Adam Conway
2026-01-31 15:31:00
macOS has a reputation for being a less user-controlled experience, but to be honest, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Users have a huge amount of control when it comes to the operating system, and even if there are more hoops to jump through, there are countless tweaks and useful software packages that you can install. And one I recently found and instantly loved is called Mole.
What is Mole?
A Swiss Army Knife for your Mac
Mole is a free, open-source command-line utility that handles deep system cleanup, app uninstallation, disk analysis, and real-time monitoring, and it works directly from your terminal. Created by tw93, the developer behind Pake (a popular tool for converting websites into desktop apps), Mole consolidates the functionality of apps like CleanMyMac, AppCleaner, DaisyDisk, and iStat Menus into a single lightweight binary. There are no upsells or subscriptions, and it’s just a straightforward system maintenance tool that actually works.
The “mo clean” command is the centerpiece of Mole, as It scans your system for caches, logs, browser leftovers, and temporary files that quietly accumulate over time. I ran it on my MacBook and watched it identify 40 GB of reclaimable space, mostly left over from developer tools like Xcode and Node.js, along with browser caches and other bits and pieces dotted around the system.
One feature I especially appreciate is that Mole allows you to show what exactly it’s going to delete before it does anything. You can run “mo clean –dry-run” to preview the cleanup without committing to it. Given that we’re dealing with system files, it makes it easy to test it out and see what it’ll do before you let it wipe away potentially-useful files. If there are specific paths you want to protect, you can add them to a whitelist using “mo clean –whitelist”. For example, I noticed that the Spotify cache is protected by default, meaning that your music will still stay downloaded.
There’s one major gripe I have with macOS when it comes to uninstalling apps, and it’s that deleting an app or moving it to the Trash doesn’t actually remove everything. Leftovers like launch agents, preferences, caches, and other remnants stick around, silently taking up space. Mole’s uninstaller (“mo uninstall”) goes deeper. It scans your system to find and remove all the scattered leftovers associated with an application that was removed, and can do so with applications that were installed and removed before Mole was even installed.
The interface presents a list of installed apps with their sizes, and you can select which ones to remove. It’s essentially what AppCleaner does, but without needing a separate GUI application running in the background. There’s a lot more Mole can do too, but these are its most useful features.
Mole can also do system monitoring and analysis
More than just a storage cleaner
Mole isn’t just for cleaning up your uninstalled applications, even though that’s arguably its best feature. The “mo analyze” command gives you a hierarchical breakdown of disk usage, similar to what DaisyDisk offers. You can navigate through directories using arrow keys (or Vim bindings if that’s your thing), identify large files, and delete them on the spot.
All of this is surprisingly intuitive for a terminal-based tool, and being able to see exactly which directories are eating the most space makes cleaning up your Mac a lot easier. Overall, it’s quite similar to WizTree on Windows.
Running “mo status” brings up a dashboard that displays CPU usage, memory allocation, disk activity, network stats, and battery health, all in your terminal window. It’s not as visually polished as iStat Menus or Stats, but it provides the same essential information without requiring a menubar app or additional system resources. It’s more like a “btop” for macOS than anything else, and it works perfectly.
Finally, it has an optimization tool built in with “mo optimize”. This command runs a series of maintenance tasks that macOS doesn’t handle automatically. It rebuilds system databases, clears diagnostic logs, resets network services, cleans up swap files, and refreshes Spotlight indexing. These are operations that are painful to do manually, but Mole handles automatically for you.
Getting started with Mole
It’s super easy
If you want to install Mole, it’s incredibly easy, especially if you have Homebrew installed. Just run “brew install mole” to get started, or use the curl command on the Mole GitHub. Once installed, all commands start with “mo”, and “mo” on its own will bring you to a function picker that lets you pick what you want to run.
If you’re currently paying for CleanMyMac or similar utilities, Mole offers most of the same core functionality at no cost. It won’t replace every feature, as there’s no malware scanning or fancy visual interface, but for straightforward system maintenance, it gets the job done very well. The fact that it’s open source means you can inspect exactly what it’s doing to your system, which is more than you can say for most commercial alternatives.
For power users who are comfortable with the Terminal, Mole is an easy recommendation. It’s lean, effective, and respects your system without trying to upsell you on premium features. Sometimes the best tools are the ones that just work quietly in the background, and Mole fits that description perfectly.