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A DaisyDisk alternative — with the cleanup built in

DaisyDisk is one of the nicest pieces of Mac software ever made. Its sunburst map turns an abstract storage problem into something you can point at, and no list view has ever felt quite as good. But it is a disk visualizer by design: it shows you where your space went and then hands you the shovel. If you want the finding and the fixing in one app, here is an honest comparison.

Updated 2026-08-02 · Written by the CleanerMac team · macOS 13–15 tested

What DaisyDisk does better than we do

Let us start where DaisyDisk wins, because it genuinely does. Its radial sunburst is the clearest way anyone has found to show nested folder sizes on a Mac. You see the shape of your disk in one glance, drill in by clicking a segment, and the animation keeps you oriented as you go deeper. Scanning is fast, the interface is uncluttered to the point of being elegant, and it can scan connected drives and, with admin rights, other users' folders too. For pure discovery, it is still the benchmark, and if visualizing your disk is the only thing you want, buying DaisyDisk is a perfectly good decision.

It is also sold as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, which we think is the correct way to sell a utility — we make the same argument in Mac apps without a subscription. On price philosophy, DaisyDisk and CleanerMac agree completely.

Where a visualizer leaves you hanging

The limitation is structural rather than a flaw. Once DaisyDisk has told you that 40 GB sits in a folder, you still have to know whether that folder is safe to delete. A sunburst segment labelled Library/Caches or Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData means something to a developer and nothing to most people. The map is honest about size and silent about consequence.

The other gap is that duplicates and app leftovers are invisible to a size map. Three copies of the same 2 GB video in three folders look like three unrelated files. The 300 MB of support files belonging to an app you deleted two years ago look like an ordinary folder in your Library. Neither problem announces itself, and neither is solved by seeing it drawn in colour.

Side-by-side comparison

What CleanerMac adds

CleanerMac's Disk X-Ray answers the second question as well as the first. Every category and every individual file carries a plain-language note — cache, safe to delete; untouched since March, review; active project, protected — so you are not left interpreting a path. From that same view you act: send items to the Trash, remove an app together with its hidden caches, preferences, containers and login items, or clear a developer build folder without touching the project you are working on today.

Beyond the disk map, CleanerMac covers the parts a visualizer cannot see. The duplicate finder hashes file contents with SHA-256, so it catches identical files under different names and groups them with thumbnails. The large-and-old view filters by last-opened date, not just size, which is a far better signal for what you will never miss. Tune-ups run the usual Terminal chores — free inactive memory, flush DNS, restart Finder and Dock, reset Quick Look, clear font caches — as buttons.

Honest verdict: which should you buy

Buy DaisyDisk if the visual map is the product for you, if you regularly analyse external drives or server volumes, and if you are comfortable deciding for yourself what is safe to delete. Plenty of experienced Mac users are, and for them DaisyDisk plus the Finder is a complete toolkit.

Choose CleanerMac if you want the analysis and the cleanup in the same app, if you want to be told which items are safe before you delete them, or if duplicates, app leftovers and stale developer caches are a real part of your problem. It is a native SwiftUI menu-bar app, universal for Apple Silicon and Intel, notarized, works offline with no account, and is localized into 20 languages. It costs $24.99 once after a 3-day trial.

There is also no rule that says you must pick one. Some people keep DaisyDisk for the map and use CleanerMac for the routine — the two do not conflict, and neither installs a background daemon that fights the other.

Safety differences worth knowing

Both apps are notarized by Apple and neither requires an account. The important behavioural difference is what happens at the moment of deletion. DaisyDisk collects items you drag into a collector and then deletes them; CleanerMac sends your own files to the Trash instead, so recovery is one restore away, and it refuses to touch the cache folder of any app that is currently running, matched by bundle identifier. If you want the full checklist we apply to every tool in this category, it is in are Mac cleaner apps safe.

Getting the most from either tool

Whichever you choose, the same habits do most of the work. Look before you delete. Start with the categories that regenerate harmlessly — caches and logs, covered in how to clear cache on Mac. Then clear old installers and archives from Downloads. Then deal with apps you no longer use, properly, as described in how to uninstall apps on Mac. Only after that go hunting for individual large files, because that is the slowest and least repeatable step. If you are trying to reclaim a specific amount of space quickly, how to free up space on Mac walks through it in order, and the System Data explainer covers the category that confuses people most.

DaisyDisk made disk analysis pleasant, and it deserves the reputation it has. CleanerMac exists for the people who want the next step done for them too.

What a visual map misses on a modern Mac

There is one more structural gap worth naming, because it catches people out regardless of which analyzer they use. On an APFS volume, snapshots, local Time Machine backups and purgeable space can account for a very large slice of what Finder reports as used — and none of it is a file you can point at in a map. That is a large part of why the System Data category in Apple's own storage panel is so confusing, and why a sunburst can add up to far less than the number macOS shows you.

The honest answer there is that no cleaner, ours included, should be promising to delete those bytes. macOS reclaims purgeable space on its own when it needs the room. What a tool can usefully do is tell you that this is what you are looking at, so you stop hunting for a 50 GB file that does not exist. CleanerMac labels these categories rather than dressing them up as junk, and the full explanation is in the System Data guide.

Any product that claims to clear tens of gigabytes of System Data on demand is either counting snapshots macOS would have released anyway, or is doing something you should not want it to do.

See where your space went — then get it back

Disk X-Ray, duplicates, uninstaller and tune-ups in one menu-bar app.

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macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · $24.99 once, no subscription