Grau (G°)Work in progress

A free, open-source, native macOS utility for cleaning, inspecting, and managing your Mac's storage. CleanMyMac for people who'd rather not pay $40/year.

Status: ✅ v1.7.0 (stable). All five features functional. Self-update via Sparkle with delta updates. Homebrew Cask formula shipped. Per-file parallel hashing in the duplicates scanner. Disk Lens has a treemap view. Duplicates scan is cancellable. Trash view has filters. In-app Notification Center. Dashboard reads real data and shows recent scans. New in 1.7: Configurable retention windows, user-defined auto-clean rules, per-rule notification cooldowns.

Features

• 🧹 Junk cleaner — caches, logs, browser data, dev caches, iOS backups. Five categories with safe defaults; everything moves to ~/.Trash, never deleted.
• 📦 App uninstaller — uninstalls .app bundles and their residual data (caches, preferences, app support, group containers).
• 🔍 Disk lens — visualize your disk as a Top-N list or a squarified treemap. Drill down to see what's eating space.
• 🪞 Duplicates finder — find byte-identical files anywhere. 3-phase pipeline (size → partial hash → full SHA-256). Cancellable mid-scan. Defaults to keeping the oldest copy.
• 🛠 Dev mode — track node_modules, 16 package manager caches, Docker, iOS Simulators, Xcode DerivedData, and archives. Hidden behind a Settings toggle.
• ↩️ Trash restore — every clean writes a JSON manifest. The in-app Trash view shows past operations and lets you restore a whole batch in one click.
• 🔔 Notification Center — every alert Grau fires is also persisted to ~/.grau/notification-log.json. The in-app Notifications view shows the full history with per-rule cooldown status.
• 🧹 Retention windows — configure how long Grau keeps notification log entries, trash manifests, and scan history. Defaults: 90d / 30d / forever. New in 1.7.
• ⚙️ Auto-clean rules — user-defined "if X then Y" automations. Four condition kinds (trash size, junk size, disk usage, time of day) and three action kinds. New in 1.7.
• ⏱ Per-rule notification cooldowns — each alert rule can be configured with a custom minimum gap between fires (no cooldown / 1h / 6h / 12h / 1d / 3d / 1w). New in 1.7.
• 📦 Sparkle delta updates — patch releases download a small diff, not the full DMG. New in 1.7.

First principles

1. The user owns their data. Grau never silently deletes anything. Everything goes to ~/.Trash, with a JSON manifest in ~/.grau/trash-manifests/.
2. Be a good citizen. Reads what it needs, asks for Full Disk Access once, never exfiltrates. No third-party network calls in v1.
3. Look and feel native. Sidebar, system materials, SF Symbols, smart dark mode, dynamic type.
4. Be fast. Scans in seconds, not minutes. Six Dev-mode inspectors run in parallel.
5. No surprise writes. Every destructive action is preceded by a confirmation; every confirmable category is classified safe or userCaution.

Install

# Homebrew (recommended)
brew install --cask grau

# Or: download the latest DMG from the Releases page and
# drag Grau.app to /Applications.

After install, launch Grau and grant Full Disk Access (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access). Grau uses this to read System Caches and Logs.

Updates are delivered automatically via Sparkle. Use the Grau → Check for Updates… menu item to check on demand.

Build

Native Swift + SwiftUI. macOS 14+ (Sonoma) and up. Apple Silicon and Intel. One third-party runtime dep in v1.1: Sparkle for self-update.

# Prereqs: Xcode 15+, Swift 5.9+, xcodegen
brew install xcodegen

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/lucianodiisouza/grau
cd grau

# Generate the Xcode project
xcodegen generate

# Run the graucore unit tests (177 tests)
cd graucore && swift test

# Build the macOS app
xcodebuild -project grau.xcodeproj -scheme grau -configuration Debug build

Package a release DMG

./scripts/make-dmg.sh 1.0.0
# → dist/Grau-1.0.0.dmg

# Optional: notarize for Gatekeeper
./scripts/notarize.sh dist/Grau-1.0.0.dmg \
    --team-id <TEAM_ID> \
    --keychain-profile <KEYCHAIN_PROFILE>

Project layout

grau/
├── grau/                       # App target (SwiftUI + AppKit)
│   ├── DesignSystem/           # Colors, spacing, 7 components
│   ├── Features/               # Dashboard, Clean, Uninstaller, DiskLens,
│   │                           # Duplicates, DevMode, Onboarding, Settings
│   ├── grauApp.swift           # @main
│   └── grau.entitlements
├── graucore/                   # Swift Package — pure logic, unit-testable
│   ├── Sources/graucore/       # 41 modules across 9 domains
│   └── Tests/graucoreTests/    # 155 tests
├── docs/                       # The full plan, architecture, design
├── scripts/                    # DMG + notarize helpers
├── .github/workflows/          # CI
├── project.yml                 # XcodeGen config
├── CHANGELOG.md
└── LICENSE                     # MIT

Documentation

• docs/README.md — start here
• docs/PLAN.md — what & why (vision, scope, 5-slice plan)
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — how (modules, data model, concurrency)
• docs/DESIGN.md — visual language
• docs/PERMISSIONS.md — Full Disk Access story
• docs/DATA-SOURCES.md — every path Grau touches
• docs/HANDOFF.md — implementation guide for each task
• docs/TASKS.md — the project tracker
• docs/REVIEW.md — the staff-eng review that corrected the plan
• docs/SPARKLE-DELTAS.md — Sparkle delta update workflow (v1.7)
• docs/MANUAL-TEST.md — the pre-release checklist
• docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md — known issues + fixes

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT.