How Spotless handles your files

Spotless deletes files, so how it decides matters more than what it finds. This page lists the rules the app follows.

Nothing is ticked for you

When a scan finishes, every box is empty. The space number on screen counts what you ticked, not what Spotless found.

You see the list first

Every clean opens a review: each item, its full path and its size. Keyboard shortcuts open this review. None of them deletes anything by itself.

The Trash comes first

Removed items move to the Trash. You can put them back until you empty it. Disk space comes back when you empty the Trash, not before. Spotless keeps a list of what it moved, in Recently Deleted.

Locked areas

• Photos Library, iCloud Drive and cloud folders (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive). Locked by default. You can turn the lock off for each one in Protected, after a confirmation. Deleting inside them can also delete the files on your other devices, so the Photos app and Finder remain the safer places.
• Projects you are working in. Build folders such as node_modules stay locked if you edited the project in the last 14 days, an editor has it open, something is running in it, or it has uncommitted changes. Projects idle for longer are offered for review.
• AI and editor app data. Locked.

What it could not see

Without Full Disk Access, macOS hides the Trash, Mail, Safari data and parts of System Data from every app. Spotless lists what it did not read on the home screen, so a small result is never mistaken for a clean Mac.

Your data

File names, folder names, sizes and scan results stay on your Mac. Nothing about your files leaves your Mac. The privacy policy has the details.

What can still go wrong

Spotless cannot know which cache a particular app of yours rebuilds slowly, or which old download you still need. That is why the review exists. Back up your Mac with Time Machine before a large clean.