Four months ago, I started a small weekend project with one simple goal: help my friends stop yelling “My Mac is full again!” 😅
What began as a quick script to clear cache files turned into Disk Clean Kit – a full-featured macOS app that helps everyone keep their Mac clean, fast, and organized.
It works great for everyday users, developers, and creatives alike.
The Inspiration
I'm surrounded by friends — designers, developers, and content creators — who constantly run out of storage.
Whether it’s Xcode, Figma, Final Cut, or Photoshop, these tools eat up gigabytes fast. Most “cleaner” apps out there are slow, confusing, or hide features behind subscriptions.
So I thought — why not build a clean, modern, privacy-friendly alternative that just works?
The Stack
- Built with Swift & SwiftUI
- Uses StoreKit 2 for native purchase flow
- It's good for all normal users
- Support Developer Tools, Creative tools cleaning
- Implements AI-based duplicate detection
- Designed with macOS Human Interface Guidelines
- 100% sandboxed & App Store compliant
Key Features
- One-click cleanup for caches and temp files
- Creative tools cleaning — detects heavy files from apps like Figma, Photoshop, Premiere, and Final Cut
- Developer tools cleaning — safely clears Xcode cache, build data, and derived data folders
- Smart AI duplicate detection
- Manage startup apps
- Privacy-focused — all scanning done locally
I wanted it to feel native — lightweight, smooth animations, and no clutter.
The main dashboard gives an overview of your storage and one-tap access to each cleanup tool.
Design Focus
I wanted it to feel native — lightweight, clean, and delightful to use.
The main dashboard gives a clear overview of storage with one-tap access to Fast Clean or advanced cleaning modules.
Deep Scan Experience
One of my favorite parts of Disk Clean Kit is the Deep Scan UI.
It’s designed around three intuitive panels — a file type list on the left, detailed scan results in the middle, and a smart preview panel on the right.
What users love most is how every feature across the app is smartly pre-selected — whether it’s caches, logs, duplicate files, creative tools, or developer tools.
You don’t have to worry about what’s safe to delete. Just keep the default smart selection and hit Clean — that’s it.
For more control, the app also includes a context menu: with a single right-click, you can delete any item, subcategory, or entire category instantly.
It’s fast, clear, and safe by design. The deep scan view makes cleanup almost satisfying — like checking off a to-do list and instantly seeing space free up.
Image Scan Summary
After every scan, Disk Clean Kit shows a beautiful summary view that visualizes your cleanup report.
It includes interactive charts and categories, helping users easily understand what was scanned, what’s safe to delete, and how much space they’ve regained.
Everything is designed to make tracking results simple — a quick glance tells you the story of your Mac’s storage health.
Challenges
Getting sandbox permissions right on macOS was tricky.
Also, balancing safety with usefulness took a lot of testing.
Lessons Learned
Shipping > perfection — the 1.0 wasn’t perfect, but it started real feedback.
But here’s a story that DEV.to readers might relate to:
When I first submitted version 1.0 to the App Store, it got rejected because my original app name included the word “Mac”.
I had to rename and rebrand the entire app just days before launch — a painful but valuable reminder of Apple’s strict guidelines. It taught me resilience and adaptability.
Since that day, Disk Clean Kit has gone through 10 updates, improving performance, safety, and design with every release.
Now at version 2.1, the app is far more stable, polished, and smarter than ever — but the journey is far from over.
Marketing, continuous updates, and listening to user feedback are now the next big challenges.
As this year wraps up, I’m grateful for how far this little idea has come — and I’m excited to see what’s next for 2026.
Let’s keep building, learning, and cheering for every indie dev out there 💪✨
Try It Yourself
👉 HomePage
👉 Disk Clean Kit on Mac App Store (Currently 50% OFF)
If you’ve ever seen your Mac yell “Your startup disk is almost full!”, this might save your day.
❤️ Support an Indie Dev
I’m just one developer with a single Mac and a lot of curiosity.
Every download means the world to me. Thanks for reading, and if you enjoy stories like this, drop a comment — I’d love to hear yours too!
Built with love in Swift. Powered by caffeine, Copilot and curiosity. ☕
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Top comments (1)
Well, convenient. I know I can find big files with command line and visually check if it's needed, then rm -rf it. But sometimes I don't want to do that. Because I have other more interesting things to do. So I tried this tool. It's worth a cup of coffee and saves me (sometimes hours) of manually browsing and deleting.