burrow
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Open source · github.com/caezium/Burrow · v0.6.7

# Burrow

Clean · Analyze · Status — free & open source

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·EN / 简体 / 繁體·macOS 14+
Install with Homebrew Download .zip

Burrow is an independent open-source project built on the same mo engine as mole.fit (the official Mole for Mac app by mo's author), but it is not affiliated with or endorsed by mole.fit — its own name, mark, palette, and copy are original.

If you want it and to fund mo's development — buy mole.fit ($9).

## 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

Analyze
Map every chamber below.
What's new · June 2026

## New in 0.6.7

All releases
One Home dashboard

Status, History and Activity fold into a single live view — vitals, charts and recent jobs in one place.

繁體中文

Traditional Chinese joins English and 简体 — with an in-app switch, so you're not tied to the system language.

Real fans & temps

Fan RPM and CPU/GPU die temperatures, read straight from the SMC — the gaps Mole leaves on Apple Silicon, filled.

1-second live charts

Net and disk sampled every second — bursts actually show up instead of being averaged away.

Trash from the treemap

Spot a forgotten folder in Analyze and send it to the Trash right there — no detour to Finder.

Sharper AI Explain

It now briefs the whole picture — current snapshot, recent trend and your recent cleanups, in your language.

// also tightened in 0.6.7
opt-out anonymous telemetry — one switch, listed in TELEMETRY.md
loopback API hardened — no CORS grant
AI keys moved to the Keychain
deletes & uninstalls need a second agent opt-in
treemap hover & breadcrumb fixed
tests 124 → 244

## 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-only; the HTTP API is on by default (Settings turns it off), and destructive agent actions need their own explicit opt-in.

## Conservative by default

Burrow drives the audited mo engine. Your files, metrics and history stay on the Mac; the one thing that leaves is anonymous, opt-out usage & crash telemetry — disclosed line by line in TELEMETRY.md.

1
Your data stays on your Mac.

No accounts, no file or path uploads — scans, history and metrics are local files, and the MCP server is loopback-only. Burrow does send opt-out anonymous usage & crash reports (bucketed counts, never files, paths or metrics; off in source builds, one switch in Settings). The exact event list is in TELEMETRY.md.

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.

## 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

Installs the required engine, then the app, and clears quarantine.

# engine, then app brew install mole brew install --cask caezium/tap/burrow

### Direct download

Unzip into `/Applications`, then clear the Gatekeeper quarantine.

xattr -cr /Applications/Burrow.app open /Applications/Burrow.app

### Build from source

Needs `xcodegen` + `mole`. Every line is yours to read first.

git clone …/caezium/Burrow.git cd Burrow && xcodegen generate

## 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. Scans and cleanup run locally and history is a local file — none of that is uploaded. What does leave, unless you turn it off in Settings, is anonymous usage & crash telemetry: bucketed events with no files, paths or metrics, listed one by one in TELEMETRY.md. Source builds ship with it inert.
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 →