sheersweep

The Mac cleaner you can read. Open source · dry-run first · a hard never-touch list · sweeps every account.

Most Mac cleaners are a black box that asks you to trust them while they delete things you can't see, behind a subscription, with a little fear in the marketing. sheersweep is the opposite: it's one short shell script you can read end to end, it shows you exactly what it will free before it frees anything, it only clears caches/temp/logs the OS rebuilds on its own, and it has a hard-coded list of things it will never touch.

The honest cleaner. No subscription, no scare tactics, no surprises.

Why trust it

• You can read every line. It's one bash script — ~670 lines, more than half of which are its three-language strings; the logic fits on a few screens. Only two operations delete anything, and both are easy to find: the sweep's find … -delete runs solely on the cache paths listed below, and uninstall only ever moves files to the Trash — it never calls rm.
• Dry-run first. sheersweep --dry-run prints how much each item would free and deletes nothing. Run it, read it, then decide.
• 🔴 Never-touch list — no line in the script can reach these: Photos / Documents / Desktop / Movies / Music, Clip Studio (CELSYS), app Containers & Application Support (except already-uninstalled Adobe leftovers), Dropbox / cloud-sync folders, screen recordings, Mail / Messages / Keychains, any git repo, any Obsidian vault.
• Only regenerable junk. Everything it clears is a cache, a log, or temp that the OS and your apps recreate on next use.

What it does

• For every account under /Users (current and future): Library/Caches, Library/Logs, ~/.cache, ~/.npm, Xcode DerivedData / DeviceSupport, CoreSimulator caches, Cargo/Gradle caches, and leftover Adobe caches/support.
• System-wide, once: /Library/Caches, /.adobeTemp, brew cleanup.
• Releases local APFS (Time Machine) snapshots — the step most cleaners skip and most users never hear about: deleting files won't return the space if a snapshot still pins it. sheersweep frees it and tells you.

It sweeps all accounts in one pass — handy on a shared or family Mac where every other tool only cleans the user running it.

Uninstall an app (opt-in)

A second, deliberate verb — for when you actually want an app gone: the app and every trace it left behind, across every account.

sheersweep uninstall                     # pick from a numbered list of your apps
sheersweep uninstall Discord             # …or name it directly
sheersweep uninstall Discord --dry-run   # preview only — moves nothing

It's held to the same trust rules as the sweep:

• Matched by bundle id, never a fuzzy name. It reads the app's identifier and finds its files — not everything that happens to share a word.
• Preview first, typed confirmation. It lists the whole footprint grouped by account, with sizes and a grand total, then waits for you to type the app's name.
• Reversible — it moves to the Trash, never rm. Every uninstall writes a small receipt, so sheersweep restore puts the entire last removal back — across every account — in one command. That's the real undo a rm-based uninstaller can't give you. Emptying the Trash is what finally reclaims the space.
• Refuses only what truly can't go. Apps on the sealed, read-only system volume (/System/*) and the firmlinked Safari are off limits — not even root can remove them, and deleting them wouldn't free space. But removable Apple apps in /Applications (iMovie, GarageBand, the iWork suite, Xcode…) are fair game.

Clean up leftovers (opt-in)

Apps you removed long ago often leave a background item behind — a LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon that still tries to run at login. leftovers finds them across every account:

sheersweep leftovers             # find orphaned startup items (preview + confirm)
sheersweep leftovers --dry-run   # preview only

The point isn't finding more — it's being honest about what's actually junk:

• 🧟 Dead — the program it launches no longer exists (e.g. an EA Origin helper whose binary is gone). Safe to remove.
• ⚠️ Likely orphan — it references an app that's now missing (e.g. a discontinued app's self-remover). Shown for review; removed only if you opt in.
• ✅ Kept — anything whose program still exists is left alone and counted. A working updater that a still-installed app shares (say, the Google updater that Google Drive needs) is never mistaken for junk — the trap dumb cleaners spring to scare you into deleting something load-bearing.

Chosen items move to the Trash and are logged, so sheersweep restore undoes a leftovers sweep too. The system list catches up after the next login/restart.

Install & use

git clone https://github.com/CVERInc/sheersweep.git
cd sheersweep

./sheersweep --dry-run        # preview — deletes nothing (recommended first run)
./sheersweep                  # real run (prompts once for sudo — needed to sweep all accounts)
./sheersweep uninstall        # pick an app to fully remove (preview + confirm + Trash)
./sheersweep leftovers        # find orphaned startup items from apps that are gone
./sheersweep restore          # undo the last uninstall/leftovers — put it all back
./sheersweep --version
./sheersweep --help

Installed via Homebrew? Drop the ./ — sheersweep, sudo sheersweep uninstall, etc.

Prefer a double-click? Copy it to your Desktop and rename to sheersweep.command, or symlink onto your PATH:

ln -s "$PWD/sheersweep" /usr/local/bin/sheersweep

Sweeping every account needs admin rights, so sheersweep re-runs itself with sudo (one password prompt). --version / --help never need it.

Scope, on purpose

The default sweep clears only safe, regenerable junk. It will never grow "aggressive" or "deep" modes that rummage through app data hoping to find more to delete — that's exactly where cleaners delete something you wanted.

Removing an app is deleting real data, so it's not folded into the sweep. It's a separate verb you invoke on purpose, one app at a time, that previews everything and moves it to the Trash so the call is reversible. A narrow, honest sweep and an explicit, recoverable uninstall — never a broad, scary "clean everything" button.

Language

The interface speaks English (en-US), 日本語 (ja-JP), and 繁體中文 (zh-TW), auto-detected from your system locale (Traditional Chinese only — Simplified falls back to English). Force one with:

SHEERSWEEP_LANG=ja-JP ./sheersweep --dry-run

Requirements

macOS only. sheersweep is built for macOS and nothing else — it relies on tmutil (local APFS snapshots), the APFS data volume, the standard /Users home layout, and each account's ~/.Trash. It is pure bash + the system tools that ship with macOS, so there is nothing to install.

Run on a non-macOS host, the disk-touching modes (sweep / uninstall / restore) refuse to run with a clear message rather than misbehave against a different filesystem layout; only --version and --help work everywhere. The snapshot step also degrades cleanly if tmutil is somehow absent.

License

MIT © CVER Inc. — making delightful digital tools since 2011.