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CoreTend 0.9.0 — Public Beta (arm64, unsigned)

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@ahmetbsbnr ahmetbsbnr released this 27 Jul 15:32
v0.9.0
a6aa3bf

CoreTend 0.9.0 (public beta) — First Public Release

This is the first release of CoreTend available to anyone. It is a beta,
and it is unsigned. Both of those words are meant literally; what follows
explains exactly what they cost you.

Read this before you install

CoreTend is not signed and not notarized. security find-identity -v -p codesigning reports zero valid identities on the build machine, because
signing requires a paid Apple Developer Program membership that this project
does not have. Nothing here is a workaround for that — the app is simply
unsigned, and says so.

The practical consequence: macOS will refuse to open it on first launch.
Gatekeeper will tell you the app "cannot be opened because the developer
cannot be verified." That warning is correct. macOS cannot verify the
developer, because no developer identity was attached.

To open it anyway, right-click (or Control-click) CoreTend in Finder and
choose Open, then confirm. Do this once; macOS remembers the decision for
that copy. Full instructions, including how to check the download's SHA-256
first, are in Documentation/INSTALL_UNSIGNED.md.

Do not disable Gatekeeper to install this. Nothing about this app is worth
turning off a system-wide protection, and the per-app step above is enough.

Verify what you downloaded before opening it. Each artifact's SHA-256 is
published with the release; compare it with shasum -a 256 <file>.

What it does

CoreTend is a local macOS maintenance tool. It finds reclaimable disk space,
duplicate and similar files, large and old files, leftover files from
uninstalled apps, browser caches, and cloud-storage usage, and it reports what
it finds.

It runs entirely on your Mac. No telemetry, no analytics, no account, no
network calls for its own purposes. There is nothing to sign up for.

Safety model

The parts that can delete are deliberately narrow, and most of the app cannot
delete at all.

  • Large & Old files, Similar Images, and Space Lens have no deletion path.
    They reveal in Finder and Quick Look. Nothing there can be removed by the
    app, automatically or otherwise.
  • Deletion goes to the Trash, through a safety layer that validates every
    path before acting. It is recoverable by design.
  • Duplicates never lose the keeper. The shallowest copy is retained and
    cannot be fully deselected, and any copy modified on disk since the scan is
    dropped from the selection before anything is trashed.
  • The browser cleaner is cache-only. It touches only files under
    Library/Caches, enforced by a path validator scoped to that directory, and
    only while the browser is closed. History and cookies are measured and
    shown     for transparency and are never deleted.
  • Automatic actions are limited to reversible, low-risk findings. Anything
    else waits for you.

Known limitations

  • Unsigned and not notarized (above). This is the largest one.
  • Built and tested on a single Mac — one Apple Silicon machine, one macOS
    version. There is no multi-hardware or multi-OS verification, and no claim of
    any.
  • Interactive VoiceOver was not verified. Accessibility work was done at the
    code level and is real, but the build environment has no display session, so
    the interactive screen-reader pass could not be run. It is not claimed as
    verified. See Documentation/VISUAL_QA.md.
  • The DMG has no saved icon positions. Writing them needs the Finder, which
    refused automation in the build environment. Drag-and-drop installation works
    regardless; the background and volume icon are present.
  • ClamAV is optional and installed separately. When present, CoreTend flags
    findings for your review. It does not quarantine anything on its own.
  • Trademark review is not complete. Screening found no mark containing
    "coretend" across roughly 141.8 million records on TMview, but COREXTEND
    (MIPS Tech, live in class 9) is one letter away and is tracked as a watch
    item. That is not a bar to a free beta; it does require attorney review
    before any filing or commercial use.

Requirements

macOS 14.0 or later, Apple Silicon (arm64). There is no Intel build.

Source, licence, and reporting

CoreTend is open source under Apache-2.0:
https://github.com/ahmetbsbnr/coretend

Report a security vulnerability privately through GitHub private vulnerability
reporting:
https://github.com/ahmetbsbnr/coretend/security/advisories/new

Please do not open a public issue for a vulnerability. Public issues are for
non-sensitive bugs and feature requests.

Verification for this release

296 tests in 58 suites pass. Debug and Release both build clean. Artifact
checksums, the source commit, and the build's tree state are recorded in the
release manifest generated alongside the artifacts.

Assets 6
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