Help

Clean Rabbit is a free desktop app that reclaims disk space. It bundles six tools: a cleaner for application caches, junk and temporary files, logs and incomplete downloads, a duplicate finder, a large and old file browser, an app uninstaller that also clears leftovers, a startup items manager, and optional scheduled scans. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and everything it does happens on your own machine.

• Download Clean Rabbit

Nothing. Clean Rabbit is free. There is no trial, no subscription and no paid tier, and the app never asks for a card or any other payment detail.

macOS 11 Big Sur or later, as a universal build that runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Windows 10 and Windows 11 on 64-bit x86. And 64-bit Linux with a reasonably current desktop, shipped as a .deb package and an AppImage. The installer is around 10 MB on every platform, because Clean Rabbit is built with Tauri and Rust and uses the web view your system already ships rather than bundling a whole browser engine.

• Full system requirements

An account lets us tie your copy to you rather than to a machine, tell you about security fixes and important updates, and give you a way to have your data deleted on request. Registration needs only an email address. There is no password to choose or remember, because we email you a sign-in link instead.

• What we do with your email address

Clean Rabbit opens a page in your browser where you enter your email address. We send a one-time link to it, and opening that link confirms it is you. The desktop app then signs itself in a few seconds later, with nothing for you to copy or paste. The link works once, and the whole request expires after 15 minutes.

A fixed set of well known clutter locations for your operating system: application caches, junk and temporary files, log files, and downloads that were never finished. It does not roam your whole disk, and it does not touch your documents, photos or projects.

Generally yes. A cache is a copy of something the app can recreate, such as thumbnails, downloaded assets or compiled fragments, so removing it costs you a slightly slower next launch rather than any data. Two things are worth knowing. Some apps keep unsaved state in cache-like folders, so quit your apps before a big clean. And Clean Rabbit skips anything modified in the last ten minutes, precisely because it may still be in use.

In three passes. It groups candidates by exact byte size, then compares a partial hash of the start of each file, and only then computes a full BLAKE3 hash of whatever survives. A set is reported only when the full hashes match, which means the files are identical byte for byte rather than merely similar in name or appearance.

No. One copy of each set is always kept, and the interface will not let you select them all. Duplicate deletions are also fenced to the folder you chose to scan, so nothing outside it can be touched.

Reclaiming serious space. The tool surfaces your biggest files and the ones you have not opened in a long time, sorted so that the obvious candidates rise to the top: old disk images, forgotten video exports, stale virtual machines. Nothing here is deleted automatically. It is a list for you to make decisions about.

Removing the application itself leaves its caches, preferences and support files behind, which is often hundreds of megabytes for a single app. The uninstaller finds those leftovers, shows you what it found, and removes them along with the app.

Yes. Startup Items shows what launches when you log in and lets you switch entries off, and anything you disable can be switched back on from the same screen. Nothing is deleted, so it is safe to experiment.

If you turn them on, Clean Rabbit runs a quiet weekly check in the background and notifies you when clutter has built up again. It lives in the menu bar on macOS and in the system tray on Windows and Linux. It never cleans anything on its own: it tells you, and you decide. For most people a clean once a month is plenty, since caches simply rebuild themselves.

No. Scanning happens entirely on your own machine, and your file names, folder paths, file contents and scan results are never uploaded to us or to anyone else. The only personal data we hold is your account email address, basic sign-in metadata and your marketing preferences.

• Read the privacy policy

Yes, if you kept the default. Every clean asks first whether to move items to the Trash or Recycle Bin, which is the default and is fully recoverable, or to delete them permanently, which is not. If you chose the default, open your Trash or Recycle Bin and restore from there. If you chose permanent deletion, restore from your backup, because we cannot recover it for you.

A path fence enforced in the Rust engine, underneath the interface. Every path is canonicalised and checked against the locations that were actually scanned, and anything outside them is refused outright. Files modified in the last ten minutes are also skipped, on the assumption that something is still using them.

No. It runs with your normal user permissions, inside your own account, and it will not ask for an administrator password in order to scan or clean. On macOS the system may ask you to grant access to particular folders the first time, but that is a standard macOS permission prompt rather than an escalation.

