09 — CleanMyMac parity analysis

Scope: [P0-09-follow-up]. Written 2026-08-09 against CleanMyMac 5.5.7 (released 2026-07-22) and against the mac-cleaner tree at commit 9bc06e2.

Why this doc exists. The P0-10 plan review cut 12 features permanently and deferred 12 more, mostly to remove the privileged helper and to protect the honesty positioning. The user has now asked for CleanMyMac parity. This document does not re-argue those cuts. It prices parity: what each gap costs, which gaps cannot be closed without reintroducing the privileged helper, and which cannot be closed without an explicit exception to docs/research/06-honesty-contract.md. Those two lists (§5, §6) are decisions the user must make knowingly; everything else is scheduling.

Every CleanMyMac claim below is cited inline to MacPaw’s own pages. Nothing here was verified by running CleanMyMac — the app was never launched, downloaded, or installed (CLAUDE.md, “NEVER STEAL THE USER’S SCREEN”).

STEP 1 — What CleanMyMac actually ships in 2026

Version 5.5.7, 2026-07-22. Supported OS: macOS 11 Big Sur → macOS 26 Tahoe; Catalina and earlier are dropped. 320 MB install, 1200×800 minimum display. (whats-new, operating-systems)

The authoritative machine-readable taxonomy is MacPaw’s own Feature availability and differences article, which enumerates every Module → Category → Group with per-edition availability. There is no standalone “Cleanup” or “System Junk” article for CleanMyMac 5 — that article exists only for the legacy CleanMyMac X, and its category list is materially different (Photos Junk, Unused Disk Images, Old Updates and macOS Localizations existed in X and do not exist in 5).

1.1 Smart Care — the one-click front door

Five routines in one pass (smart-care):

Tunable per module/category/group in Settings → Scanning → Smart Care; deselected modules still appear, greyed out.

1.2 Cleanup — 12 System Junk groups + Mail Attachments + 3 Trash Bins

From missing-features. “AS” = present in the Mac App Store edition.

Plus Mail Attachments (“remove locally stored email attachments … keeping your messages intact”, my-tools) and Trash Bins in three groups: Startup Drive Trash, External Drive Trash, Local Mail Trash.

Behavioural detail from the legacy-but-still-accurate group docs (cleanmymac-x/system-junk): Document Versions auto-selects only versions created <4 h apart and always keeps the latest; Xcode Junk never auto-selects Module Cache or Archives.

1.3 Performance — 8 maintenance tasks + 2 managers

maintenance-tasks. All eight are ❌ in the App Store edition.

1. Flush DNS Cache
2. Free Up Purgeable Space (added 5.0.5)
3. Reindex Spotlight
4. Repair Disk Permissions
5. Periodic Scripts — macOS Ventura 13 and earlier only
6. Speed Up Mail (reindex Mail’s database)
7. Free Up RAM — Intel Macs only
8. Thin Time Machine Snapshots — only when Time Machine is configured

Two of the eight are therefore already dead on our target platform: Periodic Scripts does not run on macOS 26, and Free Up RAM does not run on Apple Silicon. MacPaw ships them; they do not execute for a Tahoe/M-series buyer.

Plus Login Items and Background Items managers — ✅ in every edition, including App Store. There is no separate “Launch Agents” manager in v5 and no “Rebuild Launch Services” task.

