Privacy Cleanup

Privacy Cleanup brings the activity traces left by browsers, apps, and the system into one place, such as browsing history, cookies, recent items, and the clipboard. Scanning happens on your Mac and changes nothing until you confirm.

#What it can clear

Results are sorted into four categories:

• Browser activity: browsing, search, download, and session records, plus browser caches.
• Browser accounts: cookies, site data, and site permissions, and possibly saved passwords and autofill data.
• Application activity: app caches, logs, sessions, and recent activity, such as recent documents in editors, office apps, and media players.
• System activity: the clipboard, recent items and apps, recently used servers, terminal command history, and more.

Common browsers such as Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox are supported. What you see depends on the apps you have installed, your browser profiles, and the permissions you have granted.

#Choose a time range

At the top right, choose Last hour, Today, Last 7 days, or All time (the default), then click Scan now. Changing the time range clears the current results, so scan again afterward.

Site permissions, saved passwords, autofill data, frequently visited sites, website icon records, and some other traces cannot be separated by time. They can be cleared only with All time; with other ranges they show Not supported.

#Review the results

Switch categories on the left. On the right, results are grouped by browser or app, and browsers are split further by profile. Each item shows its number of traces and the space it uses:

• Items marked Low risk usually do not affect normal use once cleared.
• Other items state their effect, such as May sign out accounts, May affect recent workflows, or May delete personal content.
• Access limited means Full Disk Access is needed. See Getting Started for how to turn it on.
• While a browser or app is running, some items show Scan after closing, and their count shows Pending scan.

Click an item to see its details. Some items only provide a total count.

#Choose what to clear

After a scan, Smart recommendation preselects lower-impact items such as browsing history, download history, browser caches, and recent items. Cookies, site storage, site permissions, saved passwords, autofill data, the clipboard, and terminal and command history are never selected automatically; select them yourself if you want them cleared.

Use Selection at the bottom to switch to Select all or Select none. You can also adjust by category, browser, profile, or individual item, and Select category selects a whole category at once.

#Confirm and clear

Click Clear selected, then check the types and counts for each source in Confirm privacy cleanup:

• If a browser or app is running, select the ones to quit under Close running apps (optional), and save your work first. If you would rather not quit them, click Skip running apps and continue; items from those apps are not cleared.
• If your selection may sign you out or delete personal data, tick I understand that selected items may sign out accounts or permanently delete personal data before you can click Clear now.

When cleanup finishes, the result for each item is shown, such as Cleared and verified, No change needed, or Could not complete, and the operation is recorded in Operation History.