Claude Code process cleanup tools for Mac, compared
Once you have seen ten node processes from sessions you closed hours ago, you want something that handles it. There are four realistic options on a Mac today, from built-in to paid. We make one of them, Agents Monitor, so we have stuck to what each project documents and linked the sources so you can check.
At a glance
| Feature | Activity Monitor | cc-reaper | Agent Meter | Agents Monitor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, built into macOS | Free, open source (Apache-2.0) | Free, open source (MIT) | $39.99 once, lifetime updates |
| How you install it | Already there | Shell scripts, a Claude Code hook and a LaunchAgent via install.sh | Build from source with Xcode | Download the signed app |
| Requires | Any macOS | macOS or Linux; companion app needs macOS 14+ | macOS 14+ | macOS 26+ |
| Agents it knows | None; every process is a separate row | Claude Code and Codex, plus browser automation leftovers | Claude Code and Codex, grouped and named by session | 10 built in (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor Agent, Aider, Gemini CLI, opencode, Goose, Amp, omp, Ollama), plus any process you mark |
| How it watches | Live | Scheduled sweeps (every 10 minutes by default) and session-stop hooks | On demand when you press Refresh | Live, every two seconds, from the menu bar |
| Listening ports | In each process's Inspect window | Checked before killing, not shown as a view | Not listed in its documentation | Per process and per tree |
| Disk | Disk I/O per process | Watches free space; reclaims finished worktrees and build byproducts | Disk tab for what each session leaves behind, with deletion | Disk writes and working-folder growth (node_modules, target, .venv) |
| Alerts | None | System-wide notifications for load, memory and disk | Not listed in its documentation | Per-process and per-tree limits, one notification per breach |
| Stopping a whole tree | One process at a time | Process-group kill | Ends a session and what it started, after confirmation | Freeze, rescan, terminate, after a confirmation listing every target |
| Automatic cleanup | No | Yes: hooks, scheduled sweeps, and a guard that kills oversized sessions | One-click Clean Up of ended sessions | One-click Clean, plus opt-in idle auto-kill with a countdown |
Based on each project's public documentation as of November 2026. Projects change; follow the links for the current state.
Activity Monitor
Built in and always there. View → All Processes, Hierarchically shows parent and child processes, which is enough to trace a single runaway session by hand. It does not know what an agent is, so every subagent, MCP server and dev server is just another node row, and quitting a parent leaves its children running.
Good for: the occasional check when you already know which process to look for.
cc-reaper (scripts and hooks)
cc-reaper is a collection of shell tools for Claude Code and Codex. A hook runs when a session stops and kills its orphans, a LaunchAgent sweeps for orphans on a schedule, and a guard can kill sessions whose memory passes a threshold. Further background jobs watch load, memory and free disk space, send notifications, and reclaim finished worktrees. Shell functions such as claude-ram and claude-cleanup cover manual checks, and an optional companion app can be built locally.
Good for: people who want cleanup to happen automatically, are comfortable reading shell scripts, and mostly run Claude Code or Codex. Because it acts on rules rather than showing you a choice, review its defaults before installing.
Agent Meter
Agent Meter is a small open-source Mac app that groups processes by Claude Code session or Codex thread and labels each group with the session's name. It samples when you press Refresh rather than in the background, ends sessions or their leftovers after a confirmation, and has a Disk tab for scratch files, dependencies and worktrees that sessions leave behind. There is no prebuilt download; you build it with Xcode.
Good for: developers who use only Claude Code and Codex, want session names, care about disk cleanup, and are happy to build from source.
Agents Monitor
Agents Monitor is our native menu-bar app. It recognizes 10 agents out of the box, follows each one's process tree live (including dev servers that detach), and shows CPU, memory, disk writes and listening ports per process and per tree. You can set limits and get one notification per breach, kill a whole tree with a freeze, rescan and terminate sequence, and clean up orphans in one confirmed click or let opt-in auto-kill handle idle ones. It runs entirely on your Mac with no account and no telemetry.
Good for: people who run several different agents, want to see costs live and get warned before the Mac slows down, and prefer a signed app to scripts. It needs macOS 26 or later and costs $39.99 once.
Which one to pick
- Only an occasional problem? Activity Monitor and the commands in our orphaned processes guide are enough.
- Want it fully automatic and free? cc-reaper.
- Claude Code and Codex only, and disk space is the main pain? Agent Meter.
- Many agents, live visibility and alerts, without maintaining scripts? Agents Monitor.