Pruneo FAQ

Pruneo is a free app for macOS 14 or later that scans your Mac, sorts what is safe to delete, and keeps everything in quarantine so you can undo it.

Yes. There is no subscription, no Pro tier, no ads and no locked features, and you don't need an account. If you like, you can make a one-time contribution from US$ 5; with it, the app updates itself.

Pruneo puts every item in one of three levels: safe (green, it rebuilds itself), check (yellow, it asks you to confirm) and locked (it can't be deleted). Everything it cleans goes to quarantine first, so you can undo it. The only exception is emptying the Trash, which asks for its own confirmation.

Pruneo doesn't delete right away: it moves what you clean to a quarantine. By default it's 48 hours, and in Settings you can choose from 24 hours to 30 days. Until then you can restore it with one click in the app or with pruneo quarantine restore in the terminal. After that, it is deleted automatically.

System files, SSH and GPG keys, credentials, the Keychain, iCloud Drive, Mail, Messages, .git folders, .env files, certificates, the Photos library, Docker's disk image, git project roots and the Spotlight index.

The app has no telemetry, analytics or account: what it finds on your disk stays on your Mac. Once a day it checks for a new version and only includes the version, the language, whether you are a member and whether your Mac is Intel or Apple Silicon (you can turn this off). If you connect an AI agent or turn on Help out, folder names and sizes are sent, never the contents of your files. The details are in the privacy policy.

It's optional. If you connect an AI agent (Apple Intelligence, Ollama, Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI), Pruneo asks it about the large folders it doesn't know yet, with only their names and sizes. What it suggests is never preselected and asks for confirmation. If you turn on Help out, what several Macs agree on is recognized automatically on every Mac. With pruneo mcp, you can also ask your agent to scan and clean what's safe, always to quarantine.

CleanMyMac is a very complete, paid general cleaner. Pruneo also finds the development junk CleanMyMac doesn't check, and it does it faster, lighter and for free.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later. It can't be installed on older versions.

Yes. The same download works on Macs with Apple Silicon (M1 and later) and with Intel.

It scans your folders in parallel and remembers the size of the ones that didn't change, so every scan after the first is much faster. It's also light: it installs no helper processes and uses 0.1% CPU when idle.

No. Pruneo looks at which apps and tools you actually use and builds the sections on its own: development (projects, Xcode, Node, Python, Docker, local AI and editors), design and video (Adobe, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom and Figma) and music (Logic Pro, Ableton, FL Studio and GarageBand). The general sections are always there.

First, in Settings, turn off «Open at startup», and in Scheduled turn off cleanups and remove the terminal command if you use them. Then quit Pruneo and drag it from Applications to the Trash. To leave nothing behind, also delete the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Pruneo, which holds the history and the quarantine (anything in quarantine is lost).

Pruneo checks once a day for a new version and tells you. If you contributed, it installs in one click; if not, download the new version from this website and replace the app in Applications.