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Vole

 __     __    _
 \ \   / /__ | | ___
  \ \ / / _ \| |/ _ \
   \ V / (_) | |  __/   ~~~(^°>
    \_/ \___/|_|\___|   Deep clean and update your machine.

🐦‍🔥 Clean, update, uninstall, and monitor your Linux box or Mac — from the terminal.

Vole started as a Linux-native fork of Mole (a macOS cleaner by tw93) and now runs on both platforms. It keeps Mole's interactive terminal UX — arrow-key menus, multi-select with filtering, safe-by-default cleaning — and adds the one thing Mole doesn't have: a single command that updates every package manager on your system.

Per Mole's trademark policy this fork uses its own name. Code is GPL-3.0, same as upstream. The mascot is a phoenix: Vole rose from Mole's source, and after every clean it flies across your terminal trailing fire.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fschrhunt/vole/main/install.sh | bash

or from a clone: ./install.sh. Installs symlinks vole and the vo shorthand (Mole has mo; Vole has vo). Requires bash and git — nothing else.

Commands

Command What it does
vo Interactive menu
vo clean Free disk space: user/app/dev caches, old trash, old logs, brew cleanup. Linux adds flatpak leftovers and an opt-in sudo deep clean (APT cache, journal logs, old snap revisions, crash dumps); macOS adds Xcode DerivedData and simulator caches. --dry-run previews.
vo update Scan every package manager in parallel and update what you pick. vo update all skips the menu; vo update dry run lists every pending package, then offers to apply; vo update apt brew targets specific managers.
vo optimize Tune and repair the system: caches, corrupted config files, database vacuuming, network stack, broken launchers/agents, disk and battery health, and more — see below. --dry-run previews; --list shows every task; --only=/--skip= target specific tasks.
vo uninstall One selector for apt / snap / flatpak / brew / casks. Removes packages, orphaned dependencies, and residual configs.
vo purge Find files over 100MB (--min=<MB>) and pick what to remove — to the trash when possible.
vo analyze Explore disk usage. Delegates to gdu/ncdu when installed.
vo status System health: load, memory, swap, disks, temperature, battery, pending updates.
vo history Everything Vole has cleaned, updated, or removed.
vo whitelist Protected paths, never cleaned (vo whitelist edit).
vo config Settings: animations, purge floor, system-clean behavior, retention windows (vo config edit).
vo fda macOS: check Full Disk Access, register Vole's toggle with the system, and open the exact Settings pane (points at the Remote Login switch for SSH sessions). On Linux: nothing needed.

Optimize

vo optimize matches Mole's own optimize task list on macOS (all 21 of its checks: DNS/Spotlight, Finder & icon caches, saved app states, corrupted preferences, Mail/Safari/Messages database vacuuming, LaunchServices repair, Dock refresh, .DS_Store prevention, memory pressure, network stack, disk permissions, periodic maintenance, shared file lists, login items, Gatekeeper quarantine history, broken Launch Agents, Notification Center, and usage tracking data) — plus battery health, Homebrew health, and a SMART-based disk health check that replaces Mole's diskutil verifyVolume (which can hang the system on APFS inconsistencies) with something that never touches the filesystem.

On Linux it's a from-scratch equivalent set, not a stub: DNS cache, font/icon caches, the desktop/MIME database (the real Linux analog of "Open with" repair), autostart and application-launcher audits, browser database vacuuming, systemd failed-unit cleanup, memory pressure relief, network stack refresh, home directory ownership repair, locate database refresh (the Linux analog of Spotlight indexing), disk and package-database health, and journal disk usage. SSD TRIM (fstrim) has no macOS/Mole equivalent at all — APFS handles it transparently — and is a genuine Linux-only win: a real optimization most desktops leave to a cron job nobody ever sees run.

Every task is safe to re-run — a second pass reports "already healthy" instead of repeating work — and every sudo-gated task degrades cleanly if admin access isn't available.

Update sources

Linux macOS
System APT, snap, Flatpak, firmware (fwupd) softwareupdate, App Store (mas)
Homebrew ✓ ✓
Dev tools npm, pnpm, pipx, rustup, cargo, gem, bun, deno, uv npm, pnpm, pipx, rustup, cargo, gem, bun, deno, uv

Each manager is detected automatically; you only ever see the ones you have.

Safety

  • Nothing outside caches/trash/logs is deleted without an interactive selection and confirmation.
  • Expensive-to-rebuild caches (HuggingFace models, Maven/Gradle repos, cargo registry, Ollama models, …) are whitelisted by default.
  • --dry-run everywhere it matters; every deletion is logged to vo history.
  • System-level actions never run implicitly — they need an interactive yes, an explicit flag, or an explicit config setting.

License

GPL-3.0, inherited from Mole. The lib/core/base.sh, lib/core/ui.sh, and lib/ui/ menu components are adapted from Mole's originals; the rest is written for Vole.