1.4 Protection

• Malware Removal, Moonlock Engine, 18 declared malware classes (Adware, Backdoor, Botnet, Dropper, Exploit, Installer, Keylogger, Miner, PUA, Ransomware, Riskware, Rootkit, Spyware, Stealer, Trojan, Virus, Worm, Other) (malware-removal). MacPaw cites AV-TEST 99% detection / 0% false positives and +89% scan speed on M-series (moonlock-engine).
• 3 scan modes — Quick / Balanced / Deep (protection-scan-modes).
• 5 extra scan targets — DMGs, email attachments (requires FDA), archives, USB drives, iCloud files (protection-scan-options).
• Real-time Protection Monitor — runs with the app closed and the Menu off (protection-details).
• Background scanning — periodic deeper scans on MacPaw’s own schedule (background-scanning-on-off).
• Protection Sonar — green/yellow/red radar status widget in the Menu.
• PUA detection with published criteria (potentially-unwanted-applications).
• Privacy Items — exactly 5 groups (privacy): Safari (❌ AS), Google Chrome, Firefox, Recent Items Lists, Wi-Fi Networks (❌ AS). Per-browser items: Autofill Values, Browsing History, Cookies, Downloads History, HTML5 Local Storage (Safari), Saved Passwords (Firefox/Chrome), Search Queries (Chrome), Tabs from Last Session. Only Safari, Chrome and Firefox — no Edge, Brave, Arc or Opera. Wi-Fi Networks removal is impossible since macOS Sonoma — CleanMyMac lists the networks and then deep-links you to System Settings to delete them.
• Application Permissions (❌ AS) — review/revoke camera, microphone, screen recording, contacts, files/folders, photos (app-permissions).
• No chat/messaging privacy module and no anti-tracking feature exist in v5.

1.5 Applications

• Uninstaller (✅ all editions) — app + components outside /Applications. Groups: All Applications, Unused (>6 months), Suspicious (developers/sources in Russia and Belarus), Selected, Stores, Vendors, Plugins (uninstaller).
• Updater — 4 groups: App Store Updates (❌ AS), Custom Updates, macOS Updates (❌ AS), Sparkle Updates.
• Leftovers — 2 groups: Installers, Leftover Files — including leftovers of apps already removed (my-tools).
• Since 5.5.5 the module scans in the background so results are reviewable mid-scan.
• There is no “Extensions” module in v5 — that was CleanMyMac X. Its job is split across Leftovers and Performance → Login/Background Items.

1.6 My Clutter — 4 categories

Identical in all editions.

• Large & Old Files — this is the old standalone feature, now a category. Scans a chosen location, filters ≥ 50 MB, groups by kind/size/access date, auto-selects nothing, and deletes permanently, bypassing the Trash (large-and-old).
• Duplicates — auto-suggests files from the last three months, smart selection per group, deletes bypassing Trash (duplicate-files).
• Similar Images — near-identical/burst shots; Photos-app images go to Recently Deleted, everything else is deleted permanently (similar-images).
• Downloads — 3 sub-groups only: Google Chrome, Safari, Slack.

1.7 Space Lens

Reintroduced in 5.1.0 (2025-06-12) with the bubble redesign. Scans internal drives, external drives or a single folder; bubbles plus size-sorted list; storage breakdown chart with four segments — Used, Free, Purgeable, Selected; drill-down with breadcrumbs and history; system files macOS needs are non-selectable; Review-and-Remove panel (space-lens, space-lens-results).

1.8 Cloud Cleanup

New in 5.2.1 (iCloud/Google Drive/OneDrive); Dropbox added in 5.3.0. Four capabilities: delete cloud-only files without a browser, delete from Mac + cloud in one action, Unsync (free local space, keep the cloud original), and find large cloud files / redundant local copies (cloud-cleanup).

Per-provider: iCloud Drive is local-only, one account at a time (Apple policy forbids web access); Google Drive and OneDrive support web app and/or desktop app, multiple accounts; Dropbox is web-only (cloud-cleanup-icloud, cloud-cleanup-google-drive, cloud-cleanup-onedrive, cloud-cleanup-dropbox). Three of the four providers are network + OAuth features.

1.9 CleanMyMac Menu — 9 monitors, 11 alerts

(cleanmymac-menu)

11 alerts: Battery Drain · Empty Trash · Heavy RAM Usage · Hung Apps · Low Bluetooth Device Battery (❌ AS) · Low External Drive Space · Low Free Space · Malware Detection (❌ AS) · Uninstall Apps Correctly · Update Apps (❌ AS) · Update Payment Details.

1.10 My Tools · My Activity · Smart Insights

• My Tools (5.5.0, 2026-04-02) — 17 pinnable tools with a Favorites section: App Leftovers, App Updater, Application Permissions, Background Items, Downloads, Duplicate Finder, Large and Old Files, Login Items, Mail Attachments, Maintenance Tasks, Malware Finder, Privacy Items, Similar Images, System Junk, Time Machine Snapshot, Trash Bins, Uninstaller.
• My Activity (5.4.0, 2026-02-26) — dashboard: Communications, Mac Health, Recommendations, Usage statistics; local + cloud cleanup progress, protection insights, “time saved”.
• Mac Health score — 8 named factors (detected malware, critical disk health, critical battery health, low disk space, pending app updates, unused apps, overfilled Trash, long uptime) plus whether FDA is granted, whether a scan ran recently, whether the Menu or real-time monitoring is off, and which modules you have not used.
• Smart Insights (5.2.6, 2025-10-20) — Apple Intelligence on-device tooltips explaining what a file is and whether it is safe to remove; appears in Cleanup, Protection, Performance and Applications. Requires Apple Silicon + macOS 26 + Apple Intelligence enabled (introducing-smart-insights).

1.11 Scheduling — there is none in the consumer product

This is the single most commonly mis-stated thing about CleanMyMac, and it matters for our roadmap. Nothing in MacPaw’s CleanMyMac 5 knowledge base documents a user-configurable schedule, and no feature deletes anything unattended. What runs on its own is: background malware scanning on MacPaw’s own (non-configurable) schedule which detects and notifies only; event-driven real-time malware monitoring which alerts only; the CleanMyMac self-updater every ~6 h; and weekly Menu reminders. MacPaw states plainly: “CleanMyMac only operates when you explicitly initiate it.” (full-disk-access, protection-details, cleanmymac-updater)

Genuine scheduled scans and cleanups exist only in CleanMyMac Business, as admin-dashboard automation tasks (cleanmymac-business/smart-scan).

1.12 Direct-edition-only features

The App Store edition loses 20+ groups (missing-features):

• Cleanup: Broken Login Items, Deleted Users, iOS Device Backups, Language Files, System Cache Files, System Log Files, Universal Binaries
• Protection: Safari privacy, Wi-Fi Networks privacy, Application Permissions
• Performance: all 8 maintenance tasks
• Applications: App Store Updates, macOS Updates
• Menu: Protection Monitor, Low Bluetooth Device Battery / Malware Detection / Update Apps alerts

My Clutter, Space Lens and Cloud Cleanup are identical across all three editions.

1.13 Privilege model

• Full Disk Access is needed by three components — CleanMyMac, CleanMyMac Health Monitor, CleanMyMac Menu — registered during the first Smart Care scan (full-disk-access).
• CleanMyMac Agent is a root helper installed on demand with the admin password, required for exactly four things (cleanmymac-agent): (1) removing system files — system caches, system logs, language files, Xcode files; (2) running maintenance scripts; (3) uninstalling App Store apps and apps involved in system processes; (4) removing detected malware.
• Three background items need “Allow in the Background” approval: Menu, Health Monitor, Updater (background-items).

So CleanMyMac runs one root daemon plus three background agents. Our v1.0 runs zero of either (spec §1 WHAT). That is the structural fork in the road for every helper-gated row below.

1.14 Price and licensing (USD, checked 2026-08-08/09)

macpaw.com/store/cleanmymac:

