After a scan, a cleaner has to decide what to show ticked. Tick too much and you may approve things you did not read. Tick nothing and every cleanup starts with a chore. This app’s design answers this with a preselection level you choose, and one firm rule about large files.
This page describes the design as it stands in the pre-alpha app, which runs on demonstration data for most screens and cannot clean anything yet. It may change before release.
Preselecting is not deleting
A preselected item is only ticked. Nothing happens until you review the full list and confirm. Confirmed items move to the Trash, and space is freed only when the Trash is emptied, which is a separate step with its own confirmation. The Trash guide explains why.
You can untick anything, and tick things that were not preselected.
The three levels
You choose the level in setup and can change it later in Settings. It applies to the next scan.
- Only safe. Caches, logs and old installers. These are the items apps or macOS can rebuild or that you can download again.
- Balanced. The same, plus duplicates and leftovers that the cleaner is confident belong to an app you removed. In the current build this level also ticks developer-file items that are not flagged as unclear.
- Everything. Also includes possible leftovers, the ones the cleaner is less sure about. Every item still needs your review.
In Only safe and Balanced, items flagged as unclear are left unticked, and their explanation says why. Everything also ticks possible leftovers, so review those individually.
Why large files are never preselected
Size alone does not tell whether a file is still needed. A large video may be the only copy of a family event, and a disk image may be the installer you need next month. So the app lists large and old files with their age and location, and you choose them yourself, at every level. Choosing one is an action you take, never a default.
What limited access changes
Without Full Disk Access, macOS keeps some locations out of reach. The app skips them, marks them as not scanned, and does not offer their contents for cleaning. Preselection only ever applies to what was actually scanned.
What this design does not claim
Preselection reduces the effort of choosing. It does not make a choice for you and it does not promise that every ticked item is unneeded, which is why the confirmation list exists. If you disagree with a default, untick it.