PureMac CLI

Clean developer caches, project artifacts, and disk clutter from the terminal. A command-line companion to the PureMac app that reuses the same cleaning logic and safety rules.

PureMac scans first and removes only what you approve. Cache and junk removal is permanent, but cloud state (iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive) and your config dotfiles (~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.gnupg, ~/.docker, ~/.claude, ...) are never touched.

Install

brew install momenbasel/tap/puremac-cli

Or build from source (requires a Swift 5.9+ toolchain):

cd cli
swift build -c release
.build/release/puremac --help

Commands

Command	What it does
puremac clean	Scan all categories (dev, junk, ai, trash), review, then remove
puremac clean dev	Package-manager and build-tool caches only
puremac clean junk	User logs and Xcode-generated junk only
puremac clean ai	AI-tool caches and logs only
puremac clean trash	Empty the user Trash and mounted-volume trashes
puremac purge [path]	Find removable build artifacts inside project folders
puremac analyze [path]	Show what is taking up disk space, largest first
puremac optimize [ram|purgeable]	Free inactive RAM and release purgeable disk space
puremac ignore add|remove|list <path>	Protect paths from every scan
puremac config	Show or change preferences

Flags on clean and purge:

• --force removes immediately, skipping the confirmation. Run without it first.
• --dry-run scans and reports what it would remove, deleting nothing.
• --json prints machine-readable output and never deletes.

What clean dev covers

Homebrew, npm, Yarn, pnpm, pip, Cargo, Go, CocoaPods, VS Code, JetBrains, Maven, Gradle, Poetry, uv, Bun, Deno, mise, Flutter/Dart, NuGet/.NET, Swift Package Manager, Docker, and OrbStack. Only precise cache and build directories are targeted, never a whole config directory such as ~/.cargo or ~/.docker.

What purge finds

node_modules, .next, .nuxt, .turbo, .svelte-kit, .angular, .parcel-cache, target, .build, DerivedData, Pods, .venv, venv, __pycache__, .pytest_cache, .mypy_cache, .tox, .ruff_cache, .gradle, and cmake-build-*, grouped by project. Artifacts older than seven days are preselected; newer ones are shown but left unchecked.

Safety

Every deletion passes one gate before it runs:

• Protected roots (/, $HOME, ~/Library, and other containers) can be scanned into but never removed themselves.
• Config and credential directories are on a hard denylist.
• Cloud File Provider state (iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive) is refused, checked against both the literal and symlink-resolved path.
• Symlinks are skipped, and no deletion follows a symlinked parent.
• Paths on your ignore list are excluded from every command.
• clean and purge print the full list of what will be removed and ask for confirmation before deleting anything.

Protect a path permanently:

puremac ignore add ~/Projects/important

Notes

• clean and junk are user-scoped and need no sudo.
• analyze is read-only; nothing is deleted while browsing.
• An interactive full-screen browser for analyze is not built yet; the current view ranks folders by size like du -d1 | sort.