MacJanitor Help & Manual

1. Quickstart

Back up your Mac first. MacJanitor deletes files. Every proposed deletion is shown to you for review before it runs, but deletion is permanent. A current Time Machine backup before your first cleanup is strongly recommended.

Open MacJanitor-1.0.1.dmg from your purchase email or the customer portal.
Drag MacJanitor to the Applications folder shown in the DMG window.
Eject the DMG and launch MacJanitor from Applications or Spotlight.
On first launch, paste your Anthropic API key into the prompt. (See §6 if you need one.)
Open Settings and pick a user profile that matches how you use this Mac — see §2.
Click Scan My Mac. Review the categorized plan. Approve, answer any inspect questions, and let MacJanitor clean.

2. Setting your user profile

MacJanitor's whole trick is that it knows what's safe to delete on your machine. To do that, it needs to know what you actually do with your Mac.

In Settings, pick whichever profile matches you best:

Developer — Xcode iOS simulator runtimes, derived data, package caches, build artifacts. MacJanitor knows your active runtime is load-bearing and old runtimes are likely orphaned.
Designer — Adobe / Sketch / Figma asset caches, font caches, exported renders.
Photographer or video editor — Final Cut renders, Photos library caches, RAW conversion artifacts. MacJanitor will be more conservative around media-app caches because they're expensive to rebuild.
Writer or knowledge worker — Browser caches, downloaded reading material, mail attachments. MacJanitor leans into deeper cleanup of dev/media tools because you're not using them.
Casual user — Conservative defaults across the board.

You can change profiles any time. The next scan will use the new profile's judgment.

3. Cleanup categories explained

Every folder MacJanitor finds is sorted into one of four categories based on contextual analysis:

Category	What it means
Safe to delete	Caches and temporary files that any Mac can safely lose. Apps regenerate these on next launch. No user input required — included in the cleanup batch automatically.
Surgical	Path-verified safe given your profile. Example: an iOS simulator runtime you haven't used in months when you have a newer one active. Shown to you for batch approval before deletion.
Inspect	Ambiguous given the available context. MacJanitor asks you a yes/no question (e.g., "You have iOS device backups in MobileSync. Are you using iCloud Backup?"). Your answer determines the action.
Keep	System-critical, user-data, or load-bearing-for-you files. Never touched. Listed for transparency only.

The cleanup runs in order: Safe to delete happens silently, Surgical waits for your batch approval, Inspect waits for each yes/no answer, Keep is shown but not actionable.

4. What MacJanitor scans — and what it never touches

Will scan

~/Library/Caches — app caches across the system
~/Library/Application Support — selected app data folders (only where deletion is known-safe)
~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator — Xcode iOS simulator runtimes (developer profile only)
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup — iOS device backups
Selected app-specific data folders (Slack, Teams, Audible, etc.) where cleanup is known to be safe
System-wide cache locations (read-only inspection)

NEVER scans, NEVER touches

~/Documents
~/Desktop
~/Downloads
~/Pictures and the Photos library
~/Movies
~/Music and your iTunes/Music library
Mail, Messages, iMessage history, contacts, calendars
iCloud Drive content
Anything in /System (Apple doesn't even let you)

The privacy contract. When MacJanitor sends data to the Claude API for analysis, it sends only file paths and sizes — never the file contents themselves. Your Anthropic API key is stored exclusively in your Mac's Keychain and is never sent to Magpie Studios servers (we have none).

5. Permissions & Full Disk Access

macOS protects certain folders behind Full Disk Access (FDA). If MacJanitor reports that it can't scan some locations, you'll need to grant FDA:

Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.
Click the + button.
Navigate to Applications and select MacJanitor.
Make sure the toggle next to MacJanitor is on.
Quit and relaunch MacJanitor.

Without FDA, MacJanitor can still scan most of your home directory (where the biggest hoards usually live), but it can't see into protected system caches or some third-party app containers.

Why we ask for this. macOS is conservative by default and treats every app as untrusted. FDA is the formal Apple-approved way for a cleanup tool to do its job. MacJanitor never reads file contents from anywhere FDA grants access to — it only inspects paths and sizes.

6. Your Anthropic API key

MacJanitor uses Claude (made by Anthropic) for the contextual analysis step. You provide your own API key, which means:

You pay Anthropic directly for the (tiny) amount of usage MacJanitor incurs — typically a few cents per scan.
Your key is stored only in your Mac's Keychain, encrypted at rest.
Magpie Studios never sees, stores, or proxies your API usage.

Getting an API key

Visit console.anthropic.com.
Sign up or log in. New accounts often receive free promotional credits.
Go to API Keys in the left sidebar.
Click Create Key. Copy the key (it starts with sk-ant-).
Paste it into MacJanitor when prompted, or in Settings → API Key.

Approximate costs

A typical disk scan + analysis costs well under one cent of Anthropic credit. Even running a cleanup every week, you're looking at cents per year. Anthropic's free promotional credits will likely cover years of MacJanitor use.

7. Your MacJanitor license key

When you purchased MacJanitor, you received a license key starting with MCJ- in the confirmation email and on your Polar customer portal page.

Keep this key. You'll want it if you:

Reinstall MacJanitor on a fresh macOS install
Install MacJanitor on another Mac you personally own
Contact support — quoting your license key lets us verify your purchase quickly

Lost your key?

Visit the customer portal link from your original purchase email, or email support@magpiestudios.app with the email address you used for purchase and we'll look it up.

8. Troubleshooting

"MacJanitor can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software"

This message appears if Gatekeeper hasn't fully verified the download. Right-click the app, choose Open, and confirm. After the first launch this won't happen again. (MacJanitor is fully Apple-notarized — this is a one-time Gatekeeper hiccup, not a real warning.)

"Invalid API key" or authentication errors

Double-check the key starts with sk-ant-.
Confirm the key is still active at console.anthropic.com → API Keys.
Confirm your Anthropic account has available credit (free promotional credit or paid balance).
If you recently created the key, give it ~30 seconds to propagate, then try again.

"Permission denied" errors during cleanup

You probably need to grant Full Disk Access. See §5.

Scan finds nothing or very little to clean

Good news — your Mac is already clean. Less commonly, this means MacJanitor can't see into the folders where the hoards live. Confirm Full Disk Access is granted (§5) and try again.

MacJanitor freezes or becomes unresponsive during a scan

Scans can take 1–3 minutes on a very full disk. If MacJanitor is still spinning after 5 minutes, force-quit (⌘+⌥+Esc), relaunch, and try again. Email support@magpiestudios.app if it persists — include your macOS version and any error text.

The cleanup deleted something I needed

If you had a Time Machine backup (as we strongly recommended in §1), restore from there. If not, most of what MacJanitor deletes is auto-regenerable: relaunch the affected app and let it rebuild caches. For app data specifically, log back into the affected app — most use server-side state and rehydrate on next sign-in.

9. Refunds & cancellations

We offer a 14-day no-questions-asked refund. If MacJanitor doesn't work for you for any reason within 14 days of purchase, email support@magpiestudios.app and we'll process a full refund.

See the full Refund Policy for details on processing time, EU/UK statutory rights, and what is and isn't covered.

10. Getting help from a human

If your question isn't covered above, or you'd just rather ask someone:

Email: support@magpiestudios.app

Response time: Within 48 hours on business days.

Include your macOS version, MacJanitor version (Settings → About), and a description of what happened. If you have a license key handy, mentioning it speeds verification.

We're a small studio. You'll usually hear back from a human, not a ticket bot.