Yes. Open Settings in Clean Rabbit and switch usage analytics off, which stops all telemetry immediately. It is on by default, and what it sends is deliberately thin: a few aggregate events such as which tool was opened and whether a scan completed. There is no persistent device identifier, and it never includes your file names, paths, sizes or contents. Scan results and file information are never sent, whatever the setting says.

• What the app reports

Only if you say yes. The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count page views and downloads, and it will not set an analytics cookie or even load Google’s script until you choose Accept on the cookie banner. Declining sits right next to Accept and costs you nothing, and if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal we treat that as a no and never ask. To change your mind later, choose Cookie settings at the foot of any page. There is no advertising on this site and no ad tracking of any kind.

• Cookies and analytics in full

No, and we would not be allowed to require it. Making a service conditional on marketing consent is not valid consent under UK GDPR. You can use every feature of the app while opted out of everything optional, and the choice is presented to you at registration rather than buried afterwards.

Three kinds. Service emails, which you cannot opt out of while you hold an account, meaning sign-in links, security notices and changes to the terms or the privacy policy. Emails about Clean Rabbit and similar White Rabbit Foundry tools, which you can switch off at any moment. And broader marketing and product news, which is entirely optional and stays off unless you tick the box yourself.

Sign in on the account page and use the two switches there. They are independent, so you can keep updates about Clean Rabbit and turn broader marketing off, or turn both off. Every marketing email also carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in.

• Manage your preferences
• Unsubscribe from a link in an email

Sign in on the account page and choose "Download my data". You get a JSON file containing your account record, your preferences, your sign-in metadata and the full history of consent changes, which is everything we hold about you. Your scans never leave your machine, so there is nothing about your files in it.

• Download your data

Sign in on the account page, choose "Delete my account", and type the confirmation phrase. Your account and profile are removed straight away. A minimal record may be kept for up to 12 months for accounting, legal and dispute-resolution purposes, after which it is permanently deleted. Clean Rabbit keeps working on your machine, but you will need to register again to sign in.

• Delete your account
• How long we keep things

Because early builds are not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID certificate, and macOS warns about any app it cannot attribute to a registered developer regardless of what that app does. Open Clean Rabbit once from your Applications folder and let it be refused, then go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, scroll down to the message about Clean Rabbit and choose "Open Anyway". You only need to do this once. Control-clicking the app and choosing Open used to work but was removed in macOS Sequoia, so the System Settings route is the one to use. Signing and notarisation are on the list before the first public release.

Almost certainly not. macOS shows that wording for an unsigned app that still carries the quarantine flag it gets from being downloaded, and it is misleading because the file itself is fine. Open Terminal and run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine followed by the path, which is normally /Applications/Clean Rabbit.app, then open the app again. If you would rather not use Terminal, wait for the signed build. Code signing removes this for good.

Because the installer is not yet signed with a code-signing certificate and has not built up download reputation. Choose "More info", then "Run anyway" if you are happy to proceed.

It usually needs the executable bit, so run chmod +x on the downloaded file and then launch it. Some minimal distributions also need FUSE installed before AppImages will mount. If you would rather avoid that, install the .deb package instead on Debian and Ubuntu systems.

Sign-in links are single use, and the request behind them expires 15 minutes after the app starts it. Opening the same link twice, or opening an older one after asking for a newer one, produces that message. Start sign-in again from the app and use the most recent email. It can also happen when an email client rewrites links for security scanning, in which case try copying the full address into your browser rather than clicking it. If no link arrives at all, check your spam folder and your promotions tab first.

Give it a few seconds, because the app polls for confirmation rather than being pushed to. If it is still waiting, check that the browser and the app are using the same email address and that the app has network access. Quitting and reopening Clean Rabbit makes it check again immediately. If it still will not connect, start sign-in again from the app.

Most often because of the default option: the files went to the Trash or Recycle Bin, which still occupies disk space until you empty it. On macOS, local Time Machine snapshots can also hold on to freed space for a while after a delete, though that usually resolves itself within a day.