Kipimo icon

Kipimo

A system monitor and cleanup toolkit for the Mac menu bar, written in Rust.

Kipimo (kee-PEE-moh) is Swahili for “measurement” or “gauge”.

Download for MacApple silicon · macOS 15 or later Build from sourceCommand Line Tools and Rust

Free and open source (GPL-3.0)Source on GitHubAll releases

Kipimo’s menu bar panel, with disk, memory, battery, CPU, network and devices, next to its Uninstall window listing installed apps and the files one app keeps in the Library

Monitor your Mac and clean it up

Kipimo is a free, open-source system monitor and cleanup app for macOS.

Its panel shows free disk space, memory pressure, battery charge and power draw, CPU load and temperature, network speed, and the batteries of your Bluetooth devices. Its tools clear out caches and logs, uninstall apps together with the files they leave behind, show what is filling your disk, list everything that starts automatically, and check your apps for updates.

Everything Kipimo removes goes to the Trash, where Finder’s Put Back can restore it. Kipimo takes 4.7 MB on disk and about 9 MB of memory with the panel closed.

The panel

Click the menu bar icon to open the panel. It refreshes every 2 seconds while it’s open (every second, if you choose that in Settings). When it’s closed, Kipimo checks once a minute and colours the menu bar icon if something needs attention.

CardShows
Mac HealthAn overall status, with your Mac’s model and memory, or what needs attention
ProtectionWhether XProtect, the malware protection built into macOS, is on, and when its definitions were updated
Startup diskFree space, with a Clean up button
MemoryMemory pressure; hover for used, compressed and swap
BatteryCharge, charging state and the power the Mac is drawing, in watts
CPULoad, chip temperature and the busiest app
NetworkDownload and upload speed
DevicesBattery levels of AirPods, keyboards, mice and other Bluetooth devices
Today’s recommendationA suggestion, such as a cleanup or waiting app updates. Later hides it until tomorrow

Open Kipimo opens the tools. The gear opens a menu with Settings and Quit.

The Kipimo panel: Mac Health, Protection, the startup disk, Memory, Battery, CPU, Network, Devices and today’s recommendation

Clean up

Clean up finds files that apps and macOS recreate when they need them: app and macOS caches, logs and crash reports, Xcode build data, old device symbols and simulators, and package manager caches (Homebrew, npm, Yarn, pnpm, Cargo, pip, Gradle, CocoaPods and Go). It also lists old Xcode archives, Mail’s copies of attachments you’ve opened, and iPhone and iPad backups older than 90 days.

Each category shows its size and a risk label. Items that would be slow to download again, such as AI models and items over 1 GB, start unticked with a note saying why. Backups always start unticked, because a backup may be the only copy of a device’s data. Caches that a running app is using are skipped.

Clean up: categories of caches, logs and developer files, each with a risk label and a size

Uninstall

Pick an app to see everything it stores on your Mac: preferences, caches, saved window state, containers and more. Its preferences and caches start ticked. Its data, such as Application Support folders and containers, starts unticked, so documents and message history aren’t removed by accident.

If the app or one of its background helpers is running, Kipimo says so and offers to stop it. Apps that come with macOS can’t be removed.

Uninstall: installed apps with their size and last use, and the files one app keeps in the Library

Apps you drag to the Trash yourself

About 30 seconds later, Kipimo sends a notification listing the files the app left behind. You can review them and move the ones you choose to the Trash.

The leftovers review for an example app: caches, preferences and saved state ticked; data folders unticked

Space

Space shows what is using your disk, folder by folder, largest first. Choose your home folder, a disk or any other folder, then open folders to go deeper, or switch to Largest files. Sizing /System/Applications (13,850 files, 726 MB) took 0.2 seconds on an M5 Max.

Show in Finder reveals the selected item, and Move to Trash… removes it after you confirm. Kipimo won’t move iCloud Drive’s top-level folders, app containers, running apps or system folders.

Space: the System Applications folder with its largest items first, their sizes and file counts

Startup items

Startup items lists apps that open at login, items allowed to run in the background, and launch agents and daemons. Each entry shows who signed it, whether it’s running, and the program it runs. Kipimo flags items that are unsigned, signed only for this Mac, have an invalid signature, or point at a missing file.

  • Disable and Move to Trash… stops one of your launch agents and moves its file to the Trash. Put Back restores it.
  • Check Apps for Broken Signatures verifies the apps in Applications and lists those whose code signature is broken.
  • Reinstall… takes you to a good copy of a broken app. When its update feed offers a zip, Download and Replace… downloads it, checks that the new copy’s signature is intact and comes from the same developer team, and only then moves the old copy to the Trash.
  • Removing items installed for all users needs an administrator. Kipimo shows the Terminal commands to run and doesn’t ask for your password.
Startup items: launch agents and daemons from Google, Valve, Zoom and OrbStack, each with its signer; Steam’s agent is selected

Updates

Updates checks each app’s update feed (Sparkle, electron-updater and Visual Studio Code’s) and the App Store for newer versions. Each result shows your version, the new version and its release date.