• Subscriptions auto-renew. Coupon discounts are first-year only (“Discounts apply to the first year of subscription only”) — they renew at list (purchase-options).
• One-time purchase covers the current major version only; the next major version is a paid, discounted upgrade. Subscription includes major upgrades.
• Mac App Store: free download, IAP — $39.99/yr, $9.99/mo, Plus $65.99/yr; licence covers all Macs on the Apple Account; refunds are Apple’s, MacPaw cannot issue them.
• Setapp includes CleanMyMac: $14.99/mo, or $8.99/mo billed yearly (1 Mac) (setapp.com/pricing).
• Trial: 7 days, all features, from my.macpaw.com — but the MacPaw-Store trial requires payment details and auto-converts unless cancelled. The often-quoted “500 MB cleanup limit” is legacy CleanMyMac Classic/3 shareware, not v5.
• Refunds: 30 days for annual and one-time, 14 days for monthly, initial purchase only — renewals are not refundable (refund-policy).
• Standing discounts: 40% off year one for users of a competing cleaner (proof required), 30% loyalty, 30% education, 50% Apple/Claris employees (discounts).
• Install-base claims: “29 million downloads” (cleanmymac.com), “every 5th Mac on Earth has a MacPaw app” (macpaw.com/about).

Price relationship to us. Our $49 one-time / 2 Macs (docs/spec.md §7.1) is 1.23 years of their 1-Mac annual, 41% of their 1-Mac lifetime, and 26% of their 2-Mac lifetime. Our 14-day trial requires no card; theirs is 7 days and does. Our refund window is 30 days on everything, self-serve; theirs excludes renewals.

STEP 2 — What mac-cleaner actually ships today

Verified against code at 9bc06e2, not against the docs. Method: read every file in Sources/Modules*/, Sources/CleanerUI/, Sources/CleanerKit/SmartScan.swift, and every rule ID in /Users/avantgarde/code/dfacto.ai/mac-cleaner-rules/rules/*.yaml.

2.1 The manifest as it exists — 38 rules across 8 files

apps.yaml        6   apps.leftover-{application-support,caches,launch-agents,logs,preferences,saved-state}
dev-docker.yaml  2   dev-docker.{build-cache,dangling-image}
developer.yaml  16   developer.{xcode-derived-data,xcode-archives,xcode-device-support,
                      simulator-caches,simulator-devices-unavailable,simulator-runtimes,
                      npm-cache,pnpm-store,cargo-cache,go-cache,gradle-cache,maven-repository,
                      homebrew-cache,pip-cache,node-modules-stale,playwright-browsers}
discover.yaml    1   discover.large-folder
files.yaml       3   files.{downloads-installers,large-old,ios-device-backups}
junk.yaml        4   junk.{user-caches,user-logs,trash,volume-trash}
logs.yaml        1   logs.diagnostic-reports
system.yaml      5   system.{library-caches,library-logs,diagnostic-reports,rotated-logs,temp-folders}

The apps.* (6) and system.* (5) rules are written but unreachable: AppsModule.scan (Sources/ModulesApps/AppsModule.swift:26) and SystemModule.scan (Sources/ModulesSystem/SystemModule.swift:26) both return []. They are placeholder conformances that prove the CleaningModule contract compiles. 27 of 38 rules are live.

2.2 Per-feature status

Score. Of CleanMyMac’s ~70 individually named user-visible features, we ship 11 today, have 19 deferred with a written gate, 15 permanently cut with a ruling, and ~25 never considered. But those 11 cover ≈72.7 G of 04’s ≈73.1 G of measured reclaimable bytes on the audited machine. Feature count and byte coverage are almost inversely related in this category — that is the entire finding of §4.

STEP 3 — The gap table

Columns: Possible? = can it be built on macOS 26+ per docs/research/03-os-constraints.md. Honesty? = would shipping it as CleanMyMac ships it require an exception to docs/research/06-honesty-contract.md (✗ = yes, it would violate). Helper = requires the privileged helper. Effort: S ≤ 1 lane-week · M 2–4 lane-weeks · L > 1 lane-month or gated on the $12 k external XPC audit.

3.1 Cleanup

3.2 Performance

3.3 Protection

3.4 Applications

3.5 My Clutter

3.6 Space Lens, Cloud, Menu, cross-cutting

Row count: 79 features assessed (76 numbered + 36b + 55 + 79). Of these, 13 are NO GAP or ahead.

