05All work
PenCleaner
Creator
A Mac and Windows cleaner in the spirit of CleanMyMac: find what's eating the disk, clear junk, remove apps completely, and scan for malware.
- Status
- Release pending
- Year
- 2026
- Platforms
- macOS · Windows
- License
- MIT
The problem
Keeping a machine quick means juggling caches, build output, app leftovers and login items, and the polished tools for it are subscriptions. PenCleaner does the same job with a Rust engine and one rule above all others: it must never delete something it shouldn't.
What I built
- A Rust scanning and cleanup engine, independent of the UI and unit-tested, behind a Tauri 2 shell with a Svelte 5 interface.
- Smart Care, Cleanup (system, developer, AI and Mail junk), Performance, Applications (uninstaller, leftovers and a multi-source app updater), My Clutter (duplicates and similar images) and a Space Lens bubble map of the disk.
- Protection: a malware scan using Apple's XProtect rules through yara-x, plus suspicious background items, privacy traces and app permissions.
- A safety layer every removal passes through: system and home roots refused even through symlinks, user files sent to the Trash, root actions limited to a short allowlist, and cleanup only acting on items from its own last scan.
- A menu bar health readout, scheduled Smart Care, an ignore list enforced in Rust, and Windows support for cleanup and app removal.
Stack
- Rust
- Tauri 2
- Svelte 5
- yara-x
- d3-hierarchy
Where it stands
Feature-complete and in daily use, with the source open on GitHub. Signed builds wait on Developer ID signing and notarisation, which a Mac tool that needs Full Disk Access has to have before it can be shared.
Next project
Plix