bgviewer 1.9.1

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed. bgviewer.shreshtharora.com

New in 1.9.1

• App Caches is now its own tab, next to Dev Junk — no longer buried below build artifacts. The Disk Map window now has three tabs: Folder map · Dev junk · App caches, each biggest-first with its own list.
• App Caches gets a dedicated UI with a prominent "quit the app before clearing its cache" banner, plus a direct shortcut chip in the Storage pane.
• Same paranoid guards: com.apple.* never listed, guard re-checked at delete time, two-step confirm.
• Build is now warning-free.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · Website

bgviewer 1.9.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed. Now at bgviewer.shreshtharora.com.

New in 1.9.0 — app caches 🗄

Dev Junk grows an APP CACHES group for the caches that quietly garble up disks:

• Curated classics: Adobe media cache + Camera Raw, Xcode iOS DeviceSupport, CocoaPods, npm / Yarn / pip caches, Homebrew downloads, Playwright browsers
• Plus any non-Apple folder in ~/Library/Caches over 100 MB — apps rebuild these on demand
• Same paranoid rules as everything else: com.apple.* is never listed or deletable, guards re-checked at delete time, two-step confirm, and a reminder to quit an app before clearing its cache
• If auto-update is on, this release installed itself. Neat.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · Website · README

bgviewer 1.8.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.8.0 — self-update 🔄

This is the last release you'll ever need to install by hand:

• The green update button now updates the app in place: downloads the new release, verifies its SHA-256 against the release's checksums.txt and its code signature, swaps the bundle with automatic rollback on failure, and relaunches.
• Auto-update toggle in ⚙ Settings — flip it on and future releases install themselves when the periodic check finds one.
• Self-update only touches real installs (/Applications or ~/Applications); updates download exclusively from this repo's Releases. No telemetry, ever.

Install (one last time by hand)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.8.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.7.1

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.7.1

• Dev Junk is now sorted biggest-first the whole time, not just after sizing finishes — the folders worth deleting are always at the top while sizes stream in; entries still being measured sink to the bottom.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.7.1.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.7.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.7.0 — Dev Junk 📦

Every project downloads the same gigabyte of dependencies. This release gets it back:

• Dev Junk view (second tab of the Disk Map window): finds node_modules, Python venvs, Rust target, CocoaPods, .next/.turbo caches, and Xcode DerivedData across your projects, with per-project sizes and a total-reclaimable figure.
• The one place bgviewer deletes — these folders fully regenerate on the next npm install / cargo build. Strict guards: a folder only qualifies with its manifest beside it (package.json, Cargo.toml, pyvenv.cfg…), guards are re-checked at delete time, and deletion is two-step. A folder merely named node_modules is refused.
• Your files remain untouchable: everywhere else stays reveal-in-Finder only.

Suggested by a user note — thank you!

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.7.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.6.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.6.0 — Disk Map 🥧

• From the Storage pane, open a full resizable window with a clickable pie of what's eating your disk: click a wedge (or legend row) to drill into a folder, breadcrumbs to climb back out, tiny items grouped as "everything else".
• Sizes compute lazily per level (du, three at a time, cached per session) so it's responsive instead of blocking on a whole-disk walk.
• Scan any folder via the picker. Files reveal in Finder. Still zero delete buttons — what to remove is always your call.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.6.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.5.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.5.0 — the Storage pane 💾

Suggested by a user — thank you!

• The drive button in the header opens a pane listing the biggest files (>100 MB) sitting in Downloads, Desktop, Documents and Movies — size, location, and how long ago you last touched them. That 12 GB installer from last year finally gets seen.
• A free-space bar for your startup disk sits in the pane's corner (green → orange → red as it fills).
• Deliberately no delete button. Rows only reveal in Finder — removing files is a decision that stays yours.
• macOS may ask once for access to those folders the first time you open the pane — that's the standard privacy prompt.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.5.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.4.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.4.0

• ⚙ Settings panel — Alerts and Start-at-login now live in a proper settings screen with plain-English explanations of what each does, plus an Updates section with a check-now button. The footer is back to just "Show all".

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.4.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.3.0

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.3.0 — the awareness release

• Alerts — flip the footer toggle and get a notification the moment a new dev server starts listening, even with the dropdown closed. Dev servers only, never floods.
• Scheduled (cron) — your crontab -l entries, read-only, with humanized schedules.
• 🗑 Trash — parked agents can now be removed for good (recoverable from the Trash).
• Update check — a green download button appears in the header when a newer release exists. One GitHub API call at most every 6 h; still no telemetry.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.3.0.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README

bgviewer 1.2.1

bgviewer is a menu-bar kill-switch for macOS background services — see everything running behind your Mac and stop, pause, restart, or disable it, including the KeepAlive agents that respawn when killed.

New in 1.2.1

• Quit is now a ⏻ power button in the header; tidier footer

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AroraShreshth/bgviewer/main/install.sh | bash

Or download bgviewer-1.2.1.zip below, drag to /Applications, then xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/bgviewer.app (not notarized yet) or approve via System Settings → Privacy & Security.

• Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+ · SHA-256 in checksums.txt · README