Safety

A cleaner is only worth having if you can trust it. These are the rules Caretaker follows, every time.

To the Trash first, and back again

• Everything Caretaker cleans is moved to the Trash, not deleted.
• Cleaning History remembers each move for 90 days. Restore puts a file back exactly where it was, and only the very file that was moved: never over something else that has taken its place since.
• Organize, which sorts Downloads and the Desktop into folders, keeps its own Undo.

The few things that are deleted for good

Only when you ask, and Caretaker says so before it happens:

• Empty Trash, in Maintenance.
• Old items in the Trash, if you turn that on in Auto Clean, after the number of days you choose.
• Local Time Machine snapshots, in Maintenance. Backups on your backup disk are never touched.

What Caretaker never touches

• macOS itself: the System folder, the system's own databases and Apple's caches.
• Your synced cloud files: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, MEGA, Box and pCloud. Only their caches can be cleared, never your files.
• Other disks: external drives and other volumes.
• Anything it can't name. Junk is a known kind of cache or log; leftovers are files named after an app that's no longer on your Mac. Nothing is guessed.

You choose, and you see what you choose

• Every page shows each file before anything moves, with its size and where it is.
• Only clearly safe items are ticked for you, like caches and old logs. Leftovers of removed apps start unticked.
• Cleaning always asks first. A link from a web page or another app can open Caretaker, but it can't clean anything without you saying yes.

Admin access, approved once

Cleaning system caches or another account's junk needs admin rights. Caretaker asks you once to approve its helper in System Settings, then never asks for your password again. The helper:

• only answers Caretaker itself, signed by its maker, and only for administrators of the Mac;
• only does a short, fixed list of jobs, and checks every path again on its own side;
• never follows a link to somewhere else, so a file can't be swapped in to trick it;
• only ever empties your own Trash.

You can switch it off at any time in System Settings, General, Login Items.

Nothing leaves your Mac

Caretaker has no account and sends nothing about your files anywhere. What it does connect to is listed on the privacy page.