Pearcleaner

Pearcleaner is a free, source-available Mac app cleaner that removes an application together with the files it leaves behind. Its author wrote it to learn how macOS handles application installation and uninstallation.

Applications go in by drag and drop, from a list or grid view with badges for web and iOS apps, from the command line, or by right-clicking in Finder with the bundled extension.

Around the uninstaller sits a set of related tools.

• Orphaned file search: finds leftovers belonging to applications that are already gone.
• Managers: separate views for Homebrew, packages, plugins, services, development environments and app updates.
• App lipo: strips unneeded architectures from universal apps without the lipo binary from the Xcode tools.
• Sentinel Monitor: a background watcher of roughly two megabytes that cleans up when an app hits the Trash.
• Customization: a theme system with custom colors, include and exclude directories, and adjustable search sensitivity.

Full Disk permission is required to search for files and a privileged helper to act on system folders, with macOS 13 Ventura through 26 Tahoe supported. The license is Apache 2.0 with the Commons Clause, which permits modification but prohibits monetization. Downloads come from the releases page or a Homebrew cask, and the author warns that other sites offering it are not his.

Development is on hold. The author cites a new job, joining a friend building a SaaS company, other life priorities, and no longer having a Mac for personal work, so issues, reviews and releases are paused indefinitely, though he says it is not abandoned.