superclean

Free CleanMyMac replacement — reclaim gigabytes of macOS cache and junk from one command.

What problem does it solve?

macOS quietly hoards gigabytes: app caches that never expire, stale logs, a Trash you forgot, Xcode DerivedData, months-old Downloads, and package-manager caches (npm/yarn/Homebrew/Docker). Apps like CleanMyMac charge a subscription to sweep them. superclean does the same cleanup in one command — --dry-run first so you see every byte before it's touched, per-file error handling so one protected folder never aborts the run.

Cleans by default:

• User caches (~/Library/Caches)
• User logs (~/Library/Logs)
• Trash (~/.Trash)
• Downloads older than 30 days
• Xcode DerivedData
• Safari's sandboxed cache (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/...) — Chrome/Arc/other browsers already get swept by the ~/Library/Caches wipe above, no separate step needed for those
• npm, yarn and Homebrew caches (via their own commands)
• Docker: stopped containers, unused networks and images (docker system prune)

macOS only.

Install

Global:

npm install -g @jotafierro/superclean
superclean

Without installing:

npx @jotafierro/superclean

Local dev clone, run it as superclean without publishing:

npm run build
npm link      # or: pnpm link --global | yarn link
superclean --dry-run

npm unlink -g @jotafierro/superclean to remove it.

Usage

superclean --dry-run             # show what would be deleted, delete nothing
superclean                        # asks for confirmation, then cleans
superclean -y                     # skip the confirmation prompt (cron/CI)
superclean --big-files [path]     # list files over 100MB (default: $HOME), sorted by size, top 30 — lists only, deletes nothing
superclean --big-files --min-size 500 --limit 10   # adjust threshold (MB) and result count

Config

Optional, in ~/.superclean.json. Any missing field falls back to its default (all true except dockerPruneAll).

{
  "userCaches": true,
  "userLogs": true,
  "trash": true,
  "downloads": true,
  "xcodeDerivedData": true,
  "safariCache": true,
  "npmCache": true,
  "yarnCache": true,
  "homebrewCache": true,
  "dockerCleanup": true,
  "dockerPruneAll": false,
  "downloadsMaxAgeDays": 30
}

dockerPruneAll: true adds -a --volumes to the Docker prune: also removes non-dangling images and volumes (can delete container database data). Leave it false unless you know what you're doing.

Old node_modules

superclean doesn't touch project node_modules, that's a different problem. Use npkill for that, interactive and built exactly for it:

npx npkill

Development

npm run build   # compile cleaner.ts to dist/
npm run start   # run dist/cleaner.js
npm test         # build + run the node:test suite

npm run start needs -- before flags, otherwise npm swallows them: npm run start -- --big-files, not npm run start --big-files. Or skip npm run and call node dist/cleaner.js --big-files directly.