arpwal/leftovers
Clean up what your apps and coding agents left running. A free, open-source macOS menu-bar app. - arpwal/leftovers
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Leftovers
Clean up what your apps and agents left running. A free, open-source menu-bar app for macOS.
Why Think of a house with kids running through it: each one grabs a plate, sets up at a table, and runs off to the next thing. Coding agents work the same way. Each session starts dev servers, builds and its own copy of every MCP server, then moves on and leaves them running. The memory stays taken, swap fills up, and the Mac slows down. Activity Monitor makes this hard to see. It sorts by memory in RAM, but a leak that has been swapped out barely shows there. Leftovers reads each process's footprint: RAM plus compressed plus swapped. That's the number macOS actually pays for.
The case that started this project: a video-encoder helper showing 7 MB in RAM while holding a 59 GB footprint, idle for four days.
What it does
Menu bar: a dial whose needle shows memory in use, and a standard macOS menu: memory and swap bars at the top, then likely leaks, the apps using the most memory, and your agents, each with its real logo. Dashboard: a sidebar window with five views.
Likely Leaks: each one with a plain-language reason and a Quit button. Apps: every app with all of its helper processes summed, with the app's own icon. Agents: memory per coding-agent session (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, Aider, OpenCode), including everything it started, and the tool (MCP) servers that several sessions each run their own copy of. All Processes and Protected.
Clean Up: quits every likely leak in one step, after a standard confirmation. Stays out of the way: ⌘Q closes the window and Leftovers keeps watching from the menu bar. To quit completely, use Quit Leftovers in the menu, or change the behavior in Settings. Settings: close behavior, open at login, refresh interval, menu-bar display, and your protected apps. Command line for agents: the same engine and safety rules, as text or JSON.
App logos come from the apps installed on your Mac. Nothing is downloaded.
What counts as a leak
Rule Condition
Hoarding Footprint ≥ 2 GB, at least 4× what is in RAM, idle, running ≥ 1 hour
Orphaned dev process node / python / bun / deno… whose terminal or agent is gone, idle ≥ 12 hours
Folder deleted A dev process whose working folder no longer exists (e.g. a removed git worktree)
Large while idle Footprint ≥ 8 GB, idle, running ≥ 1 hour
All thresholds live in Classification/Thresholds.swift. What it never touches Protection is checked before any leak rule runs, so a protected process can't become a candidate:
anything owned by root or another user core macOS processes (WindowServer, Dock, Finder, Spotlight, loginwindow, and more) macOS binaries under /System, /usr and /sbin, with one exception: on-demand XPC helpers. launchd relaunches those when needed, so one may be quit only while it's hoarding. Leftovers itself, and anything you protect
Before signalling a process, it checks the process ID still belongs to the same process (by start time). It asks the process to quit first and forces it only after 3 seconds. Install Download: Leftovers.dmg, open it and drag Leftovers to Applications. Builds are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so they open without warnings. Homebrew: brew install --cask arpwal/tap/leftovers Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. Website: arpwal.github.io/leftovers. Command line The app binary doubles as a CLI, so scripts and coding agents can use it: mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ln -s "/Applications/Leftovers.app/Contents/MacOS/Leftovers" ~/.local/bin/leftovers
leftovers --report # human-readable summary leftovers --json # machine-readable report (stable field names) leftovers --clean # quit every likely leak; protected processes are refused leftovers --check-updates # updater state and a check against the live feed An agent can run leftovers --json, read likelyLeaks and duplicateToolServers, and decide what to do. It's the same data the app shows. Privacy Leftovers collects nothing and has no telemetry. Its only network request is a daily update check (Sparkle, against this repository's release feed), which you can turn off in Settings. Everything it reads comes from the kernel on your Mac, and nothing leaves it. Build from source swift build # debug build swift run Leftovers # run the menu-bar app scripts/bundle.sh # universal release .app in build/ SIGNING_IDENTITY_OVERRIDE=- scripts/sign.sh # ad-hoc sign for local use scripts/install-local.sh # copy to ~/Applications and launch Maintainers: scripts/release.sh bumps the version (patch by default; pass minor or major), builds, notarizes and staples the app and DMG, publishes the GitHub release, updates the Homebrew tap and verifies the live download. Commits and tags are signed. (configuration in packaging/release.env). Project layout Sources/Leftovers/ Sampling/ libproc + sysctl readers (footprint, CPU, argv, swap) Classification/ protection policy, leak rules, thresholds Agents/ agent-session attribution, duplicate tool servers Actions/ safe termination (identity check, TERM then KILL) Store/ sampling loop and app state UI/ menu-bar popover, dashboard, design tokens CLI/ --report, --json, --clean, --snapshot [--redact] Onboarding/ three-page welcome with its animations design/ icon sources (SVG) docs/ website (GitHub Pages) and README screenshots packaging/ Info.plist, icon, release config scripts/ bundle, sign, notarize, release
Support Leftovers is free and will stay free. If it helped, star the repository so other people can find it, and follow @arpwal on X for what's next. Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. License MIT © Arpit Agarwal