AI-POWERED MAC PERFORMANCE

Your Mac, tuned by AI that actually learns

(Your Patterns x On-Device AI) / Manual Tuning = MacGuardian

MacGuardian watches how your Mac actually behaves — process by process, hour by hour — and steps in only when something's drifting. No cloud calls. No accounts. No data ever leaves your machine.

Download Free Trial See it running
Official Moose Pack Inc product ● 100% on-device ● No accounts required ● Apple-notarized ● Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ (Tahoe ready)
BASIC · FREE MacGuardian Basic — Ember look, red and orange dashboard
XR · $49 MacGuardian XR — Circuit look, emerald and silver dashboard
MAX · $199 MacGuardian MAX — HUD look, neon dashboard
Real numbers, real machine
These screenshots are not mockups
0
per-process baselines learned
0
autonomous actions taken
0
insights surfaced
0
accounts or logins required
Captured on the Mac that built this page — MacGuardian 4.2.3, macOS 26, Apple Silicon.
Every screen, as it actually looks
No stock art, no renders. This is the app running on a working machine — including the parts that aren't flattering.
MacGuardian Overview dashboard
Overview. One health score, the four signals that decide it, and a disk-full projection dated from your actual write rate — not a generic warning.
MacGuardian AI Insights listing detected memory leaks and anomalies
AI Insights. Every finding names the process, the growth rate, and what's normal for your Mac — "Growing at 1018 MB/hr. Currently 166 MB." Nothing here is a canned alert.
MacGuardian performance profiles: Max Performance, Balanced, Battery Saver, Creative Work, Developer, Gaming
Performance profiles. Six profiles with their own thresholds and polling rates. Auto-switch reads your running apps and load, and logs every switch with the reason.
MacGuardian process list with CPU, memory, status and per-process actions
Processes. Live CPU and memory per process, with throttle and stop actions inline — and a padlock on everything the protection list is guarding.
MacGuardian network view with bandwidth history and active connections
Network. Live throughput, bandwidth history, and established connection count straight from the kernel.
MacGuardian battery view with health, cycle count, temperature and voltage
Battery. Health, cycle count, temperature and voltage read from native IOKit — including the honest verdict when a battery needs replacing.
MacGuardian maintenance screen with instant fixes, Time Machine snapshots and sleep/wake analysis
Maintenance. The Terminal-session problems, made one-click: audio server reset, DNS flush, local Time Machine snapshots, and a sleep/wake log that tells you why your Mac woke up.
MacGuardian action history log of automatic system checks
History. Every automatic action, timestamped, with what it did and why. If MacGuardian touched something, it's on this list.
PILLAR / 01

Learns your patterns

Per-process baselines + hour-of-day modeling. It knows you're different at 9am vs 2am.

PILLAR / 02

Predicts before it happens

30-day disk-full projections, 5-minute memory-pressure forecasts, pre-emptive relief.

PILLAR / 03

Knows when its actions worked

Throttle outcome auditing — verifies if Spotify actually slowed down, learns when something's a lost cause.

PILLAR / 04

Explainable. Always.

Every recommendation has a reason: "CPU at 87% is significantly above your typical 23% at this hour." No black box.

The "AI" — demystified
No neural networks. No "trained on millions of users." MacGuardian is real classical statistical ML — the kind that worked decades before LLMs hijacked the term — running entirely on your Mac.
METHOD / 01

Welford's online variance

Numerically stable per-process baselines. Computes running mean + standard deviation as your usage evolves, without storing every sample.

METHOD / 02

Linear regression with R² gate

Memory-leak detection requires R² > 0.7 — the data has to actually fit a line before it'll cry leak. Cheap heuristics skip this. We don't.

METHOD / 03

Z-score anomaly detection

2σ threshold for system-wide CPU anomalies, 3σ for noisier per-process spikes. Calibrated to your Mac's normal — not the average internet user's.

METHOD / 04

Outcome auditing

Most "AI" apps fire-and-forget. MacGuardian checks back 30–90 seconds after every throttle to verify CPU actually dropped. If Chrome ignores renice, it remembers — and stops trying.

PRIVACY ARCHITECTURE

100% on your Mac. No cloud. No accounts.

