Spare 0.5.4

Spare 0.5.4

• Blocked apps stand out on Apple Apps. They're listed first, say “Blocked” next to a filled Allow button, and their names are dimmed, so you can see at a glance what's blocked and let it open again.

Spare 0.5.3

Spare 0.5.3

• Permissions only System Settings can remove are marked as such. Tools known only by their file path that apply to every account sit in a part of macOS's permission database that System Integrity Protection guards, even from an administrator. Spare no longer asks for your password to try; these rows say "removed only in System Settings", and Open Settings… goes straight to the right page, such as Full Disk Access or Input Monitoring.

Spare 0.5.2

Spare 0.5.2

• Play keys without Music. Switch off “Play keys opening Music” on Apple Apps and Music quits the moment anything opens it, with no “can't be opened” message. The play, pause and skip keys keep working for Spotify, YouTube and every other player. A small Spare helper runs in the background while this is off; Undo and Uninstall remove it.
• If you switched the play keys off with 0.5.0 or 0.5.1, they work again, and Music is kept closed the new way.
• The note under Apple's built-in apps says that opening a blocked app shows macOS's “can't be opened” message, and how to avoid it for Music.

Spare 0.5.1

Spare 0.5.1

• Uninstall waits until Spare knows what it changed. Opened straight from the Apps page, it could show “nothing to undo” and uninstall before the list was ready.
• Undo leaves your own choices alone. It only offers changes of Spare's that are still in place. A setting you changed back yourself in System Settings stays as you set it.
• Deleting a privacy permission macOS refuses to change now says so and tells you where to remove it, rather than only that it's still there.
• Finder switches show the right state for settings once made with defaults write … YES, and update when you come back to Spare.
• Removing an audio driver always asks first, as sound stops for a moment, calls too.
• The sidebar no longer fades over the first page when you're at the top, and the arrow keys keep working after you fold the section you're in.

Spare 0.5.0

Spare 0.5.0

• Privacy & Debloat: four new pages, Apple Intelligence, Data Sharing, Apple Apps and Annoyances, with switches for what macOS does. You review every change before it's made. Settings only a profile can keep off go into one configuration profile, “Spare Privacy”, which a short guide walks you through installing and which Spare can remove again. Apple's built-in apps can't be deleted, so Spare keeps them from opening and takes them out of the Dock. Nothing under /System changes and System Integrity Protection stays on.
• Undo and Uninstall in Settings: tick what to put back from everything Spare changed, then, if you like, move Spare and its files to the Trash. docs/UNDO.md shows how to undo each setting by hand, too.
• Finder settings in Settings: path bar, status bar with the space left, full paths in the title, hidden files, filename extensions, folders on top, the Library folder, how new folders open, and more.
• Appearance: Automatic, Light or Dark. And you can stop Spare asking before it moves things to the Trash.
• Privacy permissions of programs known only by their path (applets, scripts, tools) can be deleted now, as can those of apps with spaces in their identifier. When something can't be deleted, the message has a Copy Error button.
• Right-click any file, app or leftover for Show in Finder and Copy Path. Rows on Leftovers, an app's details and Purgeable Space are selected by clicking anywhere on them.
• A cleaner sidebar: the main pages on top, then titled sections with a thin line along their pages. Sections fold away and stay that way; the list fades out at both ends, and the disk sits across the bottom.
• The Apps page points Spare's own row to Uninstall in Settings.

Spare 0.4.2

Spare 0.4.2

• Privacy permissions of removed apps can be deleted. macOS's own tool refuses apps that are no longer installed, so before, nothing was removed even though Spare said it was. Delete now removes them (one administrator password for those that apply to every account), then looks again and says exactly what's gone.
• Look Again reads everything again: every page you've opened, the sizes Spare had measured, the disk and the Trash.
• The message at the bottom no longer appears again when you switch pages.
• The highlight under the pointer sits evenly inside its card, and the Apps page's title bar looks the same all the way across.

Spare 0.4.1

Spare 0.4.1

• The window is now clearly see-through: the desktop shows through the paper, blurred, and it stays that way while Spare is in the background. With Reduce Transparency or Increase Contrast the paper is solid.
• Cards, buttons, check boxes, tags and dividers are now even, with smooth rounded corners and straight lines. The motion is unchanged.

Spare 0.4.0

Spare 0.4.0

New pages

• Purgeable Space shows what macOS counts as System Data and gives back by itself, part by part, as macOS's own clean-up service reports it. Free Now asks macOS to remove the files apps marked purgeable and downloads nothing uses any more. Time Machine's local snapshots, which had their own page, are listed here.
• macOS Downloads is rebuilt. One Free button moves what an old update left in "macOS Install Data" to the Trash, where History can put it back, and has macOS remove the downloads nothing needs. Apple Intelligence can be switched off to free its models, after a sheet that says exactly what changes, and switched on again. Every other download says what keeps it.
• Cloud Downloads lists files iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox keep downloaded while they're also online. Removing a download works like Finder's Remove Download: the file stays in the cloud.
• Simulators shows Xcode's simulators and simulator systems. The ones that can't run any more can be deleted together.
• Docker shows the disk file of Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Colima or Podman. Build cache, unused images and stopped containers are cleared with Docker's own commands.
• Browser Extensions lists extensions in every profile of Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox and Safari, and marks the ones that can read every website.

Cleanup

• Finds the caches Chromium browsers and Electron apps such as Slack and VS Code keep beside their data, and the copies Mail saved of attachments you opened.
• Your Call lists Messages attachments of 5 MB or more. They're never selected.

A new look

• Warm, frosted paper with the desktop showing through, hairline cards and springy motion, with a small drawing when a page has nothing to show. With Reduce Motion everything crossfades; with Reduce Transparency the paper is solid; with Increase Contrast the lines are stronger and the paper grain goes.
• Set in Bricolage Grotesque, with its optical sizes: open at caption size, tight for the big numbers.
• When something doesn't work, Spare says what happened and offers the next step, such as Try Again.
• All coloured text meets WCAG contrast in light and dark mode.
• The disk card in the sidebar shows free space, then the Trash.

Spare 0.3.2

Spare 0.3.2

• Spare is open source under the MIT License. The source, downloads and updates are now at github.com/lumen-xx/spare; this version checks for updates there.
• Settings links to the source repository.