Mole: Deep Mac Cleaning & Disk Analysis Tool (Open Source)

Introducing Mole: The Open-Source Mac Cleaning Powerhouse

Are you struggling with a slow Mac and dwindling disk space? Meet Mole, an exceptional open-source command-line tool designed to help you dig deep and reclaim gigabytes of storage on your macOS device. Unlike many commercial cleaners, Mole prides itself on a thorough and transparent approach to system maintenance, offering powerful features for deep cleanup, smart uninstallation, and interactive disk analysis.

Why Choose Mole for Your Mac?

Mole stands out in the crowded field of Mac cleaners for several compelling reasons:

• Deep System Cleanup: Mole goes beyond basic cleaning. It targets and clears caches, logs, temporary files, and various system junk that often goes unnoticed by other tools. Users have reported freeing up impressive amounts of space (e.g., 95.50GB in one example) by using Mole's mo clean command.

• Thorough App Uninstallation: Simply dragging an application to the trash often leaves behind numerous leftover files. Mole meticulously scans over 22 locations to ensure complete removal of application data, including support files, preferences, caches, and even system files requiring sudo privileges.

• Interactive Disk Analyzer: Gain a clear understanding of what’s consuming your disk space. Mole's mo analyze command provides an interactive, terminal-based view of your file system, allowing you to navigate folders, identify large files, and delete them efficiently with arrow-key navigation and pagination.

• Fast, Lightweight, & User-Friendly: Built as a terminal utility, Mole is incredibly fast and consumes minimal system resources. It integrates features like Touch ID support for sudo commands, making the cleaning process both secure and convenient.

Getting Started with Mole

Installing and using Mole is straightforward:

Installation:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash

Alternatively, if you use Homebrew:

brew install tw93/tap/mole

Key Commands:

• mo: Launch the interactive menu for easy navigation.
• mo clean: Initiate a deep system cleanup.
• mo clean --dry-run: Preview what will be cleaned without making actual changes.
• mo uninstall: Interactively select and thoroughly remove applications.
• mo analyze: Explore your disk usage with the interactive analyzer.
• mo touchid: Configure Touch ID for approving sudo operations.

Safety and Best Practices

While Mole is powerful, it's always wise to exercise caution, especially with valuable data. The developers recommend:

• For mission-critical Macs, consider letting Mole mature further before full-scale cleanups. For most users, it's already a significant asset.
• Always use mo clean --dry-run to review potential changes before committing to a full cleanup.
• Utilize mo clean --whitelist to protect specific caches, such as those for Playwright, HuggingFace, and Maven.

Contribute to the Mole Project

Mole is a community-driven project under the MIT License. If you find it useful, consider starring its GitHub repository, reporting issues, contributing code, or sharing it with others. Your participation helps shape its future development.

Ready to give your Mac the deep clean it deserves? Dive into Mole and experience a faster, more organized system today.