Stop Paying For Mac Cleaners: Use This Free Command-line Tool Instead

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M5 MacBook Pro
Kerry Wan/ZDNET

ZDNET cardinal takeaways

  • There's nary request to acquisition pricey apps to cleanable your Mac.
  • Mole is simply a command-line instrumentality that does a awesome job.
  • Mole is free and tin beryllium installed pinch Homebrew.

Because I activity pinch a batch of video, my Mac drives tin capable quickly. When that happens, things tin get a spot tricky. The instrumentality mightiness slow down, aliases I won't beryllium capable to create aliases prevention files.

Before that business arises, I for illustration to cleanable my Mac drives of unnecessary items. When I do that task, I move to a useful command-line instrumentality called Mole.

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Mole heavy cleans and optimizes your Mac, without you having to instal costly solutions. Sure, if you're not utilized to moving pinch nan bid line, you mightiness consciousness a spot daunted… don't. Mole is really rather easy to use.

I want to show you really to instal and usage Mole.

Installing Homebrew

What you'll need: To instal and usage Mole, you'll request an up-to-date Mac. That's it. Let's get cleaning.

The first point to do is click nan Launch Pad icon connected your dock, hunt for Terminal, and click to unfastened nan app.

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To instal Homebrew, rumor nan pursuing command:

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/ bin / bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Note: Remove nan spaces aft nan first 2 / characters.

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If you're moving a Mac pinch Apple Silicon, you'll request to tally nan following:

echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

To tally Homebrew, you'll request to adhd nan installed bid to your $PATH, which is done pinch nan pursuing command:

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echo "export PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile && root ~/.bash_profile

You're now fresh to instal Mole.

Installing Mole

Within nan terminal app, instal Mole pinch nan command:

brew instal mole

That should do nan trick. You're now fresh to usage Mole.

Using Mole

To usage mole, rumor nan command:

mole

When Mole opens, you'll spot a text-based paper which lists:

  • Clean
  • Uninstall
  • Optimize
  • Analyze
  • Status

First, prime 1 (Clean), and you'll past beryllium prompted that nan action requires sudo. Hit Enter connected your keyboard, and you'll beryllium prompted for your sudo password.

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Mole will statesman a heavy scan of your system. Depending connected really overmuch information you person successful your system, this could return immoderate time. Give Mole clip to complete nan process.

When nan scan completes, Mole will study connected really overmuch it cleaned. In my case, Mole cleared up 19.85GB of space. Yeah, it's beautiful effective.

You tin besides usage Mole to optimize and analyse your system. The Mole optimizer does nan following: rebuilds strategy databases, clears diagnostic logs, resets web services, cleans up switch files, and refreshes Spotlight indexing. Again, nan optimization will return immoderate time, truthful let it to complete its task.

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After you done conscionable these 2 things, you should find that your Mac runs amended and has much free space. 

Mole should beryllium considered a must for those who for illustration to support their Macs free of unnecessary files and optimized to tally efficiently. 

Install this free app today.

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