Peel 1.0.1

The first public release of Peel, a free, open source uninstaller and cleaner for macOS, which also fine-tunes your Mac and sets up Terminal.

Peel removes an app together with what it left behind, and shows for each file why it belongs to the app and how sure Peel is. It deletes nothing itself: what it removes goes to the Trash, and History puts it back.

Requires macOS Tahoe 26 or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon or an Intel processor.

Install

• Download Peel-1.0.1.dmg below, open it, and drag Peel into your Applications folder. It's signed by its developer and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any app you download from the web.
• Homebrew: brew install --cask tuguidragos/tap/peel, which also puts the peel command on your path.

Peel opens without any permission and does more with each one: Full Disk Access to see everything an app leaves behind, App Management to move another developer's app, and its helper for the folders only an administrator can change. Home shows which ones are on and takes you to the right place in System Settings.
What Peel asks for, and why

What's in it

• Uninstalls apps together with the files they leave behind, and shows for each file why it matched and how sure Peel is.
• Finds files left by apps that are gone, caches of developer tools, what builds left in your projects, duplicate files and folders, installers and backups, files already safe in iCloud, large and old files, and what is taking up space.
• Resets an app's settings without uninstalling it, after saving them so they can be put back.
• Lists background items, extensions, plug-ins, installer receipts, Homebrew packages, and software that still needs Rosetta.
• Changes settings macOS has but doesn't show, and puts back what was there when you turn one off.
• Gives Terminal one of 29 dark themes, and sets up the command line: a prompt, the settings zsh, Git, and ssh already have, and command-line tools worth having.
• Moves what it removes to the Trash instead of deleting it, and keeps a History that puts it back and lists what it didn't move, with the reason.
• Leaves alone the files, folders, and apps you exclude.
• Checks your apps for updates, and watches the Trash for apps you remove yourself.
• Says in About when a new version of Peel is out, with where to get it, and downloads nothing itself.
• Exports what is installed and where each app came from, as JSON, CSV, plain text, or a Brewfile.
• Comes with the peel command for Terminal, a Finder extension, and actions for Shortcuts.
• Speaks English and 17 other languages.

Checksums

File	SHA-256
Peel-1.0.1.dmg	9074abfb4529b7e941cf08c3c0dc7f04bf1c9ca6126546b944b26308fb125d29
Peel-1.0.1.zip	196bd11a98621e7895d84d8685a1fa86e72de02cecf812d6dd567575eb8b3939

The disk image is for people, and the zip is for Homebrew. To check a download, run shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Peel-1.0.1.dmg in Terminal and compare what it prints with the line above.

Found a problem? Open an issue. A security problem is reported privately instead, as SECURITY.md describes.