SpotlessLocked items and the Safety Lock
A Locked tag means Spotless will not remove that item unless you say so. Most locks come with a reason you can read in the item's info card. You can lift a lock for one item, for a whole page, or for everything with the Safety Lock switch on Home. A few things stay protected whatever you choose.
Why items are locked
Spotless locks anything whose loss could hurt: your Photos library, iCloud and cloud folders, chats and history of AI apps such as ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Codex, project folders you worked in recently, virtual machines in recent use, and data of apps you use. Deleting these does not free much space for the risk it carries, so they start locked.
Lift the lock on one item
Click the Locked tag on a row. Spotless asks you to confirm and explains what could go wrong. You can also open the info card with the i button and choose Delete…. The button is there for every item, locked or not. For a locked item it shows a warning first and names the reason it was locked.
Lift the locks on a page
Pages with locked items show an Unlock all button next to Select all. It asks you to confirm, then lets you tick every locked item on that page. Items stay released until you quit Spotless, and then they lock again.
The Safety Lock switch
Home has one switch called Safety Lock, and Settings, Locked has the same one. It is on by default. Turn it off and Spotless can offer files from the places it normally protects. It asks you to confirm first. Turn it back on and every lock returns at once.
Spotless never deletes anything by itself. Even with the Safety Lock off, nothing is ticked for you, you review the list, and removals go to the Trash where possible. You can restore them from Recently Deleted.
What never comes off
- macOS system files and folders
- Passwords, keys and certificates, including the Keychain and your SSH keys
- Mail, Messages, Safari, Calendars and Contacts data
- The inside of your Photos library. Use the Photos app to delete pictures
- Your home folder and its top-level folders, such as Documents and Desktop
- The inside of app packages
Choose which places stay locked
Settings, Locked lists every protected place with its own switch. Turning one off shows the same warning. Use Add folder… there to protect a folder of your own, and Spotless will never offer it.
If you are unsure about an item, leave it locked. The space it holds is rarely worth the risk, and the info card tells you what the item is before you decide. Questions about a specific item are welcome at yashraj@oth3l.com.
Related
- Review what Spotless will remove before it removes it: Spotless lists every item in a review sheet before anything moves, says whether it goes to the Trash or is deleted for good, and ticks nothing for you.
- Locked areas: what Spotless refuses to delete: Spotless locks the Photos library, iCloud and cloud folders, AI app chats and active projects, explains each lock, and says what you can unlock.
- Undo a cleanup and restore files: How to put back files Spotless removed, where they are kept, what cannot be restored, and how scheduled cleaning keeps the same safety net.
- How a Spotless clean works: Scan, look, choose, review, Trash.