Nimbus: lighten your disk without touching your cloud

Secure connection to services, local only

Nimbus never asks for credentials and does not sign in to your online accounts. It detects the folders that sync apps have created in your user folder and shows one card per service:

• the service status: Connected if it is present, Not detected otherwise;
• the path of the synced folder;
• the number of files and the space they take up locally;
• the number of files that are already online only and use almost nothing on disk.

Scans only read files already present on this Mac: nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent. An online-only file is never pulled back down just to be analyzed.

Large files: a threshold that suits you

First choose the service to scan, then the large-file threshold: 50 MB, 100 MB, 250 MB, 500 MB or 1 GB. Nimbus lists everything above that size, split into two groups, Stored locally and Online only, with an icon showing the state of each file. You can see at once which big files really weigh on your disk and which ones are already lightweight.

Videos, installer archives, exported presentations and phone backups are the usual suspects. For large files outside the cloud, the Archipel module does the same job across the rest of your disk.

Duplicates in your cloud storage

Nimbus also looks for identical files of 1 MB or more in the selected service: the same document dropped into two subfolders, an attachment saved at every exchange, a folder copied "just in case". Copies are grouped so you can keep the one that is filed properly.

One essential point: deleting a file from a synced folder also deletes it from the cloud and from your other devices once sync runs. That is simply how these services work. MacNeat moves the file to the Mac's Trash, and most services also keep an online trash for a while; check how long in your service's settings. Our article on duplicate files covers good practices in detail.

Remove local copy: free the disk, keep the file

The Evictable tab lists locally stored files larger than 20 MB. The Remove local copy action deletes only the copy on your Mac: the file stays in the cloud, still visible in Finder, and downloads again when you open it. Nothing is removed from your account.

Let's be honest about the limits, because they depend on Apple and on each provider:

• iCloud Drive: some macOS versions no longer offer the command-line eviction command. In that case, Nimbus tells you so and you use Finder instead: Control-click the file, then choose Remove Download.
• Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox: if the service does not provide a local command to make a file online-only, use the option the service adds to Finder's shortcut menu.

Only files actually stored locally can be evicted; the others stay in the list without errors. The result is logged along with the space freed.

Safety principles

• Everything goes through the Trash for deletions, with a confirmation first.
• Logged, reversible operations, as everywhere else in MacNeat.
• Simulation mode available in the settings: operations are calculated without moving anything.
• Show in Finder to check a file before you decide.
• Local processing, on Apple silicon and Intel alike.
• Free scanning, actions with a license (7-day free trial).

For an overview of every way to save space, see the guide how to free up disk space on a Mac.