title: "CleanMyMac Alternative: How VaultSort's Space Saver Reclaims Gigabytes Without a Subscription" date: "2026-02-14" excerpt: "CleanMyMac charges $40/year to delete your cache files. VaultSort's new Space Saver feature does it faster, with a Rust-powered scanner and zero subscription — plus secure deletion, encryption, and file organization in one app." coverImage: "/images/blog/cleanmymac-alternative.jpg" categories: ["Storage", "Productivity", "macOS", "Comparison", "Cache Cleaning"]
CleanMyMac Alternative: How VaultSort's Space Saver Reclaims Gigabytes Without a Subscription
Your Mac is running low on storage. You see the dreaded "Your disk is almost full" notification. So you do what millions of people do — you Google "clean up Mac" and land on CleanMyMac.
You download it. It scans your system. It shows you a big number: 8 GB of "junk" files. Then it asks you to pay $39.95 per year to click the "Clean" button.
Every year. For deleting cache files your Mac regenerates automatically.
There's a better way.
VaultSort's new Space Saver feature uses a parallel Rust-powered scanner to find reclaimable cache files, temporary data, and logs across your entire system — then cleans them in seconds. No subscription. No recurring charges. One purchase, $19.99, and you get Space Saver plus a complete suite of file management and security tools.
In our own testing, Space Saver recovered 24 GB of wasted space on a single Mac. Here's how it works and why it's a smarter choice than CleanMyMac.
The Problem with CleanMyMac (and Apps Like It)
CleanMyMac, DaisyDisk, OnyX, CCleaner for Mac — there's no shortage of Mac cleaning apps. But they share common problems that users keep running into:
The Subscription Trap
CleanMyMac's biggest draw is cache cleaning — something macOS can do natively in many cases. Yet MacPaw charges $39.95/year (or ~$3.35/month) for a subscription that auto-renews indefinitely. Over three years, you've paid $120 to periodically delete temporary files.
VaultSort is a one-time purchase of $19.99. No subscription. No renewal surprises. No "your license has expired" pop-ups when you're trying to free up space before a deadline.
One Trick at a Premium Price
Most Mac cleaning apps do one thing: find cache files and delete them. Some bolt on an app uninstaller or a malware scanner to justify the subscription. But they don't offer file organization, deduplication, secure deletion, encryption, or any of the deeper file management tools that power users actually need.
You end up paying for CleanMyMac and Hazel and Gemini and maybe an encryption tool — four subscriptions for four apps doing jobs that should be handled together.
Questionable Safety Practices
CleanMyMac and similar tools have a reputation for being aggressive about what they flag as "junk." Users have reported tools deleting files that caused application issues, clearing browser data they wanted to keep, or flagging system components as removable. When everything is labeled "junk" to inflate the cleanup number, trust erodes.
Black-Box Scanning
Most cleaning apps show you a total number — "8.4 GB of junk found" — and expect you to click "Clean" on faith. You rarely get fine-grained control over what gets deleted. And there's no transparent explanation of why something was flagged or what the consequences of deleting it might be.
How VaultSort's Space Saver Works
Space Saver is a new feature in VaultSort that takes a fundamentally different approach to cache cleaning: transparency first, speed second, safety always.
Rust-Powered Parallel Scanner
While most cleaning apps use interpreted languages or basic shell scripts for scanning, VaultSort's cache scanner (cachescan) is a purpose-built Rust binary that uses parallel directory traversal via walkdir and rayon.
What does that mean in practice?
- Multi-threaded scanning. Multiple cache directories are scanned simultaneously across all available CPU cores. On an M-series Mac, this means near-instant results on directories that would take a traditional scanner several seconds.
- 24 cache categories. Space Saver doesn't just sweep
~/Library/Caches. It scans user app caches, browser caches (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge), developer tool caches (Xcode DerivedData, CocoaPods, Swift Package Manager, Simulator caches), user logs, system temp files, and more. - APFS-aware size estimation. The scanner uses block-level size calculations rather than logical file sizes, accounting for APFS copy-on-write cloning and sparse files. The number you see is what you'll actually reclaim.
What Space Saver Scans
| Category | Typical Size | What It Finds |
|---|---|---|
| User App Caches | 2-20 GB | Cache files from all installed applications in ~/Library/Caches |
| Browser Caches | 1-10 GB | Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge page caches, code caches, GPU caches, Service Worker caches |
| Developer Caches | 5-50 GB | Xcode DerivedData, old archives, Simulator caches, CocoaPods, SPM caches |
| User Logs | 100 MB - 2 GB | Application logs and diagnostic reports older than 7 days |
| System Temp Files | 500 MB - 5 GB | Files in /private/var/folders older than 3 days (requires admin access) |
| System Logs | 100 MB - 1 GB | Rotated Apple System Logs and diagnostic messages (requires admin access) |
For developers, the impact is especially dramatic. A single Xcode DerivedData folder can consume 10-50 GB — Space Saver finds it instantly and lets you reclaim it with one click.
