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Cleanr overview

Cleanr helps you find and remove rebuildable caches and reviewable system cleanup candidates without turning disk cleanup into a leap of faith. It runs in your terminal, shows why each item matched, and lets you decide what is moved to the system trash.

Typical candidates include:

  • project dependencies such as node_modules;
  • build output such as Rust target directories and Xcode DerivedData;
  • package-manager caches for Cargo, npm, pnpm, pip, Gradle, and other tools;
  • browser and application caches from known user-level cleanup locations;
  • large downloads, logs, and temporary files that require manual review.

The basic workflow​

Cleanr separates discovery from deletion:

  1. Scan one or more directories.
  2. Review the matched candidates and their risk notes.
  3. Select only the items you want to remove.
  4. Confirm the cleanup.
  5. Restore a previous cleanup run if needed.

Nothing is cleaned just because it was found. High-confidence, rebuildable items may be preselected, but the plan remains editable before execution.

Safety at a glance​

  • Cleanup moves items to the operating system trash; it does not permanently delete them.
  • Cleanr removes overlapping parent and child candidates before calculating reclaimable space.
  • Targets are checked again immediately before cleanup. Changed files, symbolic links, paths outside the scan roots, and protected Cleanr data are rejected.
  • Each cleanup and restore writes a local manifest so the result is auditable.
  • Plugins are declarative data files by default; dynamic hooks require explicit trust.

See Safety and recovery for the exact guarantees and restore limitations.

Is Cleanr a good fit?​

Cleanr is designed for developers who want to inspect generated files and caches from a keyboard-driven interface. It is not a general-purpose system optimizer, registry cleaner, or unattended deletion service.

Start here​