Éclair · Quick maintenance
Éclair: quick maintenance for your Mac, in a single pass
Éclair is where MacNeat starts. Click Analyze and the module reviews three things at once: disposable files cluttering your disk, maintenance tasks worth running, and an in-house security check. You get three result cards, each of which you can review in detail before anything is executed.
The point is not to "boost" your Mac by magic, but to bundle into one minute what a careful user would otherwise do by hand in the Finder, Terminal and System Settings.
Cleaning caches, logs and development leftovers
The first card gathers items that macOS and your apps can easily recreate: user and system caches, old logs and, if you write code, the leftovers that grow surprisingly fast.
- Caches: temporary app data, rebuilt at the next launch.
- Logs: old diagnostic files that are rarely read again.
- Development: Xcode DerivedData and archives, simulators, orphaned builds, package manager caches (npm, Homebrew, pip and so on).
Each category expands into a checkable tree. Selected items go to the Trash, not into the void: you can get them back as long as you have not emptied it. To go further category by category, Clarté takes over.
Optimization: targeted maintenance tasks
The second card lists maintenance tasks you can switch on or off one by one. By default, Éclair offers to:
- Flush the DNS cache, handy when a website stops responding after a network change.
- Free inactive memory, a one-off nudge when memory pressure climbs (macOS manages memory very well, so the effect is temporary).
- Thin local Time Machine snapshots, which reserve space on the internal disk.
- Compact the Mail database, for a more responsive Mail app with large mailboxes.
- Rebuild the LaunchServices database, which fixes duplicate entries in the "Open With" menu.
Some tasks need administrator authorization, requested only once per session. For a fuller list (Spotlight, disk verification, login items), see Élan.
An in-house security check
The third card checks your Mac against MacNeat's threat database: files known to be malicious (by hash and by name) and suspicious launch agents or daemons set to start automatically. Results come in two levels:
- Threats: items matching a known signature.
- To review: unusual items worth a look, without necessarily being dangerous.
This quick check does not replace the full scan in Rempart, which adds privacy and app permissions. The database itself is updated daily: see the threat feed.
How an Éclair pass works
- Click Analyze: the scan reads your disk locally and nothing is uploaded.
- Read the three cards (Cleanup, Optimization, Security) and the recoverable space shown.
- Click Review to tick or untick items, or enable other tasks.
- Click Run: files move to the Trash, then the chosen tasks run one after another.
You can also schedule the scan (daily, weekly or monthly) in MacNeat's settings, and get a weekly reminder if no maintenance has been done.
The principles behind Éclair
- Everything goes through the Trash: nothing is deleted directly by default.
- Undoable operations: every action is logged, and "Undo last operation" puts files back where they were.
- Protected areas: sensitive system folders and your exclusions are never touched.
- Simulation mode: test without moving anything.
- Apple Silicon and Intel, with all processing done locally on your Mac.
- Free scan; cleanup and tasks require a license (7-day trial).