Clearbay shows what fills your Mac, then moves big files and caches to your external drive or cloud storage with a verified copy and one-click restore. Or sends them to the Trash. You decide, item by item.
Coming soon to the Mac App Store · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · One-time price, no subscription
Most cleaners can only delete. Clearbay lets you keep everything and still get the space back.
Scan, sort, then review the whole plan on one screen. Nothing runs until you click Run.
Illustration with example sizes. Your numbers will differ.
Capacity bars for your Mac and your drive, the top quick wins, and six plain-language places: Big & old files, Downloads & installers, Developer & AI tools, Apps & leftovers, Photos & duplicates.
Switch any list to a space map: a flat treemap you can click to zoom. With Pro, duplicates are matched by content, not just by name, and similar photo series are grouped.
Pick an action for each item anywhere in the app. The review sheet lists everything grouped by action with totals, for example Remove 15.3 GB · Offload 21.5 GB → TRANSCEND.
Click Run and watch both capacity bars update. Every run is journaled, so you can undo it.
Offload to any external drive. With Pro, also to S3-compatible storage with your own keys:
Or use a cloud folder you already sync: Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box or iCloud Drive. Clearbay copies into the folder, waits until the provider's own app reports the upload is done, and only then frees the space. No third-party logins.
Live caches that tools read every day (Gradle, Hugging Face, uv, Xcode DerivedData) need a local drive, not the cloud. Your keys stay in the Mac's Keychain.
Send new AirDrop files, downloads and screenshots straight to your drive while it is connected. When it is unplugged, files stay where they are and move the next time you connect it.
A small notice tells you when something moved. Your Downloads folder stays a normal folder, so AirDrop and Safari keep working.
Clearbay knows the big folders that tools rebuild on their own, and labels each one Safe, Review or Caution:
Project build folders are only suggested when the project hasn't been touched for 7 days, and .git folders are never touched.
The Direct edition also points the tools at the offloaded copy (for example GRADLE_USER_HOME, HF_HOME, OLLAMA_MODELS) so builds keep working from the drive.
Click Explain on any row to see what it is, which app made it, and what happens if you remove or offload it. Or type a goal like “free 20 GB, keep my projects” and Clearbay suggests a plan from items its rules allow Pro. You still review every choice.
Press Space on any file to preview it with Quick Look. Folders get a Peek list of their 30 biggest items, so you know what's inside without opening Finder.
Previews happen on your Mac only and are never sent anywhere.
A daily free-space history shows how fast your disk is filling. Clearbay explains “purgeable” space and “System Data” in plain words.
Turn on the menu-bar alert Pro and the icon turns orange when free space drops below your limit (5 GB by default).
Clearbay.git folders are off-limits.
The App Store edition comes first. A Direct edition with deeper access follows on this website.
Sandboxed, reviewed by Apple.
Notarized download from this website.
Start free. Upgrade to Pro once if you want more. No subscription, no account.
$0
Useful on its own, not a trial.
$14.99 one-time
Launch week: $9.99Prices in US dollars. The App Store shows the price for your country, which may be lower. Purchases and refunds go through Apple.
Only if you choose Remove, and then it moves the item to the Trash, so you can still put it back. Offload is different: Clearbay copies the item to your drive or cloud, checks the copy, and then frees the space on your Mac. The checked copy is your safe copy, and you can restore it with one click. Nothing happens until you review the plan and click Run.
Your offloaded items stay safe on the drive. Clearbay shows which drive holds them, and you can restore them the next time you connect it. Auto-route waits too: new files stay on your Mac until the drive is back. If you use an offloaded tool cache every day, keep the drive connected while you work, or restore it first.
Yes. In the App Store edition, offloading a Gradle cache frees the space and Gradle simply downloads what it needs on the next build. Clearbay Direct goes one step further: it points Gradle at the copy on your drive (by setting GRADLE_USER_HOME in a managed block of your shell settings), so nothing is downloaded again. Restore removes that setting. The same works for Hugging Face, uv, npm, Ollama and Xcode DerivedData.
No. Clearbay asks before the first AI call, and everything works without it: built-in rules set every safety label and provide a short explanation. If you allow AI, Clearbay sends the item's path with your user name removed, its size, dates and up to 15 names of items inside. Never the contents of your files. Details in the privacy policy.
S3-compatible storage with your own keys: Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, MEGA S4 and custom endpoints such as MinIO. Regular MEGA cloud drive is not supported. You can also use the sync folder of Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box or iCloud Drive; their own app does the uploading. Cloud offload is part of Pro. Setup guides.
The App Store edition doesn't ask for it. It works in the folders you choose plus your Downloads folder. Clearbay Direct asks for Full Disk Access so it can see caches inside other apps' folders; it explains why and opens the right settings page for you. How to grant it.
System folders, your Keychains, Mail and Messages data, the Photos library, iCloud Drive's own storage, any .git folder, and project folders you changed in the last 7 days. Items with no matching rule are always marked Review and never picked for you.
No. The free version stays free. Clearbay Pro is a one-time purchase of $14.99 ($9.99 in launch week) and includes a daily AI allowance.
App Store purchases are handled by Apple, so refunds are too. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. If something isn't working, tell us first; we read every message.
Clearbay needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later. It is built for Apple silicon; whether Intel Macs are supported will be stated on the App Store page at launch.
We'll email you when Clearbay is on the Mac App Store, with the launch-week price. One or two emails, no spam.