Pearcleaner is free, open source and currently on hold. What that means

Open source is a genuine advantage in this category, because a cleanup tool asks you to trust it with deletion. Pearcleaner is the option people mean when they ask for one, and there are two things worth knowing before you install it.

What it does

• Uninstalls applications with the files they left elsewhere, the same job as AppCleaner.
• Finds orphaned files from apps that are already gone, which most uninstallers cannot do.
• Handles development leftovers, which is unusual in this category.
• Searches files across the locations apps write to.

The orphaned file search is the interesting one, because it is the limitation of the app first approach: AppCleaner cannot reach anything once the app itself is deleted, and a tool that scans from the disk side can.

The maintenance status matters here

For most software, a project on hold is a minor consideration. For a tool that deletes files based on rules about where apps put things, it matters more, because macOS keeps changing those locations. A version that was accurate in 2025 will drift, and the failure mode is either missing files or matching the wrong ones.

That is not a reason to avoid it today. It is a reason to read what it proposes to delete rather than trusting the list, which is advice that applies to every tool in this category anyway.

The licence, briefly

Apache 2.0 with the Commons Clause means the source is readable and modifiable but not sellable. For a user that changes nothing; it is worth knowing only because it is why the project describes itself as source available and fair code rather than as open source without qualification.

The alternatives

AppCleaner remains the simplest free choice for uninstalling something you still have, and the honest note about all of them is in are Mac cleaner apps safe.