A free, open-source menu-bar app for macOS. It finds the dev servers, MCP servers and leaked helpers still holding memory, and quits them safely.
macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel · Signed and notarized · MIT license
Activity Monitor sorts by memory in RAM. The memory that is actually lost is somewhere else.
A video encoder leaked for four days. Almost all of it had been pushed to swap, so it barely showed up. Leftovers measures the full footprint: RAM, compressed and swapped.
Twelve Claude Code sessions each started their own copy of the same four MCP servers. Dev servers kept running days after their terminal closed.
Leftovers never touches system or root processes. It asks before quitting anything, and checks a process is still the same one before it sends a signal.
Each coding agent grabs something, sets up, and runs off to the next thing. The blocks, the plate and the shoes stay where they were dropped. On a Mac, those are dev servers, builds and MCP servers, and they keep holding memory until someone picks them up.
The needle shows memory in use. The menu shows what to do about it.
Idle processes holding memory they don't use, each with a plain-language reason and a Quit button.
Every app with all of its helper processes added up, so the one hogging memory has a face.
Memory for each Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, Aider or OpenCode session, and everything it started.
Finds git worktrees whose work is already on main and removes them, one by one or all at once. Never ones with uncommitted work.
Every background job with its schedule, next run and status, and which agent set it up.
Quit every likely leak at once, after a standard confirmation that lists what will stop.
Open to numbers in well under a second, and each refresh shows how long it took. About 22 MB and no CPU at idle.
No accounts, no telemetry. The only network request is an update check you can turn off. Everything it reads stays on your Mac.
Agents don't just leave processes running. They schedule things: a watcher every 20 minutes, a script every morning. Leftovers lists every background job in your account with a schedule you can read, when it runs next, and whether it's working or failing.
The app is also a command-line tool with the same engine and the same safety rules, so an agent can check memory and clean up after itself.
# add the command once ln -s /Applications/Leftovers.app/Contents/MacOS/Leftovers ~/.local/bin/leftovers leftovers --report # readable summary leftovers --json # likelyLeaks, agents, duplicateToolServers leftovers --clean # quit likely leaks; protected processes are refused leftovers --jobs # scheduled background jobs (add --json)
Agents that schedule a job can leave a one-line note in ~/Library/Application Support/Leftovers/jobs/<label>.json (purpose, creator, end date), and Leftovers labels the job with it.
Open the disk image and drag Leftovers to Applications. It's signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without warnings.
brew install --cask arpwal/tap/leftovers
Or build from source with Swift 6: swift build.
No price, no account, no telemetry. If Leftovers gave you back a slow afternoon, a star on GitHub helps other people find it, and following along on X is how you'll hear what's next.