Out of the box MacGuardian makes no network calls during normal operation. There is no sign-in. No remote API for your data — diagnostic endpoints exist for our internal owner builds only and never fire on end-user installations. Everything — pattern learning, predictions, throttle decisions, outcome audits, the Guardians — runs locally and stays locally. The license check happens once at activation; after that, your Mac is on its own.

The Guardian's conversation uses Apple's on-device model by default, so your words stay on the machine. If you'd rather have a frontier model answering, you can plug in your own Anthropic or OpenAI key — opt-in, behind an explicit disclosure, billed to you. That is the only thing that ever sends text off your Mac, and it ships switched off. We never route you through our own AI subscription.

Three products. Three distinct looks.
Every tier is its own visual identity — not a re-skin. Basic runs Ember, XR runs Circuit, and MAX unlocks all six themes including the full neon HUD.
MacGuardian Basic — Ember theme, red and orange
Basic — Ember. Free. Warm red and orange.
MacGuardian XR — Circuit theme, emerald and silver
XR — Circuit. Emerald, silver, near-black.
MacGuardian MAX — HUD theme, neon magenta and cyan
MAX — HUD. Neon cockpit — plus Pro, Abyss and Sovereign. Six themes total.
Always on watch
The desktop HUD (MAX) floats live vitals over your work — one hotkey to summon it from any app. The menu-bar panel is a click away on every tier.
MacGuardian desktop HUD with live gauges, vitals, waveform and Guardian chat
Desktop HUD. Gauges, vitals, live waveform, and the Guardian — summon with ⌘⌥H.
MacGuardian menu bar panel with live stats and Optimize Now
Menu-bar panel. Live stats, top processes, one-click Optimize.
What's in the box
Every capability below runs on your Mac. Nothing here phones home.
🧠

Pattern learning

Per-process baselines (Welford's online variance) + hour-of-day model. Adapts as your usage evolves.

CORE AI
📈

Memory-leak detection

Linear regression with R² > 0.7 gate. Won't cry leak on noise. Names the process, shows the slope.

CORE AI
📉

Disk-full prediction

30-day projection from your write rate. Surfaces "you'll be out in 18 days at this pace" before you hit zero.

CORE AI
⚠

Memory-pressure forecast

5-minute lookahead to 90% pressure. Pre-emptive relief kicks in before you feel the spinning beachball.

CORE AI
🔍

Z-score anomaly detection

2σ for hourly CPU, 3σ for per-process. Compared against your Mac's history, not industry averages.

CORE AI
🔎

Outcome auditing

30–90s after every throttle, MacGuardian checks if it actually worked. Tracks success rate per process.

CORE AI
⚙

Performance profiles

Six profiles (Battery Saver, Balanced, Max Performance, Gaming, Creative, Developer). Auto-switches on trigger conditions.

CORE
🧹

AutoPilot maintenance

Scheduled gentle cleanup — caches, old downloads, trash, logs. Runs while you sleep.

CORE
🗑

Deep app uninstaller

Scans 10 Library locations + orphan detection. Removes apps and everything they ever touched.

CORE
🔋

Battery health (IOKit)

Cycle count, voltage, temperature. Health score. Charging state. All from native IOKit, no sandbox tricks.

CORE
📡

Network bandwidth

Per-process traffic via lsof + system-wide via netstat. See which app is hogging your uplink.

CORE
☁

iCloud throttling

Pause / throttle fileproviderd, bird, cloudd when you need uplink for something else.

CORE
🔑

Process protection list

Defaults guard ~20 critical processes (Finder, kernel_task, WindowServer…). Add your own.

CORE
🎯

AI Workload Mode

Detects Cursor / Claude / Ollama / MLX / Xcode running. Renices to high priority, throttles competitors, frees RAM, pauses iCloud sync.

CORE
🔥

GPU thermal monitor

IOKit GPU temperature poll + auto-throttle of GPU-heavy non-critical processes when thresholds hit.

CORE
💤

Sleep/wake analysis

Parses PMSet logs. Surfaces things like "Your Mac woke 47 times last night because of [Bluetooth keyboard]."