Three-Layer Safety Model
This is where VaultSort diverges most sharply from CleanMyMac. Every file Space Saver touches passes through three layers of protection:
Layer 1: Classification
Every scannable path is classified before it's ever shown to you:
- Safe-to-Delete — files explicitly designated as cache by Apple conventions. Deleting them is a no-op from the app's perspective; they're recreated on next launch.
- Conditionally Safe — caches that may require an app restart or cause a temporary performance dip. These are selected by default but clearly labeled.
- Excluded — system-critical files, user data, authentication tokens, databases, and anything under System Integrity Protection. These are never shown as deletable.
Layer 2: Global Exclusion Patterns
Regardless of category, Space Saver will never touch:
- SQLite databases, Realm files, or any persistent data store
- Keychain data, cookies, login tokens, or session files
- Saved application state
- iCloud sync state (
CloudKit,com.apple.bird) - IndexedDB or browser local storage
- Lock files or PID files
- VaultSort's own data
Layer 3: Running App Detection
Before cleaning, Space Saver checks whether the app that owns each cache is currently running. If Safari is open and you try to clean Safari's cache, you'll see a clear warning — with the option to skip that cache, quit the app, or clean what's safe to clean while the app runs.
CleanMyMac offers a similar warning, but VaultSort's approach is more granular: you can make per-app decisions rather than all-or-nothing choices.
Category-Level Control
Unlike CleanMyMac's "one big number" approach, Space Saver presents results by category with expandable detail:
- See exactly how much space each category consumes
- Expand any category to see individual apps and their cache sizes
- Select or deselect entire categories or individual items
- See which categories require admin access
- See which apps are currently running (with warnings)
You're never guessing what will be deleted. You see the full breakdown before anything happens.
Fast, Non-Secure Deletion
Cache files don't contain sensitive data that needs military-grade erasure. That's why Space Saver uses a dedicated plain-delete mode — a fast path that skips the multi-pass overwrite, metadata obfuscation, and anti-forensic techniques that VaultSort's Secure Delete feature uses for sensitive files.
The result: Space Saver deletes at roughly 1,000 files per second with real-time progress reporting. A 10 GB cleanup completes in seconds, not minutes.
But if you do want to securely shred your browser caches or application logs — because they can contain sensitive data — VaultSort has you covered with its full Secure Delete feature, right in the same app.
VaultSort vs. CleanMyMac: Feature Comparison
| Capability | CleanMyMac | VaultSort |
|---|---|---|
| Cache cleaning | Yes | Yes (Space Saver) |
| Scanner technology | Proprietary | Rust-powered parallel scanner |
| Cache categories | ~10 | 24 categories |
| Per-app cache control | Limited | Full per-app expandable detail |
| Running app detection | Yes | Yes, with per-app skip/quit/partial options |
| APFS-aware sizing | Unknown | Yes (block-level calculation) |
| Developer cache detection | Basic | Xcode, CocoaPods, SPM, Simulators, and more |
| Secure deletion option | No | Yes (DoD-standard, SSD-aware) |
| File deduplication | Separate app (Gemini, $20/yr) | Built-in |
| File organization | No | Auto-Organize + Advanced Organization |
| File encryption | No | AES-256 with YubiKey support |
| Disk shredding | No | Full disk erasure with privileged helper |
| Large file finder | Basic | Built-in with sorting and filtering |
| Storage breakdown | Basic | Visual categorized breakdown |
| Malware scanner | Yes | No (use macOS built-in XProtect) |
| App uninstaller | Yes | No |
| Pricing model | $39.95/year subscription | $19.99 one-time purchase |
| 3-year cost | ~$120 | $19.99 |
| Architecture | Proprietary | Rust + Swift, Apple Silicon native |
The value proposition is stark: CleanMyMac charges $40/year for cache cleaning and a few extras. VaultSort charges $20 once for cache cleaning plus secure deletion, encryption, file organization, deduplication, disk shredding, and hardware key security.
Real Results: 24 GB Recovered on a Single Mac
In our own testing, running Space Saver on a developer workstation recovered 24 GB of reclaimable space:
- Xcode DerivedData: 14.2 GB (build artifacts from dozens of projects)
- Browser caches: 3.8 GB (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox combined)
- User app caches: 4.1 GB (Spotify, VS Code, Slack, and 40+ other apps)
- User logs and diagnostic reports: 1.1 GB
- System temp files: 800 MB
That's 24 GB back — enough to install two major macOS updates or store thousands of photos. And it took under 10 seconds to scan and about 15 seconds to clean.
CleanMyMac would charge you $40/year for the privilege of running that same cleanup. VaultSort does it as part of a $19.99 one-time purchase that includes a dozen other features.
Who Should Switch from CleanMyMac to VaultSort?
If all you need is a quick cache sweep once a year, CleanMyMac's free trial might be enough. But you should switch to VaultSort if:
- You're tired of the subscription. $40/year to delete temp files is hard to justify when a one-time $20 purchase does the same thing — and more.
