Help · Guides · Pangalin Space Manager
Your free 5 GB, explained.
Scanning is always free. On top of that, you can free your first 5 GB of space on each Mac at no cost, so you can see Pangalin Space Manager work on your own files before you decide to buy. It's a one-off allowance, not a monthly one.
What counts
Everything that frees space shares the one 5 GB total, counted by what it actually freed, and only once it has worked:
- cleaning up (items moved to the Trash count, as well as caches cleared)
- moving folders to an external drive, including automatic moves you review
- making cloud files online-only
- shrinking (compressing) files
- merging duplicates, or moving duplicate copies to the Trash
- uninstalling apps, with their leftovers, and removing leftovers the Trash Watcher offers
- clearing build folders in your code projects, and creative apps' caches
- clearing iPhone backups, Mail data and leftover macOS installer files
Before an action starts, its size is checked against what's left. If something fails, it isn't counted.
What needs a licence
Deleting or thinning local Time Machine snapshots needs a licence, because macOS can't say how much space they hold, so they can't be counted against the 5 GB. Pangalin Space Manager's Janitors, which run a developer tool's own clean-up command (such as brew cleanup or go clean -modcache), need a licence too, for the same reason. Pangalin Space Manager tells you before anything changes.
Switching off or removing a startup item needs a licence because it frees no space that can be counted. So does letting automatic moves run without asking; without a licence, each run waits for your review and counts like any move.
What's always free
- Scanning, as often as you like, and the whole Dashboard, Free Up Space list and History.
- Emptying the Trash.
- Putting things back: Undo (⌥⌘Z) while Pangalin Space Manager is open, Undo Shrink, Reinstate in History, and dragging items back out of the Trash.
- Space Watch, support information, update checks, and uninstalling Pangalin Space Manager itself.
- Never Clean, Preview only, the clean-up report, the System Data page and the Mac health check.
- Resetting an app's privacy permissions, deleting an app from the Trash, stopping a helper that runs from the Trash, and switching a startup item back on.
- Putting automatic moves back from History.
See what's left
- The bar at the bottom of the window: for example “1.2 GB of your free 5 GB used”.
- Settings › Licence: “Free — … of your free 5 GB left”.
- After each clean-up: the finished sheet shows what's left.
When an action is bigger than what's left
Pangalin Space Manager doesn't do part of it. Nothing is changed, and a sheet tells you how much of your 5 GB is left. You can:
- untick some items to stay within it
- get a licence to free it all
- choose Not now
When the 5 GB is used up, scanning and History keep working, and anything you moved can still be reinstated from History.
If your subscription ends
After a 7-day grace period you're back on the free version: scanning and History still work, any of your free 5 GB you hadn't used can still be used, and moves can still be reinstated from History.
Why reinstalling doesn't reset it
The amount used is kept in your Mac's Keychain, so it survives uninstalling and reinstalling the app. It's a small counter, not your files, and it never leaves your Mac. The allowance is per Mac.
Going past 5 GB
A licence removes the limit for $25 a year, with a 14-day full refund. See pricing, or activate a key you already have.
Related guides
Checked against Space Manager 3.47.0, 10 October 2026.