Clean My Mac

Shell script to clean macOS using 2 commands (1 if already installed).

Cleaning the OS can improve system performance. With a sizeable amount of data in the system's cache - a lot of which is likely outdated - speed and performance can be impacted.

Another reason to clean the OS is to ensure privacy. Generally, caches contain private information. Clearing this information reduces the risk of it getting out if the system is compromised in any context.

The clean-my-mac.sh script clears data such as outdated caches and logs from macOS.

Setup / Installation

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/adamalston/Clean-My-Mac.git

2. Run: sh clean-my-mac.sh

Note: Any of the instructions in the script can be disabled by adding a hash mark (#: shell comment syntax) to the beginning of the line that the instruction is on.

How it works

Instruction: rm -rfv /path/to/file > /dev/null 2>&1

• rm is for remove
• -rfv is three commands:
  • -r: recursive, remove directories and their contents, folders inside will also be removed
  • -f: force, ignore nonexistent files, never prompt
  • -v: verbose, show what is happening
• > is for redirect
• /dev/null is a black hole where any data sent, will be discarded
• 2 is the file descriptor for Standard Error (stderr)
• & is the symbol for file descriptor (without it, the following 1 would be considered a filename)
• 1 is the file descriptor for Standard Output (stdout)

Therefore > /dev/null 2>&1 redirects the output of the program to /dev/null - including both the stderr and stdout