STEP 4 — Ranked recommendation

Bucket counts (66 gaps, excluding the 13 no-gap rows):

4.1 BUILD NOW — 12, ranked by impact ÷ effort

Total BUILD NOW effort: ~6 S + ~4 M ≈ 14–18 lane-weeks, fully parallelisable across the JUNK, FILES, SYSTEM and UI lanes on the module-map §4 wave plan. None of it needs the helper. None of it needs an honesty exception.

4.2 BUILD LATER — 21

Helper-gated cluster (ships together, after the external XPC audit — spec §2.3, §12): system caches (#8), system logs (#9), root diagnostic reports / rotated logs / /private/var/folders, Deleted Users (#15), Time Machine snapshot thinning (#24), app uninstaller (#40), its leftovers (#41), uninstaller groups (#44), the system half of Login/Background Items (#25/#26). Effort: L, gated on $12,000 and a passing audit. Impact: this cluster is the entire remaining “why can’t it clean system junk / uninstall apps” objection. spec §2.3 already predicts it: “‘it can’t clean system caches’ is the most common thing a reviewer will notice.”

Not helper-gated: Application Permissions read-only inventory (#39, M/Med), iCloud unsync (#56, M/Med — gated on an R07 zero-propagation fixture), the purgeable segment of a storage breakdown (#55, S — decide the 03↔06 conflict first), menu-bar app (#60, M — costs the “no background daemon” sentence), battery monitor (#64), CPU monitor (#65), network monitor minus the speed test (#66), connected devices (#67), factual alerts subset (#69), My Tools (#74), My Activity (#75), scheduling scan-and-notify (#77).

4.3 BUILD DIFFERENTLY — 6

The user need is real; CleanMyMac’s implementation is dishonest, unsafe, or both.

4.4 REFUSE — 27

Cannot be done honestly or safely on macOS 26. Grouped by the answer we give a user who asks “why doesn’t it have X?”

“macOS removed it / never allowed it” (5) — Repair Disk Permissions (#20, no-op since El Capitan 2015), Free Up Purgeable Space (#18, no third-party API can force CacheDelete; Finder’s own figure is documented as inaccurate), Free Up RAM (#23, and CleanMyMac ships it on Intel only), Wi-Fi network privacy (#38, impossible since Sonoma — CleanMyMac lists them and sends you to System Settings), a Mac App Store edition (#79, Sandbox and FDA are mutually exclusive and Apple rejects the workaround).

“It’s a placebo and we said we’d ship none” (4) — Flush DNS Cache (#17), Reindex Spotlight (#19), Speed Up Mail (#22), Periodic Scripts (#21 — moot: CleanMyMac only runs it on macOS ≤13, and our floor is macOS 26). Answer: “macOS already does these. Every honest description of them ends in ‘no general speed effect.’ We’d rather not have the button.”

“It breaks the app it’s cleaning” (2) — Language Files (#11), Universal Binaries (#12). Both strip files from a signed bundle, invalidating its sealed-resource manifest and its Sparkle/MAS delta updater. 08 R10; KeePassXC #4496 is the cited real-world breakage.

“We won’t make threat judgements” (6) — Malware Removal as marketed (#27→§4.3), scan modes (#28), extra scan targets (#29), real-time Protection Monitor (#30), background scanning (#31), PUA detection (#33). Plus Suspicious apps by developer nationality (#45) — refuse this one loudly; 02 records CleanMyMac flagging AdGuard apparently over its founder’s nationality, and it is the clearest available illustration of why we don’t ship verdicts.

“A gauge that isn’t backed by an inspectable metric is a lie” (3) — Mac Health score (#61→§4.3), Protection Sonar (#32), Smart Selection auto-preselect (#71).

“An updater makes your disk fuller, not emptier” (4) — Sparkle (#46), App Store (#47), Custom (#48), macOS (#49) updates. Answer: “This is a disk-space app. Updates use more disk, not less, and Homebrew, Sparkle and the App Store already do this for you.”

