System What macOS leaves behind
- Application Caches
- Sandboxed App Caches
- Application Logs
- Crash & Diagnostic Reports
- Saved Application State
- Trash
- Quick Look Thumbnails
- Temporary Files
- Downloaded Software Updates
- System Logs
macOS cleaner · Disk analyzer · Uninstaller
Deep clean
for macOS.
GobyStation finds and removes the data macOS and your apps leave behind, maps what is actually filling your disk, and gives you a handle on the apps, background jobs and processes running on your Mac — behind an interface that looks like a diving station rather than a control panel.
Only what rebuilds itself
is ever preselected
is ever preselected
Move to Trash by default
reversible, every time
reversible, every time
Nothing leaves your Mac
scans never call out
scans never call out
- 27Cleanup categories, each with a risk level
- 9Decks, from Dashboard to Maintenance
- 30Developer caches it knows by name
- 6Themes, all of them water
Nine decks, one station
Everything the disk is hiding, one panel each.
Every feature is called what it is. The water, the porthole and the fish carry the character; the panels do the work.
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Dashboard System overview
Live CPU, memory and disk vitals — down to swap, battery and thermals — a one-click scan, how much you have reclaimed all-time, and what to look at next.
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Cleanup Find and remove junk
Twenty-seven categories of removable data, each explained, each with a risk level.
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Disk Analyzer See what fills the disk
A full disk map: squarified treemap, sunburst, browsable tree, and composition by file type.
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Large Files Big and forgotten files
The largest files, and the ones nobody has touched in months.
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Duplicates Identical copies
Identical files, verified byte for byte — the same bytes, not just the same name.
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Applications Installed apps
Every installed app: size, last opened, architecture — and a complete uninstall that takes the leftovers with it.
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Startup Items Login items & daemons
Login items, launch agents and daemons, with a switch for each in the direct download.
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Processes Running processes
The process table, live, with quit — and force-quit in the direct download.
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Maintenance Repair and housekeeping
DNS flush, memory purge, Spotlight reindex, permission repair and other one-shot jobs — each says exactly what it does before you run it. Direct download only — the Mac App Store sandbox forbids them.
Cleanup · Find and remove junk
Twenty-seven kinds of junk, each explained.
Every category says what it is, why it is safe — or not — to remove, and what happens afterwards. Only items marked Safe, data that regenerates on demand, are ever preselected — and not even all of those: anything that would cost you hours to rebuild is left for you to choose. Review and Caution items are always yours.
- SafeRebuilds itself the next time it is needed. Preselected, unless rebuilding it would take hours.
- ReviewAlmost certainly junk, but look at the list first.
- CautionYours, not the system's. Never preselected.
Applications Data apps keep for themselves
- Mail Attachments
- iPhone & iPad Backups
- iOS Update Files
- macOS Installers
- Autosave Scratch Files
Internet Left over from browsing
- Browser Caches Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Zen, Orion
- Browser Service Workers
Developer Build output and toolchain caches
- Toolchain & Package Caches
- Derived Data, per project
- Stale node_modules in projects untouched for 90 days
- Unavailable Simulators
Leftovers From apps that are gone
- Files From Deleted Apps support folders, preferences, containers
- Broken Login Items
Downloads & Media What piled up
- Finished Installers
- Unpacked Archives
- Old Screenshots
- Interrupted Downloads
Developer · The single biggest win on a developer's Mac
Everything your build tools re-download on demand.
Safety
“A cleaner that removes the wrong thing is worse than no cleaner.”
Three rules carry that weight, and the app is built so that none of them can be stepped around.
One choke point
Nothing in the app calls the file-removal APIs directly. Every deletion goes through a single removal engine, which re-checks the safety guard even though the caller already did.
Explicit permission, not implicit trust
The guard works from allow-lists, not deny-lists. A path must sit inside a folder named as sweepable, must not be inside a protected tree, and must not itself be structural. Because /var, /tmp and /etc are symlinks into /private, every check runs against both spellings.
Reversible by default
The default is Move to Trash. Permanent deletion is available, clearly labelled, and requires a second explicit acknowledgement. Confirmation sheets list the actual paths, the risk breakdown and the byte count before anything happens — and a refusal by the guard is reported, never silently skipped. Every confirmed removal is then written to a local, append-only ledger: when it ran, the confirmation you were shown, the mode, and the exact paths removed, failed and refused.
Refused under every mode
Some places the guard will not enter no matter which mode is selected. Junk sweeps additionally never enter your own documents and media.
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It will not make your cloud provider download your files.
