Shodhana 0.5.1
3 August 2026
Fixed: pasting a licence key from the purchase email
Purchase emails wrap the licence key across several lines, and pasting that into the key field could make it look empty even though the key was there. The field now grows to show the whole key, and any stray line breaks or spaces from the email are removed automatically — what you see in the field is exactly what gets activated.
Safer with caches that are expensive to rebuild
Some caches look ordinary but cost real time to regenerate — clearing one can mean minutes of stalling the next time you open the app that owns it. Shodhana now recognises these and refuses to touch them: they no longer appear as cleanable, and the deletion engine independently refuses them as well.
Better coverage
Shodhana now finds rebuildable space in more of the apps you use, and a developer-tools cleanup that had quietly stopped being offered on most Macs works again.
As always, only genuinely regenerable material is offered — anything you imported or created is left alone, and nothing is touched while the app that owns it is running.
Shodhana 0.5.0
27 July 2026
New: Explore — follow the space, not a guess
A new Explore view answers "where did my disk go?" one honest folder at a time. Every entry is sized the way the disk actually holds it, so the numbers add up instead of arguing with Finder. Each row draws its share of the folder as a bar, and navigation is the analysis: follow the biggest bar until you recognise the answer.
- A breadcrumb trail roots at your home folder, or any mounted volume — every crumb is a jump back up.
- The largest files anywhere beneath the current folder are surfaced up front, so a single 4 GB file can't hide three levels down.
- Folder sizes are remembered between visits: the first walk of a big disk takes seconds, revisits paint instantly.
- Sort by size or by name.
Explore judges as it lists. Anything Clean already covers is marked as such instead of being offered to you twice, rebuildable folders are marked safe to delete, and anything Shodhana refuses to remove wears a Protected badge that tells you why — before you try, not after.
Moving a folder to the Trash from Explore goes through exactly the same safety checks as Clean, lands in History, and stays recoverable until you empty the Trash.
Protection that works from above, too
Shodhana refuses to touch the places where irreplaceable work is kept. Two refinements make that sharper.
Where something is protected only because re-downloading it would be slow rather than impossible, you can now remove it deliberately from Explore, and the confirmation tells you exactly what you are giving up. Everything genuinely irreplaceable stays refused.
The protection now also works upward: trashing a parent folder that contains something protected is refused while the protected item is inside it. Previously the guard could be sidestepped from one level up.
Clean and the deletion engine now always agree — anything the engine would refuse is never offered as cleanable in the first place.
Shodhana 0.4.0
24 July 2026
Cleaning is quieter and better behaved
Cleaning 200 files used to play 200 trash sounds. Now a clean plays the move-to-trash sound once, when it finishes — and permanent deletes get the empty-trash sound instead, so your ears know which mode you're in.
Files that running apps hold open no longer fail with a vague "may be in use" — they move to the Trash cleanly, and the app that owns them simply rebuilds its cache. And when something genuinely can't be cleaned, the results screen now shows the actual reason instead of a guess.
Finds considerably more space
Shodhana now recognises a great deal more reclaimable space than it did: the caches apps rebuild on demand, the copies of themselves that some apps keep after they update, abandoned partial downloads and crash reports, and more of the rebuildable output that development tools leave behind.
All of it follows the same rule as everything else — attributed to whatever put it there, sized, and shown to you with a reason before anything moves.
Safer by default
- Leftovers from uninstalled apps now wait until data has clearly been abandoned, and recognise apps installed by the common package managers. Far fewer false leftovers.
- Anything credential-adjacent — password managers, SSH, GPG — is never listed, anywhere.
- Caches that hold things you'd notice losing, like device and automation settings, are protected out of the box.
- A browser that is running is left completely alone during scans.
- Security and device-management software is never offered for uninstall. Removing that kind of tool requires the vendor's own uninstaller.
- Uninstalling an app now finds more of its true footprint, while never touching command-line tools that outlive a desktop app.
Shodhana 0.3.0
20 July 2026
Build output now tells you whose build it is
This list used to be named after the folder each item sat in, which is technically the truth and no help at all. Two 65 MB rows with the same generic name gave you no way to tell which project you were about to reclaim space from.
Rows are now named after the project that owns the build. If one project produces output for several platforms, all of it is attributed to that project, so you see the app's name rather than a platform's.
Packages inside a larger repository keep their own names instead of being swallowed by the name of the repository.
Tags and locations
Each row now carries a small tag for what produced it, and shows its location underneath. When two projects share a name, the path is what tells them apart.
Fixes
- Item counts above a thousand mixed two number formats in one sentence ("10,000 of 10000 items"). They now group consistently.
Shodhana 0.2.0
More kinds of project are recognised. If you write software, Shodhana understands a considerably wider range of development projects than it did, and finds the rebuildable output they leave on your disk.
Every one is checked against the project it belongs to before it is offered. A folder is only ever treated as build output when the project around it proves that is what it is — the same name somewhere else is left alone.
Shodhana 0.1.6
Wording changes to the licence agreement. Nothing about how Shodhana works has changed, and you will not be asked to accept the terms again.
Shodhana 0.1.5
The licence agreement is now shown in full on first launch, rather than summarised. It sets out plainly how removal works and what can go wrong — including that permanently deleted items cannot be recovered by anyone, the developer included. You'll be asked to accept it once.
Moving a licence between Macs is explained more clearly. Replacing a logic board can make a Mac look like new hardware and need reactivating; if you ever run out of moves or a Mac is lost or sold, support will sort it out.
Shodhana 0.1.4
A clearer welcome. The first-run screen now explains how Shodhana works — approval before anything is removed, what stays on your Mac, what your licence covers — rather than leading with disclaimers.
Updates arrive sooner. Shodhana checks for new versions several times a day rather than once. You can turn automatic checks off in Settings › General.
Shodhana 0.1.3
Shodhana now asks you to agree to its terms before it does anything. A short summary of what matters — keep backups, the software is provided as is, what your licence covers, and what does and doesn't leave your Mac — with links to the full documents.
Deactivating a Mac no longer forgets your key. Freeing a slot so you can use your licence elsewhere used to delete the key from this Mac, leaving you hunting through email to get back in. Your key now stays put, and reactivating is one click. You can move a licence up to three times a year.
You can turn off automatic update checks in Settings › General, which also explains exactly what a check sends.
Shodhana 0.1.2
Shodhana now keeps itself up to date. New versions are found and installed automatically, so fixes reach you without you going looking for them.
Settings has been reorganised into General, Cleaning, and License. Your protected paths live under Cleaning, in a list that stays a sensible size no matter how many you add — previously the window kept growing with them.
Shodhana 0.1.1
Your trial is now visible where you work. The Overview shows how many days remain, with a way to buy when you're ready. It stays quiet until the last few days, then makes sure you aren't caught out.
Onboarding no longer asks for a permission you already have. If Full Disk Access was granted before — after a reinstall, for instance — Shodhana now recognises it and gets straight out of the way.
Settings is organised into tabs. General, Cleaning, Safety, and License. Safety keeps everything about what Shodhana may touch — protected paths and disk access — in one place.