- You're a developer. Space Saver's 24 cache categories include deep Xcode, Swift, CocoaPods, and Simulator support that CleanMyMac's basic developer detection can't match. Developer caches are often the #1 space hog on a Mac.
- You want transparency. Category-level breakdowns with per-app detail and running-app warnings give you complete control over what gets deleted. No "trust us, it's junk" black boxes.
- You need more than cleaning. Deduplication, secure deletion, AES-256 encryption, YubiKey hardware key support, auto-organization, large file discovery, and storage analysis — all in one app.
- You care about performance. A Rust-powered parallel scanner on Apple Silicon is measurably faster than traditional scanning approaches.
- You want to free up disk space safely. VaultSort's three-layer safety model (classification, global exclusions, running-app detection) ensures nothing important is ever deleted.
What Space Saver Won't Do (And Why That's Good)
VaultSort doesn't include a malware scanner. macOS ships with XProtect, Gatekeeper, and the Malware Removal Tool built in — Apple's own security stack that updates silently and runs without user intervention. We'd rather not duplicate what the OS already does well.
VaultSort also doesn't include an app uninstaller. If you need one, AppCleaner is free and excellent. We don't believe in bundling filler features to pad a subscription.
What VaultSort does do is give you every tool you actually need for file management, storage optimization, and data security — in a single app, for a one-time price.
How Space Saver Handles System-Level Caches
Some cache files live in system directories (/private/var/folders, /private/var/log) that require elevated permissions to access. VaultSort handles this through its privileged helper daemon — a signed, Apple-notarized helper that performs system-level operations with proper authentication.
When you select system-level categories for cleaning:
- VaultSort prompts for administrator authentication (Touch ID or password)
- The helper validates every path against a strict allowlist — only approved cache locations are permitted
- Operations are logged for auditability
- If you don't want to authenticate, user-level caches still clean without any elevation
This is a key difference from CleanMyMac: VaultSort's helper uses path validation with an explicit allowlist, meaning even a compromised process can't trick the helper into deleting files outside of known cache locations. Every path is verified against forbidden patterns (/System/, /usr/, /bin/, /Keychains/) before any operation executes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is VaultSort a direct replacement for CleanMyMac?
For cache cleaning and storage reclamation — yes. VaultSort's Space Saver matches CleanMyMac's core cleanup functionality and goes further with 24 scan categories, per-app detail, APFS-aware sizing, and a Rust-powered parallel scanner. VaultSort also includes file management and security tools that CleanMyMac doesn't offer. The one thing VaultSort doesn't include is a malware scanner or app uninstaller — macOS handles malware protection natively, and free tools like AppCleaner handle app uninstallation.
Will deleting cache files break my apps?
No. Cache files are designed to be expendable — applications recreate them automatically when needed. The only side effect is that some apps may take slightly longer to launch the first time after cleaning, as they rebuild their caches. Space Saver classifies every file before showing it to you and never flags system-critical or user data as deletable.
How much space can I expect to reclaim?
It depends on your usage, but typical results range from 2-15 GB for general users and 10-50 GB for developers with Xcode installed. In our testing, we recovered 24 GB on a developer workstation. Space Saver shows you the exact breakdown before you clean anything.
Does Space Saver require Full Disk Access?
Space Saver works without Full Disk Access for most categories. Some browser caches (particularly Safari's) and certain system paths require FDA for complete scanning. If FDA isn't granted, VaultSort gracefully degrades — it scans what it can access and clearly labels categories that need additional permissions.
How does VaultSort's pricing compare to CleanMyMac?
VaultSort is a one-time purchase of $19.99. CleanMyMac is a $39.95/year subscription. Over three years, CleanMyMac costs approximately $120; VaultSort costs $19.99. VaultSort also includes features that would require purchasing additional MacPaw products (Gemini for deduplication at $19.95/year, for example).
Does VaultSort work on Apple Silicon?
Yes. VaultSort is built natively for Apple Silicon. The Rust scanner compiles to native ARM64 code, delivering maximum performance on M-series chips.
Can I securely delete cache files instead of regular deletion?
Yes. While Space Saver uses fast plain-delete for cache cleaning (since caches are regenerated anyway), VaultSort includes a full Secure Delete feature with DoD-standard overwrite passes, SSD-aware algorithms, and anti-forensic metadata destruction. If your cache files contain sensitive data — browser history, application logs, diagnostic reports — you can securely shred them with VaultSort's dedicated secure deletion tool.
Stop Renting Your Mac's Storage
Every year you pay for CleanMyMac, you're renting the ability to delete files your Mac created temporarily. Files that are designed to be thrown away. Files that your applications will recreate the next time you open them.
VaultSort's Space Saver puts that power in your hands — permanently — for a one-time purchase that costs less than half of CleanMyMac's annual subscription. And you get a complete file management suite on top of it: organization, deduplication, secure deletion, encryption, disk shredding, hardware key security, and storage analysis.
Download VaultSort for $19.99 and reclaim your Mac's storage — without renting the privilege.
