a 700 MB folder and let you google whether it matters. One-button cleaners decide for you and won't say why. You get a ready-made list when you just want space back, and the full tree when you want to look yourself.
Recommendations
A list, already grouped
The app walks the whole tree and assembles the candidates: nested findings collapsed so nothing is double-counted, small fry dropped, the rest grouped by browsers, development, package managers, app caches, temporary files and logs. One button sends the ticked items to the Trash.
Browse
The full tree, ncdu-style
Every item on the current level sorted by size, nothing filtered or hidden — including things that cannot be deleted, with the reason attached. Stepping in and back out is instant; the disk isn't re-read as you navigate.
Ask about anything
Chat on a single finding
"What is this?", "What breaks if I delete it?", "Why can't this be removed?" — asked about one specific item. Only metadata goes out: path, size, type, the names of a few nested items.
Works offline
No key, no network, still useful
Without a model the row still carries an explanation from the built-in rule base rather than an empty space, and the source of every explanation is labelled. Cloud analysis is off until you turn it on.
Built for developers first
The folders that actually fill a dev Mac.
Package-manager caches, build artifacts, simulator runtimes, VM images, model downloads — the things that grow fastest and are hardest to judge. Also for anyone who wants their space back with an explanation instead of jargon.
Why the AI can't hurt you
The model explains.
It never unlocks.
The point isn't that there's an AI in here. It's that the architecture only lets the model make things more cautious. Every claim below is a mechanism, not a promise.
Trash only, by construction
There is no unrecoverable delete path in the product — no rm, no unlink. Everything the app moves comes back with one click, including several cleanups in a row.
Re-checked at the last moment
Before moving an item, the app walks its subtree from disk again and re-runs every prohibition. The snapshot taken during the scan isn't treated as good enough: in the minutes between scanning and clicking, a database, a cloud original or a running process could have appeared inside that folder.
The verdict gets re-clamped
The model's answer passes through a second pass that re-derives the blocking reason for each item and matches it strictly by file identity. A model that is wrong — or substituted — can only make a verdict stricter. The explanation is text; it doesn't drive the decision.
Busy means actually busy
Occupancy is determined from open file descriptors, not guessed from a process name. In practice: while a test run or a build is going, its temporary directories are locked, even when the app has no idea which program created them.
It won't offer what macOS forbids
macOS puts an undeletable flag on folders like ~/Library/Logs, ~/Documents and ~/Downloads. A naive cleaner offers them anyway and fails silently. FreeSpace checks first and offers the contents instead of the folder.
Project dependencies are never pre-ticked
node_modules and build artifacts are shown, but the tick is yours and it's labelled as such. Restoring them needs a network install and exact versions — and they aren't offered at all until they're at least two weeks old.
Honest numbers
Real blocks on disk.
FreeSpace counts the space actually allocated on the volume, not the logical file size. That difference isn't academic — it's the reason other tools point you at tens of gigabytes that were never there. You can't decide what to delete from numbers that are wrong.
iCloud placeholders
Files evicted to iCloud still look full-size to naive tools, so they pad the totals with space that doesn't exist. FreeSpace reports what they really occupy — and never offers a cloud original for deletion just to reclaim space.
macOS firmlinks
On a typical machine du -shx /System reports 177 GiB, because it counts the entire user volume a second time. FreeSpace knows about firmlinks and shows the real figure.
du -shx /System 177 GiB
FreeSpace ~14 GiB
Privacy
Metadata leaves. Contents never do.
What it readsFile names, sizes and modification dates, plus runtime signals like iCloud status and whether a process holds the file open. File contents are never opened or read — not for the audit, not for the chat.
What it sendsFor an audited finding: path, size, dates, type, flags, the names of a few nested items, and the facts derived by the rule base. Nothing else. The app can also run fully offline on the built-in rules, and cloud analysis stays off until you enable it in Settings.
Where the key livesThe model is Gemini through Google AI Studio on your own key, or a compatible endpoint of your choosing. The key is stored in the macOS Keychain, and you can check or delete it at any time.
How it's shippedNative Swift and SwiftUI, one universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 13 and later. Not sandboxed and not on the Mac App Store — the sandbox blocks most of what a disk cleaner must see. It will ship signed with an Apple Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle. 316 automated tests, with the safety rules covered most densely of all.
FAQ
Straight answers.
Will the AI delete my files?
No. The AI neither deletes nor permits anything — it explains. What may be offered for deletion at all is decided by the built-in rule base and a set of checks, and the model can only tighten that verdict, never loosen it. You do the deleting, and only ever to the Trash.
How is this better than free ncdu?
ncdu shows sizes. It won't tell you that ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.CloudKit must be left alone while the folder next to it is fine — and it counts iCloud placeholders as occupied space. FreeSpace finds like an analyzer and explains like an expert.
Do my files go to the cloud to be analyzed?
Paths, sizes and dates do. Contents are never read, so they can't be sent. If that's still too much, the offline rule-based mode sends nothing at all.
What if I remove something I needed?
It's in the Trash. Undo restores it in one click, including several cleanups in a row. Worth knowing: the space itself comes back only after the Trash is emptied — the app states this plainly and offers the button.
How much space will it free?
That depends entirely on your machine, so we won't quote a number. What FreeSpace promises is a list of the largest consumers with an explanation of each, not a guaranteed figure.
Why not on the Mac App Store?
Because the sandbox closes off most of what a disk cleaner has to be able to see. FreeSpace will be distributed directly instead: Developer ID signature, Apple notarization, updates over Sparkle.
Does it need Full Disk Access?
Only if you want it to see everything. Without it, some folders stay unreadable: their sizes are underestimated and they aren't offered for cleanup at all. The app tells you when that's happening rather than quietly reporting a smaller number.
When can I buy it, and for how much?
Neither is settled yet, so there's nothing to click. FreeSpace isn't available for purchase or download — email us and we'll let you know when it is.
Coming soon
Want it when it ships?
FreeSpace is not available for purchase or download yet. Email us for product questions or to hear about the release.