AppCleaner

Uninstall Mac apps — leftovers and all.

A free, open-source, native macOS app uninstaller — inspired by FreeMacSoft's AppCleaner.

Dragging an app to the Trash leaves gigabytes of junk behind in ~/Library. AppCleaner finds all of an application's related files and removes them together with the app, safely, via the Trash.

Built with Swift + SwiftUI. No dependencies, no telemetry, no nonsense.

Features

• Drag & drop an app onto the window (or onto the Dock icon) to scan it
• Browse & search every app installed in /Applications and ~/Applications
• Thorough leftover detection across the user and system domains:
  • Application Support (including vendor subfolders like Google/Chrome)
  • Containers and Group Containers
  • Caches, HTTPStorages, WebKit, Cookies
  • Preferences (including ByHost)
  • Saved Application State, Autosave Information
  • Logs, DiagnosticReports, CrashReporter
  • LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons (matched by file name and plist contents)
  • Application Scripts
  • Package receipts in /private/var/db/receipts
• Matches by bundle identifier, app name, and executable name — conservatively, to avoid false positives
• Shows the size of every item, grouped by category, all checked by default
• Warns when the app is still running and lets you quit it first
• Deletes by moving to the Trash (recoverable); root-owned files can optionally be removed with an administrator prompt
• A built-in safety net refuses to touch anything outside ~/Library, /Library, /Applications, ~/Applications and receipt files
• Bonus: a CLI mode for scripting — AppCleaner --scan /Applications/Foo.app prints everything it would find, without deleting anything

Install

Download the latest AppCleaner-<version>.zip from the releases page, unzip it and drag AppCleaner.app to /Applications. Each release lists the archive's SHA-256 checksum and the exact build commit; verify what you're running with AppCleaner --version.

Or build from source (macOS 13+, Xcode command line tools):

git clone https://github.com/popyapp/app_cleaner.git
cd app_cleaner
make app        # builds build/AppCleaner.app
open build      # then drag AppCleaner.app to /Applications

Or during development:

swift run AppCleaner                                 # run the GUI
swift run AppCleaner --scan /Applications/Foo.app    # dry-run scan from the terminal

Safety

• Everything is moved to the Trash first — nothing is permanently deleted unless you explicitly confirm the administrator fallback for root-owned files.
• The scanner only ever suggests files matching the app's bundle identifier or full name; short/generic names are excluded from name matching.
• The remover refuses paths outside the known Library/Applications locations.

Still: review the list before clicking Remove. It's your disk.

MCP server (AI agent integration)

AppCleaner doubles as an MCP server: run the binary with the --mcp flag and it speaks JSON-RPC over stdio, so any MCP-capable AI agent (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, ...) can list, scan and uninstall applications directly — no GUI needed, no extra dependencies.

Setup

Claude Code:

claude mcp add appcleaner -- /Applications/AppCleaner.app/Contents/MacOS/AppCleaner --mcp

Any other MCP client, via the standard stdio server config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "appcleaner": {
      "command": "/Applications/AppCleaner.app/Contents/MacOS/AppCleaner",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then just ask your agent: "uninstall MacDown and all its leftovers" or "which of my installed apps has the largest leftovers?".

Tools

Tool	Arguments	Description
list_apps	—	List installed apps (name, bundle id, version, path)
scan_app	app	Read-only: report every related file with category, size and whether removal needs elevated access
uninstall_app	app, confirm	Move the app bundle and all leftovers to the Trash
remove_paths	app, paths, confirm	Remove a subset of an app's files (e.g. only caches)

The app argument accepts a path to a .app bundle, a bundle identifier, or an app name (fuzzy-matched; ambiguous names are rejected with the candidate list). Results are returned as structured JSON, including per-item size_bytes, category and needs_admin.

Safety rails for agents

On top of the general safety guarantees above:

• Destructive tools require an explicit confirm: true argument — a bare call returns an instructive error instead of deleting anything
• remove_paths only accepts paths the scanner itself reported for that app; arbitrary paths are refused, so a confused agent cannot delete unrelated files
• uninstall_app refuses to run while the target app is running
• The app bundle is trashed last and kept if any leftover was blocked, so a re-scan can finish the job after permissions are fixed
• Everything still goes to the Trash, so any mistake is recoverable
• If macOS privacy protection (TCC) blocks an item, the response includes a hint explaining the Full Disk Access fix instead of a bare failure

Full Disk Access

macOS protects app sandbox containers (~/Library/Containers, ~/Library/Group Containers) with privacy controls (TCC). Not even administrator rights can bypass this — sudo rm fails with "Operation not permitted".

To let AppCleaner remove those items:

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access
2. Add (or enable) AppCleaner
3. Relaunch AppCleaner and remove the items again

AppCleaner detects this itself: it shows a banner when a scan finds protected containers, and if a removal is blocked it offers to open the right settings pane. When some leftovers are blocked, the app bundle is deliberately kept so you can re-scan and finish the job afterwards.

License

MIT