Using Mint without opening the window

You don't have to open Mint's window to use it. You can clean up and free memory from the menu bar, ask Siri to organize a folder, put a folder on a schedule, read Mint's numbers in the terminal, and let an AI agent ask Mint what's on your disk. These used to have their own section on our homepage. They're handy, but they're not the main reason people install Mint, so we moved them to the blog, where there's room to explain how each one works and where it stops. ### The menu bar Mint keeps an icon next to the clock. Click it for two buttons, Quick Clean and Free Memory, with your managed folders listed below under "Organize a specific folder". Quick Clean scans your Mac and clears the junk that needs no decision from you: caches, logs and build output that Mint has checked are safe to remove and not in use right now. Apps rebuild these files when they need them, so Mint deletes them outright (the App Store edition moves them to the Trash). Your own files, AI agent data and anything else that needs a judgment call wait on the Disk tab. Free Memory lists the apps you could quit and ticks the idle ones holding a lot of memory. An app that is busy, or has a coding agent running inside it, stays unticked. Apps quit the normal way, so one with unsaved work can still ask you first. Click a folder name and Mint organizes it with that folder's saved template. Files marked Needs Review stay put, and the notification says how many. In the App Store edition the second button is Organize, because the sandbox doesn't let Mint quit other apps. ### Shortcuts and Siri Mint adds five actions to the Shortcuts app: Run Mint, Organize Folder, Undo Last Mint Action, List Mint Folders and Free Memory (the App Store edition has the first four). You can use them in your own shortcuts, find them in Spotlight, or ask Siri with phrases like "Organize Downloads with Mint" or "Free memory with Mint", where Downloads can be any folder Mint manages. Run Mint scans your Mac and opens the Disk review, and nothing is removed until you confirm there. Organize Folder brings the window up on the Organize tab so you can watch the run. Free Memory never opens a window. It quits idle background apps using 500 MB or more and replies with how much memory came back. Undo Last Mint Action reverses Mint's latest change in the folder you name. ### A schedule for each folder On the Organize tab, every folder has a "Schedule" switch. While it's off, the folder waits for you to click Organize. Turn it on and the folder runs once a day at a time you pick, 9:00 AM unless you change it. The menu next to the switch also has "As files arrive", which handles new files once the folder has gone quiet. Arrival mode only moves files and never deletes anything. Every move goes into Mint's journal with Undo. Scheduled and arrival runs both skip files marked Protected or Needs Review, because nobody is there to ask. ### mint-cli in the terminal The Direct edition includes a command-line tool. Each time Mint launches, it links `mint-cli` into /opt/homebrew/bin or /usr/local/bin, whichever it can write to. These are the commands most people use, and most accept `--json`: - `mint-cli status` shows disk trends, recent activity and your managed folders. - `mint-cli scan` looks for reclaimable space, developer caches by default or everything with `--all`. - `mint-cli why` shows which categories grow fastest, and `mint-cli why ~/Downloads` lists what Mint did in that folder and why. - `mint-cli watch` prints Mint's file operations as they happen. - `mint-cli agents` reports what Codex, Claude Code, Cursor and other AI tools keep on disk, from the app's last AI Agents scan. - `mint-cli rules` lists your cleanup rules, and `mint-cli rules run ` shows what a rule would match. These commands only read. The exception is `mint-cli rules exec `, which runs a rule for real and records it in Mint's journal. Optimizing or deleting agent conversations only happens in the app. ### MCP tools for AI agents `mint-cli mcp` starts an MCP server over standard input and output, so Claude Code, Cursor or any other MCP client can use it. Add this to the agent's MCP settings: ``` "mint": {"command": "mint-cli", "args": ["mcp"]} ``` The server has eight tools. Seven only read: `mint_status`, `mint_why`, `mint_scan`, `mint_recent`, `mint_activity`, `mint_agents` and `mint_rules`. An agent can use them to answer "what's taking up my disk?" from the same scans and history the app uses. The eighth, `mint_execute`, is the only one that changes anything, and all it can do is move items to the Trash. It takes item IDs from a `mint_scan` plan, never file paths, and a plan works once and expires after 15 minutes. Before anything moves, Mint checks again that each item is the same file, isn't in use and isn't protected. It uses the Trash even if you set the app to delete permanently, and items marked Needs Review still have to be handled in Mint. Whichever way you start, organize runs and Trash moves land in the same journal as the ones you start from the window, so you can find them in the app's history and undo them there.