Kipimo doesn’t install updates. Release Notes, Download Page and Open Updater open the place where you update the app.

Updates: apps with a newer version available, where it was found, and its release date

Alerts and the weekly summary

Kipimo can notify you when the startup disk has less than 20 GB free, the Trash grows past 2 GB, a Bluetooth device’s battery drops below 20%, an external drive is connected or ejected, or an app you moved to the Trash left files behind.

Each alert can be switched off and its limit changed. An alert fires when a value crosses its limit, and not again until the value recovers. Once a week (Sunday at 10:00 unless you change it), a notification says how much space a cleanup would free and how many app updates are waiting.

Settings, Alerts tab: startup disk, Trash, Bluetooth battery, external drives and leftovers

Privacy and safety

Kipimo sends no analytics. It runs as your user, without a privileged helper or administrator rights.

  • Kipimo moves files to the Trash and never deletes them. Emptying the Trash is left to you and Finder.
  • It acts only on the items you tick, and asks before it moves anything. Cancel is the default button in every confirmation, so pressing Return never removes files.
  • It never changes the contents of an app bundle or re-signs an app.
  • It goes online only to check for updates and, when you ask, to download a replacement app. Update checks run at most once a day and when you click Check Now or Reinstall…. Each update feed is asked only about its own app. App Store apps are looked up through Apple’s public lookup service in batches of up to 40, so Apple sees which App Store apps you have.

Get Kipimo

Download the zip from the latest release. It’s signed and notarized by Apple.

Download

Mac
Kipimo-macOS-arm64.zip
Requires
Apple silicon, macOS 15 or later
Other versions
Releases on GitHub

Resource use

App size
4.7 MB
Memory, panel closed
About 9 MB
Memory, panel open
About 14 MB
CPU, panel closed
About 0.03%

Measured on a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max. The tools run in a separate process that quits when their window closes, so the menu bar app stays at about 9 MB.

Install

  1. Download Kipimo-macOS-arm64.zip and unzip it.
  2. Drag Kipimo into your Applications folder and open it.

Build from source

You need the Xcode Command Line Tools and Rust 1.98 or later.

xcode-select --install
git clone https://github.com/piedol/kipimo.git
cd kipimo && scripts/bundle.sh --install

Get Rust from rustup. The script builds Kipimo, signs it, copies it to /Applications and opens it. It signs with KIPIMO_SIGN_IDENTITY if that’s set, or else with the first Developer ID Application certificate in your keychain. Without either, it uses an ad-hoc signature, which runs on your own Mac, but macOS then forgets Kipimo’s Full Disk Access after every rebuild.

When Kipimo first opens

  1. Allow notifications when macOS asks. Alerts and the weekly summary use them.
  2. If Settings › General says Kipimo can’t read the Trash, click Open Full Disk Access… and turn Kipimo on. It needs this to measure the Trash and to notice apps you drag there.
  3. To start Kipimo when you log in, turn on Launch Kipimo at login in Settings › General.

Kipimo has no Dock icon. To quit, open the panel and choose Quit Kipimo from the gear menu. To remove it, follow Uninstall Kipimo in the README.

Frequently asked questions

Is Kipimo free and open source?

Yes. Kipimo is free to download and use, and its source code is on GitHub under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.

Does Kipimo delete files?

No. Everything Kipimo removes goes to the Trash, where Finder’s Put Back restores it. It acts only on the items you tick, and emptying the Trash is left to you.

Which Macs does Kipimo support?

Macs with Apple silicon on macOS 15 or later. Battery power and CPU temperature appear only when macOS reports them.

What does Kipimo send over the network?

It goes online only to check for app updates (at most once a day, or when you click Check Now or Reinstall…) and, when you ask, to download a replacement app. App Store apps are looked up through Apple’s public lookup service. Kipimo sends no analytics.

How do I install Kipimo?

Download Kipimo-macOS-arm64.zip, unzip it, drag Kipimo into Applications and open it. Allow notifications, and Full Disk Access if you want it to measure the Trash.

How do I uninstall Kipimo?

Turn off Launch Kipimo at login, quit it, and move Kipimo.app and ~/Library/Caches/top.piedol.kipimo to the Trash. Running defaults delete top.piedol.kipimo removes its settings.

License

Kipimo is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.

Use it anywhere, including at work, and read, change and share the source. If you distribute a modified version, release its source under the same license.

Power and temperature come from private IOKit interfaces (IOReport and the SMC), so those two readings may stop working in a future version of macOS.