Lifetime Mac
Menu bar & system utilities

AppCleaner

Finds the preferences and caches an app leaves behind

Price: Free

FreewareNothing to buy

Checked on freemacsoft.net, the page Get it opens.

The catch

No build listed for macOS 27 yet — the newest release on the page stops at macOS 26

The full picture

Development is quiet and it shows: as of today the newest listed build is 3.6.8, "For macOS Mojave up to Tahoe", with nothing yet listed for macOS 27, so check the download page before relying on it. It matches leftovers by name and bundle identifier, which means it can miss oddly named files and can occasionally propose one you want to keep — read the list before confirming. It uninstalls apps and does nothing else: no cache sweeping, no browser extension removal, no general system cleanup.

Replaces
CleanMyMac, Setapp$40 a year.
Developer account
None needed

What you’re buying

Dragging an app to the Trash leaves most of it on disk: preference plists, caches, launch agents, a folder in Application Support, sometimes a login item that keeps failing quietly. AppCleaner collects those, shows you the list, and removes the set. Its best feature is SmartDelete, a background watcher that notices you trashed something and offers to finish the job, so you stop having to remember the tool exists at the moment you need it.

It has been free since 2007, with no paid tier, no store page and no upsell — only a donate link. The catch arrives in another form: development is quiet, and right now the newest build on the download page covers Mojave through macOS 26, with nothing listed for macOS 27. Check the page before you count on it.

Because it matches files by name and bundle identifier it is not magic. It can miss an oddly named leftover, and it will occasionally offer up something you want to keep, so read the list rather than clicking through. It also does none of the other things cleaner suites advertise — no cache sweeping, no browser extensions, no "system junk". It uninstalls apps, which is the only part of a paid cleaner most people ever used.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • When someone asks for an uninstaller on these forums this is the name that comes back, usually with a note that the poster has run it for years without trouble
  • Owners like that it does one job and stops — no system-junk sweeping and no upsell — and that you drag an app onto it exactly as you would onto the Trash

Criticised

  • A standing counter-argument is that it does not find everything: experienced posters say it can leave files behind and that hunting them down by hand is more thorough
  • Others argue the whole category is unnecessary on macOS, since most leftovers are a few kilobytes of plists and anything with a real installer ships its own uninstaller

Details

Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
Minimum macOS
macOS 10.14
Developer
FreeMacSoft
The AppCleaner page at freemacsoft.net
The developer’s own page. freemacsoft.net, captured 22 Sep 2026

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