Open source · github.com/caezium/Burrow · v0.6.0 Install

Burrow

Remove junk, manage apps, run maintenance, analyze disk usage, and watch live status — in one native Mac app. Free, and open source.

Free· MIT open source· built on the Mole CLI· adds history + an MCP server· macOS 14+
Install with Homebrew Download .zip
00 · See it

Five tools, one window

Five tools plus a menu-bar HUD: Clean, Software, Optimize, Analyze, and Status, each with its own page and job — and each re-themes the whole window in its own colour.

Covers everyday jobs people split across CleanMyMac · Pearcleaner · DaisyDisk · iStat Menus · ncdu

Burrow — Analyze treemap
Analyze Map every chamber below.
01 · The Five

A burrow of small jobs

Each tool re-themes the whole window in its own colour. The colour is not decoration — it is how the tool tells you what it is about to touch. Every one drives a single, audited mo command.

Clean
Fresh air through old tunnels.
Ten-plus categories — caches, logs and leftovers from Xcode builds to browser temp files — sorted by what is safest to remove. Preview every file and byte count first; untick anything you want to keep, then clean for real. mo clean
Software
Shed what you've outgrown.
Your installed apps with search and sort by size, name, recency or source, plus multi-select uninstall that sweeps preferences, support files and launch agents. A Homebrew Updates tab checks what's outdated. mo uninstall --list
Optimize
Small turns, a smoother run.
Default maintenance tasks, one tap. Rebuild Quick Look, repair caches and metadata, flush DNS and audit login items — the routine chores, batched behind a single prompt. mo optimize
Analyze
Map every chamber below.
A squarified treemap of your whole disk. Drill into any branch, spot the biggest space users, and use context menus to reveal in Finder or send to Trash. mo analyze
Status
Every pulse of the den.
CPU, memory, GPU, disk, network and battery live on one page, each with a sparkline, plus a sortable, pinnable process table and a menu-bar HUD that drops the whole picture down from the menu bar. mo status
… and two things the CLI can't do
History
A long memory of the den.
Every sample the Status tool takes lands in a local SQLite history. Scrub charts from five minutes out to ninety days, with peak-per-process tables for the moments the fans actually spun up. Nothing leaves the Mac.
Agent · MCP
Ask your Mac, from Claude.
Burrow doubles as an MCP server, so Claude Code can ask "what's been happening on this Mac?" — burrow_snapshot, burrow_history, burrow_top_processes — alongside a loopback HTTP API on 127.0.0.1:9277. Both local, both off until you opt in.
02 · How it behaves

Conservative by default

Burrow drives the audited mo engine and adds no surveillance of its own. There is no backend — nothing to phone home to.

1
Nothing leaves your Mac.

No analytics, telemetry, accounts or third-party SDKs. History is a local SQLite file and the MCP server is loopback-only. The one opt-in network call is brew outdated in the Updates tab.

2
Show before you remove.

Every action shows the file list and byte count first. You confirm; Burrow acts. Clean is categorized and sorted by what is safest to remove, and nothing is deleted on a single mis-tap.

3
You approve every elevation.

No background root helper. When a task needs admin rights, macOS's own dialog asks you — Burrow runs that one mo command, then exits. No persistent privileged daemon.

4
Free, open, no upsell.

Five tools plus the HUD, history and the MCP server — all of it, MIT-licensed. Every line is on GitHub. No trial limits, no accounts, no trade.

5
Built on an audited engine.

Burrow bundles nothing from mo — it drives the same binary you can read and run yourself. The honest trade-offs, including the admin path, are in SECURITY.md.

03 · Price

Free, no subscription

$0
Free, forever. MIT-licensed.
Get Burrow
All five tools, the menu-bar HUD, history, and the MCP server included.
or build it from source
unlimited Macs·no account·unsigned, pre-1.0·requires brew install mole
Homebrew
recommended
brew install mole  then  brew install --cask caezium/tap/burrow — installs the required engine, then the app, and clears the Gatekeeper quarantine for you.
Direct download
a .zip from Releases
Unzip Burrow.app into /Applications, then xattr -cr /Applications/Burrow.app to clear quarantine. Burrow is unsigned and pre-1.0 — Releases.
Build from source
xcodegen + mole
git clone https://github.com/caezium/Burrow.git, then xcodegen generate and a Release xcodebuild. Every line is yours to read first.
04 · Questions

Honest answers

How is Burrow different from the mo CLI?
mo is the free, open-source terminal engine that does the real work. Burrow is the native Mac GUI around it — disk maps, a status dashboard, the menu-bar HUD, multi-select uninstall, one-click workflows — plus two things the CLI doesn't have: a long-range metric history and an MCP server for agents.
Is it really free?
Yes — free and MIT-licensed, with no accounts, ads or upsells. If you'd rather have a polished, signed, supported app and want to fund the mo engine, mole.fit is $9 and worth it. Burrow is the open-source alternative for people who want the source and the agent hooks.
Why does it need the Mole CLI?
Burrow doesn't reimplement cleaning or analysis — it drives the audited mo binary and bundles nothing from it. That keeps Burrow thin and means the dangerous work runs through a tool you can audit independently. brew install mole first, or Burrow refuses to launch.
Is it signed and notarized?
Not yet — Burrow is unsigned and pre-1.0. Every install path clears the Gatekeeper quarantine for you (xattr -cr or the Homebrew cask). The honest trade-offs are in SECURITY.md.
Does it work without Full Disk Access? Does it upload anything?
Yes — Burrow runs a safe scan by default; Full Disk Access lets it reach deeper App Support and container caches, and you can grant or skip it anytime. Nothing is uploaded: scans and cleanup run locally, history is a local file, and the MCP server is loopback and off until you turn it on.
What's the MCP server for?
It lets Claude Code query your Mac's recent state — burrow_snapshot, burrow_history, burrow_top_processes, burrow_info. Point it at Burrow --mcp in ~/.claude/settings.json and an agent can answer "what's been hammering this machine?" from real data.

Building from source, wiring up the MCP server, or anything else? It's all in the README.