Best Free Mac Cleaners 2026: 6 Options Compared

Mac cleaner apps have a poor reputation for a reason: macOS manages most of its own caches, and the aggressive one-click scanners sold on the web often delete little of value while asking for a subscription. The useful free tools do narrower jobs. AppCleaner and Pearcleaner remove an app together with the support files it scattered around your Library, which is the genuine gap macOS leaves. GrandPerspective draws your disk as a treemap so you can see which folders hold the big files, and it only shows usage, leaving the deleting to you. OnyX from Titanium Software runs maintenance routines, clears caches and rebuilds indexes, and Mole is a command-line tool that cleans, uninstalls and analyzes. Apple's own Storage settings page covers the built-in options, including Optimize Storage and emptying the Trash automatically after 30 days. The trade-off is how much you trust a tool with your Library folder. Deleting caches rarely speeds a Mac up and can make the next launch slower, so clean to recover space, not for performance, and check which macOS version each app supports, since OnyX ships a separate build per macOS release.

macOS Storage settings

Built into macOS: Store in iCloud, Optimize Storage, auto-empty Trash after 30 days and automatic clearing of safe caches and logs. iCloud storage plans are separate. Start here before installing anything.

Price: Free (Built into macOS; iCloud storage plans are separate) (macOS Storage settings pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: macOS. Proprietary.

Best for: Safe automatic cleanup.

AppCleaner

Free download with optional donations: drag an app in, it finds related files, delete them. Version 3.7 needs macOS 15 or later and 3.6.8 covers 10.14 to 15.6. License not stated.

Price: Free (Free download with optional donations; page states no price) (AppCleaner pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: macOS. Proprietary freeware (not stated).

Best for: Fully uninstalling apps.

Pearcleaner

Free source-available app under Apache 2.0 with the Commons Clause, so not OSI open source. macOS 13+. The maintainer put development on hold, so check recent releases.

Price: Free (Free) (Pearcleaner pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: macOS. Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause (source-available).

Best for: Uninstalling apps with a modern interface.

GrandPerspective

GPL treemap disk usage viewer, free from SourceForge (the App Store build is $2.99). Latest 3.8.1 needs macOS 14 or higher. It shows usage only and cleans nothing itself.

Price: Free (Free download from SourceForge; the Mac App Store build costs $2.99 and is the same app) (GrandPerspective pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: macOS 14+ (latest 3.8.1), older macOS versions for older releases. GNU GPL (open source).

Best for: Finding the biggest folders and files.

OnyX (Titanium Software)

Free utility that verifies system files, clears caches, rebuilds databases and runs maintenance tasks. It ships a build per macOS version and the current 5.1.1 needs Apple silicon.

Price: Free (Free; the author says Mac users can use it freely, donations optional) (OnyX (Titanium Software) pricing, checked 2026-10-24).

Platforms and license: macOS. Freeware (license not named on the page).

Best for: Maintenance routines on a specific macOS.

Mole

GPL-3.0 command-line tool for macOS 12+ with clean, uninstall, optimize, analyze and status commands. A separate proprietary app exists, with price not stated.

Price: Free (Free open-source CLI; a separate proprietary app exists with price not stated) (Mole pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: macOS. GPL-3.0 (open source).

Project activity: 73.1k GitHub stars · latest release V1.65.0 (Oct 27, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: Terminal users who want one tool.

Which one to pick

• You want to free space with no new software: macOS Storage settings
• You are deleting apps you no longer use: AppCleaner
• You cannot find what is eating your SSD: GrandPerspective
• You prefer working in the terminal: Mole
• You want maintenance scripts run for you: OnyX (Titanium Software)