ByteWatch

A little oversight for a very full Mac.

Is your hard drive an LLM dumpster fire?

Models, builds, and caches have made themselves at home. This native macOS storage monitor shows what’s growing and warns you when space runs low.

In development for macOS 14 and later.

Take a look inside
It started with “just one quick experiment.”
My very ambitious Mac92%
!
Storage is getting full

Your disk is 92% used.
Perhaps the next model can wait.

Example alert · you choose the thresholds

Native macOS appAnalysis stays on your MacCleanup is opt-inReady at login

Find where the space went

A place for everything
that takes up space.

Follow growing folders, find forgotten repositories, and connect application data to the app that owns it. Copy the full paths when it’s time to investigate.

ByteWatch · AnalysisInteractive preview
Example disk usage

440.3 GBof 512 GB

Storage healthy86%
Warn at 90% · persistent panel at 95%

Large folders

Nonempty folders, with the paths you need.

FolderOn disk
Models/Users/you/Models
36.2 GB
Local experiments/Users/you/Projects/local-lab
18.4 GB
Downloads/Users/you/Downloads
8.6 GB

.git and node_modules are excluded by default. Edit exclusions in Settings.

Example data · no files are scanned or cleaned here

Before “disk full” ruins your afternoon

A nudge at 90%.
A panel at 95%.

Set your own warning thresholds. Get a notification when space runs low, then a persistent panel when it needs attention. Keep an eye on growing folders, too.

Try the defaults with the example slider.

86%
70%90% warning95% panel
Room for another idea.

Capacity checks continue quietly in the menu bar.

The critical panel stays until usage falls below 93%. A little recovery room keeps alerts from flickering.

Mindful of the machine doing the work

Your disk monitor
shouldn’t become
another big job.

ByteWatch watches filesystem changes and updates affected folders. Scans run one at a time, with battery and Low Power Mode pauses enabled by default.

60seconds

Check volume capacity.
Read metadata, without walking folders.

15minutes

The default minimum interval between automatic folder scans. Update changed subtrees when needed.

Stop means stop. Folder monitoring stays paused until you resume it. Capacity alerts keep working.

Full scans cover your selected roots at startup, daily, after wake or recovery, when scope changes, or when you request one.

A few sensible questions

Small print,
normal-size type.

Is there an AI deciding what to delete?

The headline is a joke about growing AI workspaces. Analysis and cleanup use local rules. You select cleanup jobs and review what runs; the app doesn’t ask a model to choose your files.

What do excluded folders do to the totals?

Folder and application totals omit excluded contents. The volume-capacity check still measures the entire disk, so your alerts include space used by excluded folders. You can edit the exclusions in Settings.

What permissions does it need?

macOS controls which files the app can inspect. ByteWatch guides you to Full Disk Access settings for protected data. You grant access yourself, and incomplete scans are marked as partial.

Can cleanup run in the background?

Selected jobs can run on an optional daily schedule. Nothing is selected or scheduled by default. Podman machine removal is always manual and requires the exact machine name; removing one deletes the VM and its contents.

When can I get it, and what will it cost?

Public downloads are coming soon. Pricing and the release date haven’t been announced. The download and Mac App Store options below will become available when there is a real release to get.

ByteWatch for macOS

Save some room for this one.

Coming soon. Before “just one more model” fills the last 40 GB.

macOS 14+ · Public download not yet available