Folders under iCloud Drive and other cloud mounts are measured by what they report and never walked, so a survey cannot turn into 200 GB of traffic.
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It will not hang on a dead mount.
Every bulk filesystem walk runs on a supervised thread pool that notices a worker has stopped making progress, writes the path off, and carries on. Anything skipped is named in the interface, so the totals are never quietly wrong.
The other decks
Built for the rest of the job, too.
The same panels, the same honesty about what is known and what is not — applied to the disk, the apps, the things that start themselves, and the things that are running right now.
Squarified treemap, a sunburst, a browsable tree, and composition by file type. Cloud mounts are measured, never walked.
- XcXcode v26.0 · opened 1 mo ago4.31 GB
- DoDocker v4.87 · opened 2 mo ago2.30 GB
- BlBlender v5.2 248 d idle950 MB
- FiFigma v125.6 · opened 3 d ago480 MB
- ZoZoom v6.4 310 d idle290 MB
Blender — you have not opened this in 248 days.
ShowUninstall
Uninstall removes the app together with the 412 MB of caches, preferences and support files it has accumulated — or keeps the app and clears only those.
Size, version, architecture and last opened. Idle apps are flagged, and uninstalling takes the leftovers with it.
User agent Runs when you log in, as you.
- Docker Desktop helper~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.helper.plistrunning
- Software updater~/Library/LaunchAgents/updater.plist
- Creative suite launcher~/Library/LaunchAgents/launcher.plist
Global daemon Runs at boot, as root, before login.
- Backup agent/Library/LaunchDaemons/backup.plistadmin
- VPN tunnel service/Library/LaunchDaemons/tunnel.plistkeepalive
Login items, launch agents and daemons. In the direct download each has a switch, and anything outside your home folder is changed through macOS's own administrator prompt; the Mac App Store edition shows them and leaves the switching to System Settings.
CPU12.4%user 8.1 · system 4.3
Memory15.7 of 24 GB
- app 9.8 GB
- wired 3.6 GB
- compressed 2.3 GB
- free 8.3 GB
| Process | PID | Memory | CPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| GobyStation/Applications/GobyStation.app | 1 265 | 301 MB | 0.6 |
| Safari/Applications/Safari.app | 812 | 1.21 GB | 4.2 |
| WindowServer/System/Library/…/WindowServer | 171 | 612 MB | 3.8 |
| Xcode/Applications/Xcode.app | 1 104 | 2.33 GB | 2.1 |
| kernel_taskmacOS | 0 | 1.80 GB | 1.9 |
The process table, refreshing every two seconds, with quit — and force-quit in the direct download. System processes are hidden until you ask for them.
Design
Drawn, not decorated.
Everything is drawn procedurally. The background is a single clock driving four canvas layers — a depth gradient, interfering sine fields for caustics, angled light shafts, marine snow and a bubble curtain — so the whole ocean costs a handful of draw calls rather than hundreds of animated views. The water gets brighter and busier while a scan is running, and darkens as you move to deeper decks.
The theme lives in the visuals, not the vocabulary. Every feature is called what it is — Cleanup, Disk Analyzer, Startup Items — while the water, the porthole and the fish carry the character. The same water you are looking at right now, in fact.
On the cost of all that
An animated background is easy to write and easy to make expensive. The first working version idled at 67% of a core. Almost none of that came from drawing — it came from layout — and fixing it is what makes the water affordable.
- 18%of one core with everything running
- 6%with motion turned down to Still water
- 0%when GobyStation is not the active app
Motion can be turned down to Calm water or off entirely to Still water in Settings. Those settings remove the clocks rather than hiding the layers, so turning motion down actually costs less.
Six themes
All of them stay aquatic — the app should still feel like one body of water — but they differ in depth, temperature and light. Auto follows macOS: Tidepool in Light, Abyss in Dark.
Abyss
Deep teal and bioluminescent cyan. The original.
Coral Reef
Warm shallows — coral, turquoise and sunlight.
Kelp Forest
Green water and amber light under a canopy.
Arctic
Pale ice-blue, cold and very quiet.
Midnight
Almost black, with violet running lights.
Tidepool
A light theme, for bright rooms and daylight.
The optional assistant
An assistant you switch on — not one that watches.
GobyStation can ask a language model what an unfamiliar file is, whether removing it is risky, or what a process belongs to. It is the only part of the app that talks to anything outside the machine, so a few rules shape it.
- Off until you switch it on. Scans never call out. Every request is one button press, and the panel keeps the exact payload visible as a record.
