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Same idea as the best free disk tools: see everything without paying. Premium is for deleting, uninstalling, and emptying Trash — after you’ve seen your own numbers.
Perfect for visualizing what’s taking up space.
Actionable tools for deep cleaning and control.
System Data on a Mac is the storage category macOS uses for everything it cannot file under Apps, Photos, Documents or Mail. It is not one thing. In practice it is mostly cache files that apps write and never clean up, log files, old iOS device backups, disk images left in Downloads, and support folders belonging to apps you deleted months ago.
It grows quietly because nothing in macOS is responsible for shrinking it. Apple's Storage settings will show you how large System Data is, but it will not show you what is inside or let you remove any of it selectively. That is the entire reason Mac cleaners exist.
On the Mac measured for this page, System Data held 84.8 GB of removable files — roughly 8.5% of a 994 GB disk.
These numbers come from one real Mac, not a mock-up. Broomkit pre-selects only what is safe to remove; anything it is less sure about stays unticked until you look at it.
| Category | Found | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Dependency folders | 27.7 GB | 104 folders of reusable code that programming projects download — they fetch it again by themselves when needed |
| App caches | 22.5 GB | Temporary files apps like Chrome and Slack keep to speed things up — your settings, history and logins stay untouched |
| Package caches | 18.7 GB | Old copies of software downloads that install tools keep “just in case” — fetched again on demand |
| System caches | 6.0 GB | Temporary files macOS rebuilds on its own the next time you open an app |
| Simulators | 3.4 GB | Pretend iPhones used for building apps — Broomkit points you at the safe way to clear them, it never deletes them itself |
| Duplicate files | 2.05 GB | 90 exact copies of files you already have, verified down to the last byte |
| Old installers | 1.86 GB | Setup files sitting in Downloads more than 30 days after you installed the app |
| Docker | 1.46 GB | A developer tool whose storage only grows until you tell it to tidy up — Broomkit shows you the safe way |
| Privacy traces | 432 MB | Leftover traces of what you have opened and browsed |
| Logs | 443 MB | Technical activity reports apps write in case something needs troubleshooting |
Dragging an app to the Trash removes the application bundle but leaves its support files behind. macOS has no built-in uninstaller, so preferences, caches, saved state, containers and logs stay in your Library folder indefinitely — for apps you removed years ago.
To remove an app completely you have to delete the bundle from Applications and then find its leftovers across roughly eight separate Library directories. The folders are usually named after the app's bundle identifier rather than the app, which is why manual cleanup misses most of them.
On the Mac measured for this page, one code editor left behind 1.86 GB — nearly twice the size of the app itself.
Full guide: how to uninstall apps on a Mac →
There is also a Reset action that removes an app's settings and data but leaves the app installed — the repair move when an app has got itself into a bad state and you want it to behave like a fresh install.
You clear cache on a Mac by emptying the contents of
~/Library/Caches — and it is safe, because every file in it is
designed to be regenerated. Apps rebuild their caches on the next
launch. The only cost is that the first launch after a clear is slightly slower.
Two directories are genuinely unsafe and Broomkit never touches them:
/System/Library/Caches, which holds kernel caches that can prevent your
Mac booting, and ~/Library/Containers as a whole, which holds live user
data such as your Notes database — not junk.
Broomkit also never deletes swap files, sleep images or app language packs. Those are the three things careless cleaners remove to inflate their totals, and they cost you slow wake-from-sleep or crashing apps for a couple of gigabytes.
Some package managers store real content in hidden folders such as
node_modules/.pnpm. A scanner that skips dotfiles measures a 5 GB
folder as zero bytes and silently drops it. Broomkit counts them.
Scanning a fixed list of folders finds a fraction of what is there. Broomkit walks your whole home folder and stops descending at each match, so nested copies are never counted twice.
Overlapping categories inflate headline numbers. Every path is claimed exactly once, so the total you see is the space you actually get back.
The risk with any Mac cleaner is not that it deletes too little — it is that it deletes something you needed and cannot get back. Broomkit is built on the assumption that its own judgement is sometimes wrong.
Everything goes to the Trash rather than being unlinked, so a mistake is recoverable. Anything inferred rather than known — old installers, app leftovers, large files — starts unchecked. Categories where deleting files does not even work, such as Docker's disk image, cannot be selected at all; Broomkit shows the command that genuinely reclaims the space instead.
It also asks for no administrator password and installs no privileged helper. Tasks that need root show you the exact command to run yourself.
CleanMyMac is a legitimate, notarised product from an established company — the safety question people ask about it is largely answered. The real differences are scope and billing. CleanMyMac covers more ground, including malware scanning that Broomkit deliberately does not attempt: a scanner without a maintained threat feed reports "no threats found" on an infected Mac, which is worse than having no scanner at all.
Broomkit finds more disk space on developer machines, shows every file before it acts, and lets you scan for free forever without a licence.
Download is free. A licence unlocks Reclaim and the uninstaller. Every plan is a single payment that never auto-renews — there is no subscription. Choose a 1-year licence or a lifetime one.
No. Cache files exist to be rebuilt. The only effect is that the first launch after a clear takes slightly longer while the app regenerates what it needs.
Because nothing in macOS shrinks it. Apps write caches and logs continuously, iOS backups accumulate, and uninstalled apps leave support folders behind forever. Apple's Storage settings show the size but give you no way to look inside.
Yes. macOS blocks apps from reading other apps' cache and support folders without it. Without Full Disk Access, Broomkit can only see a fraction of what is on your disk.
Yes. Everything is moved to the Trash, never unlinked directly. Until you empty the Trash, any removal can be undone by dragging the files back.
No, and deliberately so. A malware scanner without a maintained threat feed reports "no threats found" on an infected Mac — false confidence is worse than no feature. macOS includes XProtect for this.
Yes. Download is free forever: full scan, Disk Map, large files, and path browsing — no account and no card. A one-time licence unlocks Reclaim and the uninstaller. There is no free trial of Reclaim.