diff --git a/src/content/find/2026/07/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx b/src/content/find/2026/07/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx index 9f2e473..e4ac127 100644 --- a/src/content/find/2026/07/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx +++ b/src/content/find/2026/07/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx @@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ name: "App Monitor" subtitle: "One free menu-bar dashboard for app usage, storage, and updates" date: 2026-07-09 +promotedTo: app-monitor-mac-utility link: "https://github.com/jcranokc/app-monitor" linkText: "github.com" source: "r/macapps" diff --git a/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/hero.png b/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/hero.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5a3189e Binary files /dev/null and b/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/hero.png differ diff --git a/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx b/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08aff3c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/reviews/app-monitor-mac-utility/index.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +name: "App Monitor" +subtitle: "One free, open-source dashboard for Mac app usage, storage, and updates" +date: 2026-07-10 +category: maintenance +tags: [open-source, maintenance, storage, free, mac] +link: "https://github.com/jcranokc/app-monitor" +linkText: "github.com" +description: "A free, MIT-licensed SwiftUI dashboard that folds Mac app-usage tracking, storage cleanup, health checks, and update monitoring across the App Store, Homebrew, and Sparkle into one local-first native app. macOS 14+, currently beta." +source: "r/macapps" +fromFind: app-monitor-mac-utility +--- + +import { Image } from 'astro:assets'; +import hero from './hero.png'; + +App Monitor's overview dashboard: a sidebar of app and storage sections beside stat tiles for installed apps, apps used this period, unused apps, storage used, and potential savings, over a storage treemap and a usage-trend bar chart. + +*The overview: installed count, what you actually used, what's gone untouched, and what you could reclaim — in one window.* + +> App Monitor is a free, open-source SwiftUI app that gathers the Mac-housekeeping chores usually scattered across a shelf of paid utilities — usage tracking, storage cleanup, health checks, and update monitoring — into a single native dashboard you can read the source of. It runs entirely on your machine, with no account and nothing to pay. + +The Mac has no shortage of apps that do one of these jobs: a usage tracker here, a storage visualizer there, an update checker, an uninstaller that promises to catch the leftover files. App Monitor's bet is that the value is in seeing them together. One window shows how many apps you have installed, which you actually used this period, which have sat untouched for a month, how much disk each is holding, and how much you could reclaim — so "should this app stay?" becomes a question you can answer at a glance instead of across five tools. + +Under the hood it's a local-first SwiftUI app backed by SQLite, and the feature list runs deeper than the dashboard first suggests. Storage scanning finds not just the app bundle but the caches, containers, preferences, logs, and WebKit data that trail behind it. Update monitoring reaches across the Mac App Store, Homebrew casks and formulae, Apple's own software updates, and Sparkle feeds — the usual blind spots for "is everything current?" Health checks verify code signing and Gatekeeper status and flag stale bundles and crash logs. And it can seed itself with Spotlight's historical last-used data, so the usage picture isn't blank on day one. + +The part that earns trust is the cleanup model. Nothing is deleted out from under you: cleanup and uninstall are quarantine-first, showing the exact file paths before anything moves, with a History view to restore what you pulled. The project is refreshingly clear about its lane, too — it isn't trying to replace a dedicated package manager, a malware scanner, or a deep disk visualizer; it's the native, local-first overview that ties usage, storage, warnings, updates, and uninstall impact into one place. It also runs as a standard Mac app window, with an optional menu-bar presence rather than living solely up in the status bar. + +Two honest caveats. It requires macOS 14 or newer, and it's still beta — the current build is labeled 1.2.0 beta 3 — so treat it as a capable work in progress rather than a finished 1.0, and lean on the quarantine-and-restore safety net accordingly. It's MIT-licensed and free, which means no subscription, but also that its upkeep rides on a single developer's momentum. For the price of a GitHub download, though, it folds together a category of tools people routinely pay for — and you can watch exactly what it does to your system.