MacWrench Changelog
What shipped, when, and why — straight from the commit log.
1.3.2
- Dashboard polish — unified cyan accent across the Dashboard (purple is now reserved for Pro and Paywall surfaces). Smart Scan's transport bar has consistent button styles, a dedicated Cancel state while scanning, and an inline result strip ("3 apps · 0 brew · 8.5 GB · 4.3s") once the scan completes. The misleading "Fix All" button — which only navigated to the Cleaner tab — is gone.
- Storage donut, rewritten — the Dashboard storage donut now uses Apple's canonical Swift Charts pattern (
SectorMarkwith chart-angle selection and inner/outer-radius emphasis). Eliminates a recursive-layout race that surfaced when equalizing hero card heights. - Quieter chrome details — hover highlights on Operations tiles, monochrome folder reveal arrows that no longer leak folder colors onto chrome controls, and the Insight panel "Today's Recommendation" caption is pinned to cyan at every health-tier score.
- Full-screen Cleaner experience — clicking Clean Now sweeps the entire Cleaner tab into a dedicated Particle Vacuum view: a SwiftUI Canvas-driven particle field flowing into a pulsing trash icon, a cyan radial glow, hero stats, a live monospaced "now cleaning" path strip, and a floating Cancel. Sidebar tabs remain interactive throughout.
- Scrollable cleanup confirmation — the confirmation dialog is now scrollable with a fixed action bar, so long category lists never push Cancel / Clean Now off-screen. The elevation explanation appears only when relevant.
- No more admin password prompt during cleanup — an audit of cleanup categories found that the only elevation-gated paths on macOS 14+ (
/Library/Caches,/Library/Logs) are almost entirely TCC-protected — the OS refuses to delete them even for root — and the few items that are deletable yield ~100 MB max. MacWrench no longer asks for your admin password during cleanup, and known TCC-protected paths (Music, HomeKit, CloudKit, Safari Safe Browsing, icon services, and more) are filtered upfront so they never reach the deletion pipeline. - Homebrew uninstall — uninstall casks and formulae directly from Discover, Search, Popular, Categories, and the package detail screen. Already-installed packages now show an "Installed" pill in every row, and the package detail screen flips between Install / Uninstall based on inventory state. Uses the same subscription gate, error handling, and analytics shape as install.
- Wider category coverage — Homebrew category package coverage expanded from ~108 to ~750 tokens. Far more relevant casks now surface inside each category.
- Menu Bar widget action strip — Open and Clean footer buttons can no longer be truncated by a long status timestamp ("Updated about an hour ago"). The action strip is pinned to its natural width and the timestamp truncates with "…" instead.
1.3.1
- Bug fixes and security improvements.
1.3.0
- Homebrew tab, fully redesigned — a flat Browse / Packages / Services pager replaces the old split view. The middle column and chunked toolbar are gone, and the layout finally feels right on narrow windows.
- App Store-style Discover — Browse is now one composite scroll: a Recommended carousel of the week's top picks, a Popular vertical list, and a Categories grid. The search bar filters all three at once.
- Real cask icons — Notion, Rectangle, Slack, Obsidian, 1Password, Discord, VS Code, Fantastical, Alfred and dozens of others now show their actual app icons instead of a generic box, sourced from App-Fair appcasks with a strict iTunes Search fallback.
- Inline filter chips on Packages — Updates / Up to Date / Ignored / Unknown live at the top of the package list. One tap to switch filters, no sub-sidebar to manage.
- Smarter toolbar — "Upgrade All Packages" now only appears when you're actually on the Updates filter, and the refresh button knows whether to refresh the catalog, the installed list, or services based on where you are.
- Polished package detail screen — bigger 88×88 hero icon, large bold title, tinted Cask/Formula badge, and 30-day install count inline.
- Fixed a crash on launch in the Dashboard donut chart caused by a SwiftUI/Charts layout race during the initial disk scan.
- Fixed the "Couldn't load catalog" error on Discover — the Homebrew analytics endpoint serves two different shapes for formulae and casks, and the decoder now handles both.
- Fixed Category detail taps silently doing nothing — navigation now correctly pushes through the Discover stack.
1.2.1
- Live Homebrew counts on the Dashboard — updating, installing, or removing a Homebrew package now refreshes the Dashboard's brew tile and health score immediately. No need to re-run a Smart Scan.
- Consistent free-tier guardrails — every action that modifies your system (uninstalling apps, cleaning files, removing or pinning Homebrew packages, toggling startup items, deleting orphaned files, installing the privileged helper) now surfaces the upgrade prompt for free-tier users. Browsing stays open; only mutations require Pro.
- Pro badges on action buttons — inline Update and Uninstall buttons now show a small Pro badge for free-tier users so the gate is visible before tapping.
- Smoother Dashboard donut — the disk-usage donut animates only when the underlying numbers actually change, and shows a clean placeholder ring while the disk scan is still running.
- Fixed a crash in the Dashboard donut chart that could occur during the initial disk scan or with incomplete data. The chart now uses Apple's recommended Swift Charts selection and animation patterns.
- Subscription state propagates immediately when a Pro subscription expires mid-session — every panel reflects the change without needing to switch tabs.
1.2.0
- New Dashboard tab — disk gauge, AI Analysis panel with a health score, signal tiles for app updates, Homebrew updates, reclaimable space, orphaned files, and startup risk, plus folder size bars. Smart Scan runs every subsystem check in one click and reflects the result on the Dashboard.
- New Menu Bar widget — see pending app and Homebrew updates without opening MacWrench. Refresh inline, jump in when you're ready.
- New Large & Old Files scanner in Cleaner — finds files over 100 MB you haven't opened in months. Filter by minimum size, last access, and type. Recovers more space than every cache category combined.
- Each tab now keeps its own back-stack — drilling into a Homebrew package and switching tabs no longer loses your place.
- Reliability hardening across Apps, Homebrew, Cleaner, Menu Bar, and Dashboard. Failure paths now surface inline instead of failing silently.
1.1.7
- Added privacy-respecting analytics via TelemetryDeck (no third-party tracking, ever)
- Built-in crash reporter — captures unhandled crashes locally and sends a minimal report on next launch if you opt in
- Improved reliability of direct app updates by relaxing overly strict signature checks
1.1.5
- Maintenance release with internal stability improvements
- Resolved edge cases in the automated build pipeline
1.1.4
- Fixed a crash in the Homebrew tab when navigating between packages
- Separated the refresh and upgrade actions so they no longer conflict
- Resolved stale lock conditions that could block Homebrew operations
1.1.3
- Replaced the custom self-update system with the industry-standard Sparkle framework
- Updates now check automatically every 24 hours in the background
- Native update dialog with release notes, matching what you'd expect on macOS
1.1.1
- New authentication options: email one-time passwords and Apple web-based sign-in
- Quit-before-update flow — MacWrench now asks you to close a running app before updating it, then offers to relaunch it afterward
- Security hardening across the app binary
- Automated release pipeline via GitHub Actions
1.1.0
- First public release of MacWrench
- Apps tab: scan installed apps, detect updates via Sparkle and the App Store, update individually or in batch, view version history
- Homebrew tab: manage formulae and casks, pin/unpin packages, see GitHub release notes, batch upgrades
- Cleaner tab: 21 cleanup categories across 7 groups with safety scoring (safe / caution / risky), AI-powered insights
- Inspector panel for detailed app info, uninstall with thorough file discovery
- Subscription system with free tier, monthly and yearly Pro plans
- Sign in with Apple and secure credential storage via Keychain