Dragging an app to the Trash leaves its caches, preferences, containers, launch agents and background services on your Mac. Tideline finds them, shows you the path, the size and how sure it is — and moves only what you approve.
Native SwiftUI. No account, no telemetry, nothing leaves your Mac. Heading to the Mac App Store soon.
Figma 1.4 GB · com.figma.Desktop · /Applications ▾ Current User Verified Identity │ ☑ Application Support/Figma 612 MB │ ☑ Caches/com.figma.Desktop 318 MB │ ☑ Preferences/com.figma.Desktop.plist 12 KB │ ☑ Containers/com.figma.Desktop 4.1 MB │ ☐ Logs/Figma Review Match ▾ All Users Requires Administrator │ ☐ /Library/LaunchAgents/com.figma.agent.plist ▾ System Record informational │ ◦ pkgutil receipt — com.figma.Desktop.pkg not removed Selected 4 items · 930 MB → Move to Trash Nothing is deleted permanently. Protected Apple apps are refused.
Most leftovers are found by matching a file name against an app name — which is how a cleaner ends up offering to delete something you still use. Tideline derives trusted identities from the bundle itself and its code signature first, and labels everything weaker as a review match.
~/Library/ ├─ Application Support/ # app data and state ├─ Caches/ # regenerable, usually the largest ├─ Containers/ # sandboxed app storage ├─ Group Containers/ # signed app groups ├─ Preferences/ # plists by bundle id ├─ Logs/ # diagnostics ├─ LaunchAgents/ # things that start on login ├─ Services/ # background services ├─ Application Scripts/ ├─ Internet Plug-Ins/ ├─ Fonts/ └─ Saved Application State/ # and, read-only, the installer receipts # pkgutil keeps as system records
The bundle identifier, the identifiers of bundled components and helpers, signed app groups, and — clearly marked as review-only — the app's name.
Once for confidence (Verified Identity or Review Match) and once for scope (Current User, Requires Administrator, or an informational System Record). Only the strong, user-scoped matches are preselected.
Findings are grouped by location and category — caches, preferences, containers, logs, launch items, services, plug-ins, fonts, receipts — each with its real path and size on disk.
An uninstaller that decides for you is a data-loss tool with a progress bar. Tideline keeps the steps apart, and the last one always belongs to you.
/Applications,
/System/Applications and ~/Applications, with identities
read from the bundle and its signature.
Every app you ever dragged to the Trash left something behind, and nothing on your Mac keeps track of it. The Orphaned Files screen looks for exact bundle-style remnants in approved Current User Library locations and groups them by the developer that wrote them.
One row per vendor, so you recognise what you are looking at — not a flat list of reverse-DNS folder names.
If an application from that developer is still installed, its files never appear here. Orphans mean orphans.
Candidates arrive unchecked. Removal is only ever the result of an explicit review.
▾ Adobe 7 items 1.9 GB │ ☐ Application Support/Adobe │ ☐ Caches/com.adobe.acc.installer │ ☐ Preferences/com.adobe.crashreporter.plist ▾ Docker 3 items 840 MB │ ☐ Containers/com.docker.docker │ ☐ Group Containers/group.com.docker ▾ Zoom 2 items 96 MB │ ☐ Application Support/zoom.us Vendors with an installed app are not listed.
Tideline has no account, no sign-in and no server. It never sends what it finds anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to send. The only state it keeps is two local files.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Folder access |
~/Library/Application Support/Tideline/folder-access.json —
read-only bookmarks you grant, revocable in Settings → Permissions
|
| Cleanup history |
~/Library/Application Support/Tideline/cleanup-history.json — what
you removed and when, for your own review
|
tccutil for a verified bundle identifier.
The honest version, because an uninstaller that oversells itself is the dangerous kind.
All Users findings are shown for review but held back from the transaction until the signed privileged-removal path exists. Only validated app-bundle-to-Trash authorization is available today.
Protected Apple and system applications cannot be uninstalled, by design. Tideline marks them and refuses.
Shown as metadata so you can see what an installer registered — never removed, because they are system records rather than app files.
A scan is intentionally bounded and conservative. It cannot promise to discover every artifact an app has ever written.
Review first. Trash, never delete. Nothing leaves the machine.
A Sunsato product · coming soon on the Mac App Store.