Sift audits your Applications folder — what each app is, whether it earns its place, and what it's quietly costing you in disk, updates, and attention.
brew install --cask aka-kika/tap/siftSix ways Sift turns a cluttered Applications folder into a decision you can make in an afternoon.
Half the apps on a developer's Mac arrived as a dependency of a dependency. Sift identifies each one — category, developer, bundle ID — and writes a one-paragraph explanation you'd actually send a friend. No more googling com.something.helper at midnight.
Ollama is a local LLM runtime that lets you run open-source language models on your own machine, popular with developers building or testing AI workflows. Currently running alongside Claude and Goose.
Every app is rated 1–5 against how you actually work — what's running, what you open daily, what fits the rest of your stack. Sort by relevance and the wheat sorts itself from the chaff.
Sift doesn't recite App Store blurbs. It sees that your machine is heavily AI-focused, that the app is open right now, that you have 26 tools across five categories — and writes the tip accordingly.
Directly relevant given 26 installed apps across multiple categories; useful for periodic inventory, version tracking, and cleanup decisions in your developer stack.
“I use this all the time.” Last used: never. On disk: 27.1 MB. Source: Sparkle. Analyzed: 4 weeks ago. Every claim Sift makes comes with the receipt attached.
Sparkle, direct download, App Store — Sift knows where each app came from and whether it's current. Find the stale copy, the duplicate install, and the updater that stopped running.
Keep each app's license key, the email it's registered to, and what you actually pay — lifetime, one-time, or subscription — in the macOS Keychain, behind Touch ID. The License Vault lists them all in one place, even for apps you've since removed, with a link back to where you bought them.
No accounts, no cloud sync, no setup ritual. Point Sift at your Mac and read the report.
Sift reads /Applications and the usual install locations, pulling bundle metadata — version, size, source, running state, last-opened date — into a single sortable list.
Each app gets a plain-English identity, a 1–5 relevance score weighted by your actual usage, and a tip written for your stack — not a generic App Store blurb.
Keep, update, or delete — with the receipts on screen. Run it quarterly and your Applications folder never gets away from you again.
Right now. Download the DMG, drag Sift to Applications, and it keeps itself current from then on — updates arrive inside the app.
Your /Applications folder and standard install locations. For each app it reads public bundle metadata — name, version, category, bundle ID, size, install source — plus local signals like last-opened date and whether it's running right now.
Usage data — last-used, running state — never leaves your Mac. App identities are analyzed to write the descriptions and relevance scores you see in the report.
Scores weigh your behavior, not generic popularity: how recently and often you open the app, whether it's running now, and how its category fits the rest of your installed stack. A niche tool you live in outranks a famous app you never touch.
Only when you ask. Right-click an app and choose Uninstall…: Sift shows the app and every leftover it found, with sizes and why each one matched, and you pick what goes. Everything goes to the Trash, so you can put it back. If the app is open, Sift offers to quit it first. Apple’s own apps and Sift itself can’t be uninstalled, and your license record stays in the vault.
Nothing, during the beta. Download it, use it, tell us what's wrong. If Sift ever gets a price, it will be a one-time one, and everyone who was here for the beta will hear about it first.
Yes. Turn on Developer Mode (Settings → Scanning) to mark apps as yours and attach a local project folder — Sift reads its README as evidence instead of guessing from the bundle. Off by default, fully offline.
Your Applications folder has a story — duplicates, stale copies, and that one app you've never opened. Read it in one sitting.
brew install --cask aka-kika/tap/sift