TidyDisk

A macOS menu bar app that shows what your dev projects really cost in disk space and reclaims it in one click: every node_modules folder, your package manager caches, and every installed package across your machine. Safely, to the Trash, never rm -rf.

Free to scan: install it and see everything at no cost. One-click cleanup is a one-time 19 euro lifetime license (founding price, 29 euros after launch, 30-day money-back), with the key delivered instantly via Polar. The source is MIT on GitHub.

TidyDisk collects anonymous usage analytics (never file paths, project names, or package names; opt out any time in Settings) and re-checks your license key online about once a week, with a 30-day offline grace window.

Install

Download the latest signed and notarized build from the Releases page (Apple Silicon), open the DMG, and drag the app to /Applications. It lives in the menu bar; there is no dock icon. From the next tagged release the DMG is named tidydisk-arm64.dmg.

Prefer to build it yourself? See Development.

Features

• Menu bar dropdown: total node_modules size, pixel-cell meter against your GB limit, the four oldest projects with one-click delete, and a "Clean N stale folders" action (stale = untouched for 100+ days).
• Full launcher window (⌘O from the dropdown) with three tabs (⌘1/⌘2/⌘3):
  • Projects: Spotlight-style search across project names and paths, sort by last-used / size / name, keyboard navigation (↑↓, ↵ open, ⌘⌫ delete with confirm, ⌘R rescan, ⌘, settings, esc).
  • Caches: the global pnpm store size with a safe one-click Prune (never deletes the store itself), plus npm/yarn/bun placeholders. Robust store detection with manual store/binary overrides when pnpm lives somewhere unusual.
  • Packages: a computer-wide inventory of every package your projects directly depend on: how many projects use it, its size, the version(s) in use (a unify badge flags divergence), the latest version on npm, and a security-advisory pill. Expand a row for per-version severity and which projects are on each version. ↵ opens the package on npm.
• Real scanning: walks your home directory (skipping dot-folders, Library, etc.), sizes each node_modules via du, detects the framework from package.json, and infers last-used time from project file mtimes. Results are cached for instant relaunch.
• Honest, real vs linked sizing: on pnpm setups, each folder reports the real freeable bytes (its own content) separately from bytes linked into the shared pnpm store, so the numbers reflect what deleting actually frees.
• Safe deletion: folders are moved to the Trash, never rm -rf'd.
• Background scans: every 6h / daily / weekly (or manual), with a native notification when you cross your threshold.
• Reveal in Finder and open-in-editor row actions.
• In-app Uninstall: a one-click uninstall in Settings moves the app to the Trash and removes its settings + cache, then quits.

Registry lookups (latest version, advisories) power the Packages tab, are cached for 24h, and can be turned off in Settings; all local sizing still works fully offline.

Stack

Electron 33 + React 18 + TypeScript, built with electron-vite. Settings and the scan cache are plain JSON files in the app's userData directory. The tray icon is rasterized at runtime from the design's cube glyph (no image assets, no canvas dependency). The signed, notarized macOS build ships via a tag-triggered GitHub Actions release pipeline.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm dev        # runs the app; the launcher window opens automatically in dev
pnpm test       # vitest unit tests (scanner, stores, packages, formatting, color math)
pnpm typecheck
pnpm build      # production bundles in out/
pnpm package    # unsigned .app bundle via electron-builder

Cutting a release: pnpm version minor && git push --follow-tags. Pushing the vX.Y.Z tag triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds, signs, notarizes, and uploads the DMG/ZIP to a GitHub release. Signing secrets are documented in docs/SIGNING.md.

Layout

• src/main/: Electron main process, with scanner/, projects/, packages/, pnpm-store/, settings/, tray/, windows/, scheduler/, notifications/, actions/, ipc/, lib/
• src/preload/: the window.clean context-bridge API
• src/renderer/src/: panel/ (menu bar dropdown), launcher/ (full window with the Projects / Caches / Packages tabs), components/ (one folder per component), hooks/, lib/
• src/shared/: types and constants shared across processes
• site/: the Next.js + Tailwind landing page (deploys to Vercel)
• clean-my-node-modules/: the original design handoff bundle (reference only)