Ambysto Optimer

Part of the Ambysto Pro Suite, the jet-pack for every vibeworker · Mac & Windows

Ambysto Optimer

Your machine is slow. Now you know why.

Ambysto Optimer shows which app is eating your memory, CPU and disk.

Then it cleans only what grows back. It never force-quits anything.

Download for Mac & Windows See how it works

Free on Mac and Windows

macOS 14+, Apple Silicon and Intel · Windows · Free forever

The Ambysto Optimer dashboard in dark mode: memory used, CPU load, free disk and swap as large numbers, with live charts below.

Slow Mac. No answers.

AI agents, dev servers and builds eat RAM and disk fast. Your current tools don't help.

One row per app.

Chrome's 20 helpers count as Chrome. Memory, CPU and disk, rolled up. One click from your menu bar.

  • Same numbers as macOS. Memory is physical footprint, the measure the system itself uses.
  • Pressure at a glance. Green, yellow, red. Plus swap, thermal state and GPU.
  • Runaway flag. One process over 8 GB? You see it, and the parent that started it.
  • Quit, politely. Same as ⌘Q. Always asks first. No force kill. Ever.
The menu-bar popover listing top apps by memory: TradingView 3.02 GB, Claude 1.49 GB, Orca 1.22 GB, with a Memory, CPU and Disk tab switcher.

Big numbers. Live every 2 seconds.

Memory, CPU, disk and swap up front. Five minutes of charts behind them.

Four ratings: Great, Good, Fair, Poor. Each one has a clear rule.

Always on screen.

A slim bar floats over every Space and full-screen app. It never steals focus. Expand it when something looks off.

  • Mini bar. Pressure, memory, CPU, free disk.
  • Table. Top five apps, a five-minute chart, Quit on hover.
  • One shortcut. ⌃⌥M shows or hides it. It remembers its spot.
  • Dock badges PRO Memory or CPU on the icon of every heavy app. Turns to a warning colour at 4x your limit.
⌃⌥M show / hide
The expanded floating table: Memory, CPU and Disk tiles, a memory chart, the top five apps and health chips.
The macOS Dock with memory badges floating above heavy apps: 1.5 GB, 3.2 GB in the warning colour, and 1009 MB.

Badges are click-through and hide when the Dock hides. Accessibility access is asked only when you turn them on. It reads icon positions, nothing else.

Measure first. Clean what regrows. Ask before the rest.

Same six steps, every time.

  1. Measure

    Free space, cache sizes, biggest folders.

  2. Auto-clean

    Caches that rebuild. Pre-ticked.

  3. Approve

    Personal items start unticked. You choose.

  4. Pick a mode

    Trash by default. Permanent only for caches.

  5. Run

    One item at a time. Cancel any time.

  6. Report

    Space before and after. What went, what didn't.

The Cleanup window, step one: 29.9 GB free of 245.1 GB and 2.1 GB safe to auto-clean across five caches, with a Move to Trash toggle.
Measure first.
The cleanup report: 347 MB freed, 28.7 GB to 29.0 GB free, three items deleted, and the uv cache skipped because python3.11 was using it.
The report shows what it skipped, and why.

Safe by default.

Every delete passes a gate first. Touch anything on this list and it's refused.

Never touched

  • Photos and photo libraries
  • SSH and GPG keys, keychains
  • Browser profiles: Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox, Brave, Edge
  • Backups and Time Machine
  • Agent transcripts in ~/.claude/projects

Never does

  • Force-quit a process
  • Run as admin or use sudo
  • Follow a symlink to delete its target
  • Sell you a "Free RAM" button
  • Send anything off your Mac. No account. No upload.

Free works. Forever.

Pro adds extras. Free stays free.

Free

$0 forever

Everything you need to find the problem and fix it.

  • Menu bar, popover, dashboard
  • Floating mini bar and table
  • Health ratings and polite Quit
  • Measure, auto-clean, approval table
  • On-screen report
Download free

Pro PRO

Soon price not set yet

Everything in Free, plus:

  • No reminder, ever
  • Background alerts: critical pressure, low disk, heavy app
  • Dock badges and floating bar looks
  • Report export in Markdown and JSON
  • History and trends · later release
  • Custom cleanup rules · later release
Follow the Pro launch

Once Pro is on sale, Free shows one reminder per launch, never during a cleanup, dismissed with one click. Until then there is none: early users get Pro keys for free.

Questions

Which Macs does it run on?

macOS 14 or later. Apple Silicon and Intel. Menu bar only, no Dock icon.

How heavy is it?

Light by design. The collapsed bar skips process scanning. Nothing animates on a timer.

What permissions does it need?

Only what a feature needs, when you use it. Scanning Desktop, Documents or Downloads triggers a normal macOS prompt. Dock badges ask for Accessibility. It never asks for admin rights.

Can it delete something I need?

Auto-clean only touches caches that rebuild. Personal items stay unticked until you tick them. Trash is the default.

Is there a Windows version?

Yes. A native Windows app, built from the same written spec. No mobile.

Ambysto Optimer app icon

See your machine right now.

Install it. Click the menu bar or the tray icon. First numbers in about a second.

macOS 14+, Apple Silicon and Intel · Windows