How Mint works

Until recently our homepage had a diagram that tried to explain Mint in six steps: Scan, Understand, Suggest, You decide, Clean up, History, plus two arrows looping back. Visitors who hadn't used the app found it hard to follow, so we took it down. This post walks through the same loop in plain words, using what you see on screen. All of this happens on your Mac, and your files, scan results and history stay there. ### Scanning On the Disk tab, click Scan. Mint goes through the places where space quietly piles up: app caches, logs, build output from developer tools, the Trash, big files, copies of the same file and apps you don't use. The Organize tab starts a little differently. You add a folder, say Desktop or Downloads, and Mint reads what's in it and shows where each file would go. Nothing moves yet. ### Sorting what it finds The Disk tab sorts what a scan finds into five groups, because they shouldn't all be handled the same way. **Leftovers** holds old logs, unused versions and leftover data. **Rebuildable** holds generated caches, build output and downloads that can be fetched again. Apps make these again when they need them, though that can take a while or need a network. **Codex conversations** lists your Codex chats so you can pick them by when you last used them. **Clutter** is where your own things end up: the Trash, copies of files, and unused apps and files. **Keep** is everything Mint leaves as it is. Keep is also where a row goes when Mint can't act on it right now, with the reason on the row. A common case is the cache of an app you have open, which waits in Keep while the app is using it. Quit the app and the row moves back to its group without another scan. On the Organize tab, the sorting comes from a template you pick for each folder: Type, Date, Source or Topics. Source looks at file names and the download record macOS keeps for each file. Topics works from file names, metadata and any topic rules you've added. ### What Mint ticks for you Open a group and you'll see a list of rows, each one saying what it is. Some rows come already ticked. Mint only does that when it can show the data comes back by itself and nothing is using it right now. Caches of apps you've closed and old log files are the usual examples. Anything that needs a judgment call starts unticked, like large files, duplicate copies, unused apps or build folders inside your own projects. Mint lists them so you can take a look and decide. We hold ourselves to one rule here: if a row in a group has a checkbox, Mint can actually remove it. Anything it can't remove goes to Keep with its reason. ### You decide Nothing changes until you press a button, so tick and untick whatever you like first. If everything you've ticked is the kind Mint ticks for you, there's one button, Delete permanently. These files get rebuilt when they're needed, and moving them to the Trash would only keep the space taken until you empty it. Mint asks you to confirm once and then removes them. You can't undo that, which is why Mint only leaves out the Trash option when everything ticked is data it has proven will come back. If you've ticked anything that needs your judgment, Move to Trash sits next to Delete permanently. Use it when you might want something back later. Organizing works the same way. The Organize button moves the files shown in the preview into their folders, and every move can be undone. ### History and Undo Every cleanup and organize run is written to Mint's history. Click the magnifying glass at the top right of the window, or press Command F, to open Work History. Find the run and click the arrow next to it to put it back. After an organize run, the Organize tab also shows an Undo link in its summary line. Mint keeps up to 90 days of history, and at most the latest 5,000 runs. Anything Mint moved into a folder or to the Trash can be undone (for the Trash, until you empty it). A permanent delete can't. ### What Mint remembers An Undo also tells Mint something, but Mint doesn't decide what it means. When you undo a Mint run, move a file Mint organized back within seven days, or take something Mint cleaned out of the Trash, Mint asks once whether to add those paths to the Ignore List. Nothing changes until you choose Add to Ignore List, and then those paths are Protected. If you don't answer, the question goes away after 24 hours, or when that folder is organized again. The Ignore List lives in Settings. Needs Review means Mint asks first. Protected means Mint leaves the path out of every scan and action. You can add a path yourself with Add Path, change its level, or select rows and use Remove from list. Removing a row only takes it off the list, and nothing on your disk changes. ### The next scan When you scan or organize again, Mint starts from how your Mac looks now. Files you removed are gone from the lists, anything on your Ignore List is skipped, and rows that sat in Keep because an app was open come back once it's closed. You don't have to start every run yourself. Each folder on the Organize tab has a Schedule switch. Turn it on and pick Daily at a set time or As files arrive. As files arrive moves new files into place once the folder has gone quiet. It never deletes anything. Scheduled and arrival runs land in the same history, so you can undo them too.