Hello,
A free /open-source utility providing much of the same features as CleanMyMac, AppCleaner, DaisyDisk, and iStat: GitHub - tw93/Mole: š¹ Deep clean and optimize your Mac..
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Just to add, it is a terminal based utility, free and open source. I installed and it seems to work OK.
I read about this and was impressed with the description.
i downloaded it, installed it with Homebrew, it started but then after one run froze.
This happened again. So I got to test two of the functions.
I wrote Github and got a response saying install this update, will be in the next release.
The update complained that Homebrew wouldnt let it proceed.
So I had Homebrew uninstall Mole, then ran the new package again.
It didnāt work either.
I gave up.
Frankly having tested 2 of the 4 cleanup functions offered, I wasnāt impressed with their scope or flexibility. And by the end of the experience have abandoned the program.
Some Github stuff is a real boon. But not all.
I canāt endorse this one.
Bob
2 Likes
This also got my on my first run. Some of the steps take a relatively long time depending on how much it had to clean (I remember a āpauseā for around a minute on one of the steps?) during which there is no progress reported on screen.
Perhaps only an issue if you sit and watch it run. If you let it run whilst you do something else youāll be OK.
My experience with this app has so far been positive. I first installed it via Homebrew on a test MBP running 15.7.3. First, I tested āmole clean ādry-runā, then let it clean. No problems. Then started mole without options to play with the menu. I tested Uninstall, Optimize, Analyze, and Status; no problems. Plenty of feedback on screen as to what the app was doing. So, I installed it on two iMacs also running 15.7.3. Same experience; no problems. Mole works for me as advertised.
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Not sure how comfortable Iād be, installing a product on my machine thatās called āmoleā! 
(espionage) An internal spy; a person who involves themself with an enemy organisation, especially an intelligence or governmental organisation, to determine and betray its secrets from within.
ā Wiktionary
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Matt,
The program delivered the clean-up action I selected and then froze.
It did not take a minute to deliver results, definitely less.
Donāt know what the issue is.
Thanks
Bob
My point was: how do you know it was frozen and not just busy? The program has multiple steps, ec of which gives a result, but some of which take much longer than others, yet there is no progress bar.
My understanding, given my own experience, is that you started the process but did not wait long enough for it to complete.
Matt,
You may be entirely correct.
I saw the program complete two of the four actions offered and then freeze.
I found the product of the action relatively limited but the output shown matched the article I started from, so I assumed it was complete.
After two such freezes, the difficulty of the fix offered and its failure to resolve the problem led me to conclude that, for my purposes, the program offered little.
Again, you may be entirely correct and my limited 45 years of personal computing experience starting with an Apple ][ plus insufficient for this problem. But it is a modest enough issue I feel comfortable just moving on.
Thanks for your interest in my posting.
Best,
Bob
1 Like
I donāt blame you.
I feel that itās a user experience issue with the app. They should show it is busy even if itās a terminal app.
When a program appears to have frozen, I usually try to run Activity Monitor (itās in /Applications/Utilities/) to see if the program is using a reasonable percentage of CPU. If it is using 10% or more, that usually means it is doing what it is supposed to do, though sometimes that can mean it is spinning its wheels unproductively.
Unless, of course, it is using ~100% cpu, which usually indicates a runaway process, which can also lead to an apparent hang.
I appreciate the effort all of you are making in trying out mole, but I wonder why. Can mole do something that cannot be done by other means? In particular, can this be done without resorting to Terminalās CLI? Why should anyone are?
Yes. And no.
It essentially a (free) cli tool roughly equivalent to some parts of (paid) Clean My Mac.
Itās a useful tool. Like with any app some people will care about it, others will not. Thatās OK.
2 Likes
Sure, sometimes. It depends on what the app is supposed to do, of course. It was just an easy thing to look at. The user needs to have some idea of the appās likely behavior.
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A SPOD means that the window under the cursor is not responding to UI events. It could be because the app has hung, or it could be because thereās a bug causing it to not respond quickly enough.
For example, DNS name resolution is often done in-line with an appās normal processing. But if there are network issues, the API to resolve a name might take a long time (minutes) to succeed or fail. If the call is being made from the event-handling thread, that will cause an SPOD.
Iāve also seen CPU-intensive tasks (e.g. video encoding) consume so much CPU power that the UI thread just canāt respond quickly, leading to intermittent SPODs. I remember frequently seeing this in iMovie and iDVD, many year ago.
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Resort to a CLI?
The more I use the GUI, the better I like CLI.
I prefer a scriptable work flow.
YMMV