- Names and metadata only. Paths, sizes, dates and identifiers leave the Mac; file contents never do.
- Your key, your file. If you bring your own key it is kept in a file only your account can read, in the app's own support folder — not the Keychain, and the interface says so rather than implying otherwise.
- Your provider, your key. Point it at Anthropic, at anything speaking the OpenAI chat shape, or at a model running on this Mac — where no key is needed at all. GobyStation runs no service of its own, so nothing you ask ever reaches us.
An answer is presented as what it is: a language model's opinion, not a check GobyStation performed. Where a list is capped, it says it is capped rather than printing the cap as a total. The safety guard still governs everything that is actually removed.
Permissions
Asked for plainly, once.
GobyStation comes in two editions. The direct download is unsandboxed: it reads and removes files as you, and nothing more. The Mac App Store edition is sandboxed, and asks you once to choose Macintosh HD so it can see the folders it cleans. Either way, a user agreement and privacy statement are shown on first launch and accepted before it does anything at all.
- Full Disk Access has no request API, so the app opens the right pane and floats its own icon for you to drag into the list — then notices on its own when you did. Without it, scans see less and say so plainly.
- Administrator rights, in the direct download, are asked for by macOS itself, through the standard prompt, and only for work outside your home folder — a system log, a global daemon. A scan never asks for a password, and never installs anything.
- One password, once. In the direct download, granting that installs a small privileged helper, after which those removals and switches stop prompting. It does two things and validates both on the root side: it refuses any job under
com.apple., refuses its own label, and refuses a domain that is not a real account. Settings can remove it. - The Mac App Store edition has no administrator path at all — no helper and no password prompt. So it has no Maintenance deck, shows startup items without switching them, quits processes without forcing them, and reports any removal that needs root as not done, with the reason.
Pricing
Free to keep. Pay for the parts that cost something.
The station is free. A subscription adds the assistant and the advanced features; a lifetime license buys them once. Everything marked Undetermined is a placeholder — the structure is settled, the numbers are not.
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Free The station
Freefor everyone, always
The cleaner, the disk map, the safety guard and the removal record. No assistant, no advanced features.
- The core decks. Which of the nine stay free: Undetermined
- Move to Trash by default, the safety guard, and the removal record.
- Six themes, six languages, and updates.
- No assistant. The assistant is a paid feature.
- No advanced features.
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Monthly Subscription
Undeterminedper month · cancel any time
A small monthly fee for the assistant and the advanced features, for as long as you keep it.
- Everything in Free.
- The assistant, with your own provider key — Anthropic, OpenAI-compatible, or a model on this Mac.
- The advanced features. Which ones: Undetermined
- Free trial: Undetermined
- Macs per subscription: Undetermined
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Lifetime One purchase
Undeterminedonce · yours for good
A bigger fee, paid once, for everything the subscription unlocks.
- Everything in Monthly, for good.
- The assistant: with your own provider key, for good.
- Major version upgrades: Undetermined
- Macs per license: Undetermined
| What you get | Free | Monthly | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| The nine decks — which stay free is undetermined, one decision each | |||
| Dashboard | Undetermined | ||
| Cleanup | Undetermined | ||
| Disk Analyzer | Undetermined | ||
| Large Files | Undetermined | ||
| Duplicates | Undetermined | ||
| Applications | Undetermined | ||
| Startup Items | Undetermined | ||
| Processes | Undetermined | ||
| Maintenance | Undetermined | ||
| The assistant | |||
| The assistant, with your own provider key Anthropic, OpenAI-compatible, or a local model. Your provider bills you for what it answers. | |||
| Advanced features — undetermined | |||
| Undetermined Advanced feature, to be named | |||
| Undetermined Advanced feature, to be named | |||
| Undetermined Advanced feature, to be named | |||
| Terms | |||
| Price | Free | Undetermined / month | Undetermined , once |
| Currency and regional pricing | — | Undetermined | Undetermined |
| Free trial | — | Undetermined | — |
| Macs per license | Any | Undetermined | Undetermined |
| Updates | while subscribed | Undetermined minor always; major versions open | |
| Where to buy This site, the Mac App Store, or both | — | Undetermined | Undetermined |
| Refunds | — | Undetermined | Undetermined |
Prices, trial, refund terms and the list of advanced features are placeholders while the plan is decided. Nothing on this section is for sale yet.
Surfacing soon
Coming soon to the Mac App Store.
GobyStation is being prepared for the App Store. Requires macOS 14 or later, and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
Coming soon on theMac App Store