macOS disk cleanup for developers

Safety tiers, CleanHints, and stack detection — built from a real dev machine audit.

Inspired by dwcleaner — the original developer-aware macOS cleaner that caught what CleanMyMac and Mole missed.
$ brew install srmdn/tap/plong

★ Star on GitHub v0.2.5
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Safety Tiers

T1–T4 classification with hard enforcement. Tier 3 and 4 items are locked — plong won't delete them even if you try. Every deletion is confirmed and home-directory bounded.

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Clean Hints

Locked items don't just show a lock icon. They tell you exactly how to clean them: "chrome://settings/clearBrowserData", "docker system prune -a", "Slack → Settings → Clear Cache".

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Developer-Aware

79 known targets from a real developer machine audit. Detects your stack (Node, Go, Rust, Python, Docker) and surfaces relevant waste first. Unknown dirs get heuristic classification, not ignored.

$ plong scan

Terminal — plong scan
scanning your mac... ── TIER 1: Safe caches (auto-regenerate) · 31.6 GB ── ✓ 7.2 GB Homebrew cache Brew download cache system ✓ 4.1 GB npm cache Node package manager cache node ✓ 2.8 GB System caches pip, HuggingFace, SDK caches system ✓ 1.9 GB Go module cache Downloaded Go modules go ✓ 1.2 GB Bun cache Bun package manager cache node ... +26 more (14.4 GB) ── TIER 2: Reinstallable toolchains · 18.3 GB ── ✓ 5.6 GB Node.js versions Node version manager installs node ✓ 4.2 GB Android SDK Android SDK and emulators mobile ✓ 2.1 GB Cursor editor data Cursor IDE data editor 🔒 8.2 GB Docker data Docker images, containers docker ✓ 1.7 GB Rust toolchain Rustup toolchain installs rust ... +9 more (8.2 GB) ── TIER 3: App-level cleanup required · 15.8 GB ── 🔒 4.1 GB Chrome profile Browser profile with bookmarks browser 🔒 3.2 GB Slack cache Slack workspace cache messaging 🔒 2.5 GB iOS backups iPhone/iPad backups apple ... +3 more (6.0 GB) ── TIER 4: Manual review required · 22.1 GB ── 🔒 12.4 GB Downloads folder Review DMGs, zips, old files system 🔒 5.3 GB VS Code workspaces Old workspaces — review editor ... +3 more (4.4 GB) ── Code editors ── VS Code 45 extensions · 12 stale · 1.2 GB Cursor 28 extensions · 8 stale · 890 MB Windsurf 12 extensions · 3 stale · 340 MB 23 stale extensions total — 2.4 GB reclaimable (Tier 2) ── Stale disk images ── 5 DMGs in ~/Downloads — 3.2 GB total Run rm ~/Downloads/*.dmg to remove (review first) ── Large old files (>100 MB, 90+ days) ── 1.2 GB ~/Downloads/old-backup.tar.gz (modified 2025-01-15) 450 MB ~/Downloads/Video.mp4 (modified 2025-03-02) ──────────────────────────────────────────────── Total reclaimable: 85.3 GB 'plong clean' — free Tiers 1-2 · 'plong hogs' — full list · docs/cleanup-guide.md

Cleanup Tiers

TierDescriptionExamples
1 — Safe Auto-regenerates npm, bun, pip, go, Homebrew caches
2 — Reinstall Manual recovery nvm, rustup, Android SDK
3 — App cleanup Clear in-app Chrome, Telegram, Docker
4 — Manual review Your files Downloads, DMGs, old projects
∞ — Never Permanent data .ssh, .gitconfig, Keychains, iCloud

Install & Use

Install

brew install srmdn/tap/plong

Requires macOS 11+. Single binary, zero dependencies.

Build from Source

go install github.com/srmdn/plong/cmd/plong@latest

Requires Go 1.26+. Pure stdlib — no third-party packages.

Commands

plong scan plong clean plong serve plong hogs plong history

Safe Preview

plong clean --dry-run

Preview what would be deleted before touching anything.

GitHub Cleanup Guide Releases Issues

MIT License · plong v0.2.5 · Maintained by @srmdn