Mole for Mac
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 Mac cleaners
Free command-line tool that frees disk space on a Mac by clearing caches and leftovers; people report large recoveries. Caveat: caches refill quickly after cleaning.
Free command-line tool that frees disk space on a Mac by clearing caches and leftovers; people report large recoveries. Caveat: caches refill quickly after cleaning.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 92%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 11 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Frees up large amounts of disk space
“Mole also found and deleted a bunch of stuff on my mac from Claude, Gemini, etc.”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps” “Mole freed up 80GB on my laptop the first time I ran it.”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps” Popular, well-regarded macOS maintenance tool
“This seems to be a recent popular tool to handle this”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” “Mole for Mac is a very nice system maintenance app”
Comment from 15 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Mole – Deep research agent for your terminal”
Other Mac cleaners people recommend
The two most recommended other Mac cleaners, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mole for MacThis page | 11 | 1 | 92% | 6 | — | Approved |
| AppCleaner | 6 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Pearcleaner | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Mole freed up 80GB on my laptop the first time I ran it.”
“Mole also found and deleted a bunch of stuff on my mac from Claude, Gemini, etc.”
“TUI version is free, though there is a paid app if that’s your thing”
“mole clean up the caches, but it fill back quickly”
“that would have re-gain back some performance”
“Mole for Mac is a very nice system maintenance app”
“That is a LOT of code for a pretty basic feature.”
“I love the fact that it's a lightweight and verbose script.”
“This seems to be a recent popular tool to handle this”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.