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Mole: Clear 95GB of macOS Junk with One Command

Mole is a 38K-star macOS cleaner. mo clean removes caches deep in the system, mo uninstall removes apps plus all leftover files, mo purge clears node_modules and build artifacts. Free, open-source, dry-run safe.

Your disk is almost full. Open Storage and “Other” has eaten 80GB. CleanMyMac costs money. Manually hunting caches in Finder takes forever. Mole clears 95GB with one command.

What Is Mole

Mole is a macOS system cleaner built by Taiwanese developer tw93, written in Shell and Go, with 38K stars on GitHub. It brings the functionality of paid tools like CleanMyMac into a CLI β€” free, open-source, no system extension required.

Six core commands: clean (remove junk), uninstall (remove apps), optimize (system tuning), analyze (disk explorer), status (live dashboard), and purge (clear dev artifacts).

Installation

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# Homebrew
brew install tw93/tap/mole

# Or via install script
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash

Verify:

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mo --version

All subcommands use mo (not mole).

mo clean: Deep System Cleanup

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mo clean

Clears: system caches, log files, temp files, browser caches (Chrome, Safari, Firefox), Xcode derived data, iOS simulator caches, and app-specific cache directories.

Not sure what it’ll delete? Run a dry-run first:

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mo clean --dry-run

Lists every path and size it would remove. Confirm it looks safe, then run for real.

Want to protect specific items? Use the whitelist:

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mo clean --whitelist

An interactive UI lets you check off items to preserve.

mo uninstall: Remove Apps and All Their Leftovers

Dragging an app to the Trash leaves behind Library preferences, Launch Agents, support files β€” sometimes hundreds of megabytes. Mole’s uninstaller removes everything:

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mo uninstall

Shows a list of installed apps. Select what you want gone, confirm, and Mole deletes the app plus all its associated files. Ideal for trial software you used once.

mo purge: Clear Development Artifacts

This one is the most useful for developers. node_modules, Rust’s target/, Go build caches β€” these accumulate to tens of gigabytes fast:

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mo purge

Scans your home directory for projects and lists all purgeable artifacts with checkboxes. Select what to delete and confirm.

Scan specific directories:

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mo purge --paths ~/Sites,~/Projects

Preview first:

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mo purge --dry-run

mo analyze: Find Disk Space Hogs

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mo analyze

An interactive disk browser with percentage bars showing space usage per directory. Drill down level by level to find what’s eating your storage.

Analyze an external drive:

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mo analyze /Volumes

mo optimize: System Tuning

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mo optimize

Does several things: rebuilds the Spotlight index, flushes DNS cache, rebuilds the Launch Services database, and clears font caches. If your system has been running for a while and feels sluggish, this usually helps.

Use the whitelist to skip services you don’t want touched:

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mo optimize --whitelist

mo status: Live System Dashboard

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mo status

A real-time terminal dashboard showing CPU, memory, disk, network traffic, and battery status in ASCII charts. Faster than opening Activity Monitor for a quick health check.

Raycast / Alfred Integration

If you use Raycast or Alfred, you can trigger Mole directly from the launcher:

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# Override the terminal Mole opens in
MO_LAUNCHER_APP=iTerm mo clean

Or set it permanently in your shell config:

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# ~/.zshrc
export MO_LAUNCHER_APP=iTerm

Mole vs CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac has a subscription fee and a polished GUI, but navigating it takes multiple clicks. Mole is pure CLI β€” dry-run to preview, confirm, done. For developers who live in the terminal, it’s more direct.

What Mole doesn’t have: malware scanning and privacy protection features that CleanMyMac includes. For everyday junk removal, app uninstallation, and clearing dev artifacts, Mole covers everything a developer needs.

Developers β†’ Mole. General users β†’ CleanMyMac. That’s roughly the split.

References