“We can’t tell, and being wrong is silent” (2) — Leftovers of apps already removed (#42; D1 upheld — 08 R01 is H × Critical, Pearcleaner shipped this bug twice), Document Versions (#16; root-owned, and the payload is the user’s undo history).

“It contradicts what we sell” (4) — Google Drive (#57), OneDrive (#58) and Dropbox (#59) cloud cleanup all need OAuth, a network client and stored refresh tokens, against spec §1 WHAT’s “opens no socket”; Recommendations / weekly nag notifications (#68) are 05 §6.1/§6.6 and MacKeeper never-do items 5–6.

Plus CleanMyMac Business / MDM (#78) — refused for 1.x on 01 §2’s “unaddressable as scoped.”

STEP 5 — Gaps that CANNOT be closed without the privileged helper

Decide this once; it is a cluster, not nine decisions. spec §2.3: “the privileged-helper cluster ships together, or not at all.”

What reintroducing the helper costs, from the register and the budget, not from opinion:

• R04 returns — the only Critical row in the risk register caused by our own code, and the exact bug Pearcleaner shipped in production (GHSA-gr2j-65fh-8pvc: unauthenticated runCommand executing arbitrary shell as root because shouldAcceptNewConnection returned true unconditionally). Same class hit Forklift, GOG Galaxy, Acustica and Sparkle (CVE-2025-10016/10015).
• $12,000 for the full-scope external XPC audit (07 §3), repeating on any major version that touches the helper/XPC boundary.
• The SMAppService install/repair/unregister lifecycle, the root-restore path in §4.2, P10 in §5, HR7’s static + runtime tests, and a second manual System Settings trip for the user (Login Items & Extensions) — 03 confirms Apple removed the auto-prompt path.
• The loss of one marketing sentence we currently sell: “it also runs nothing as root and opens no socket,” which spec §1 calls a claim “both free competitors cannot match without becoming a different product.” It is also mechanically checkable today (PrivilegedHelper is 7 lines, not embedded, not linked).

What it buys: ≈366 MB of 04’s ≈73 GB — 0.5% of measured bytes — plus the uninstaller, which measured 0 bytes but is the feature users most expect. So the case for the helper is entirely a perceived-parity case, not a byte case. That is a legitimate reason to take it; it just should be taken with that sentence in front of you, because CEO-2 rejected it on exactly the byte arithmetic and nothing in this research changes the arithmetic.

STEP 6 — Gaps that CANNOT be closed without an honesty-contract exception

Each row names the specific clause and, where one exists, the CI token in scripts/honesty-guard.sh that will fail the build. A “yes” here means a release-blocking guard must be disabled or allowlisted, not merely that a doc needs editing.

The honesty tax, stated plainly. 21 of CleanMyMac’s ~70 features cannot be copied as they are implemented. Seven of those 21 are already dead or dying on our own platform — Periodic Scripts (macOS ≤13 only), Free Up RAM (Intel only), Wi-Fi privacy (impossible since Sonoma), Repair Disk Permissions (no-op since 2015), Free Up Purgeable Space (no API exists), and the App Store edition’s 20-group deficit. CleanMyMac ships buttons for several things that do not execute on an Apple-Silicon Tahoe Mac. Full honest parity on our platform is not 70 features — it is about 49, and we already ship or have a written path to 45 of them.

Bottom line

• Closing every gap that is honest, safe and needs no root costs ~14–18 lane-weeks (§4.1) and takes us from 11 shipped features to 23.
• The next tier is one decision, not nine: the privileged-helper cluster — system caches, system logs, the uninstaller, TM snapshot thinning and the system half of the login-items manager — costs $12,000 + R04 + the “never runs as root” sentence, and buys 0.5% of measured bytes plus the feature users most expect. Take it as a perceived-parity decision or not at all.
• 27 CleanMyMac features should never be built, and for 7 of them the reason is that they no longer work on modern macOS — including in CleanMyMac itself.