CORE
🔊

Stuck audio reset

One-click coreaudiod reset for when your audio dies after sleep. Auth via AuthorizationServices.

CORE
🌐

DNS cache flush

Auto-triggers when ping latency drifts. Flushes mDNSResponder + dscacheutil in one move.

CORE
💾

Time Machine local snapshots

Lists local snapshots (the storage thief). One-click delete-all to recover invisible disk space.

CORE
🧯

Pre-emptive memory relief

When the 5-min forecast says critical pressure is coming, MacGuardian acts before the lag hits — not after.

CORE
The XR line — protect the user, the work, the workforce
Three new pillars introduced 2026-06. Included in XR and above.
😴

Snooze Guard

Catches you falling asleep at the keyboard via the camera (face landmarks + sustained-eye-closure detection) and locks the screen with an audible escalation. Anti-burnout for solo founders + late-night ops.

XR
💾

Work Guard

Silent APFS snapshot insurance for everything that matters. Ranks files by recency × size × type, snapshots the top N via clonefile() on a 5-min sweep + before sleep + when AI processes spike. Costs almost zero disk.

XR
🛡

AI Shield

Live inventory of every AI process running on your Mac (Cursor, Claude, Ollama, MLX, ChatGPT, LM Studio…). Audit log of when each started, what it opened, what it touched. Watches your boundary paths (~/.ssh, ~/.aws, credentials) and alerts when an AI process opens them.

XR
🌙

Quiet Hours

Define a sleep window and MacGuardian watches your AI workforce during it — tracking what's running unattended and alerting you to anything unexpected. Your active work is never touched or frozen.

XR
Start free. Own it forever.
Three tiers. Basic is free, and the two paid tiers are perpetual licences — pay once, no subscription, no auto-renewal.

MacGuardian Basic

Free
Essential protection
  • Live performance dashboard
  • Manual disk cleanup
  • Battery & network monitor
  • Menu-bar readout
  • On-device, no account
Download Basic — free
No card. No account.
MOST POPULAR

MacGuardian XR

$49/once
Extended Release · perpetual
  • Everything in Basic, plus:
  • AutoPilot automated maintenance
  • Adaptive per-app performance learning
  • Plain-English bottleneck ID — names the exact stall
  • Snooze Guard · Work Guard · AI Shield
  • Custom thresholds & protected processes
  • Pro + HUD themes
Buy XR — $49
Pay once. Yours forever.

MacGuardian MAX

$199/once
The ultimate guardian · perpetual
  • Everything in XR, plus:
  • Guardian Watcher — assign a Guardian to a folder and it keeps it sorted and de-duplicated
  • Conversational performance control
  • Autonomous defense & active optimization
  • Thermal-trajectory prediction
  • Desktop performance HUD
Buy MAX — $199
Pay once. Yours forever.
How the pricing works — no surprises
  • Basic is genuinely free. No card, no account, no time limit. It's the dashboard, the monitors and manual cleanup.
  • The paid tiers are one-time payments. $49 for XR or $199 for MAX — you own it forever. No monthly fee, no auto-renewal, no hidden charges.
  • MAX includes everything in XR. There are only these three products.
  • Free updates for your version line, and a 7-day free trial of the full feature set — no card required up front.
  • Apple Silicon (M-series) only · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · tested through macOS 26 Tahoe · also on Setapp.
Your data — clear and in your control

Your files and system data never leave your Mac. The learning optimizer, the predictions, the Guardians and every automatic action run entirely on-device. The Guardian's conversation runs on Apple's on-device model by default, so your words stay on the machine too.

The one exception, and it's yours to switch on. If you want the Guardian backed by a frontier model instead, you can connect your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key in Settings → AI. That is opt-in, sits behind an explicit disclosure, bills to your key — and it is the only path that sends chat text off your Mac. Leave it off and nothing does.

We collect anonymous product diagnostics — which performance issues occur, whether a recommendation helped, and your hardware profile (Mac model, macOS version). Never your files, never your personal content. On by default and switchable off anytime in Settings → Privacy. Checkout details (name, email, phone, billing location) are handled by Stripe. See our Privacy Policy.

Straight answers
The questions people actually ask before paying.
Will it delete my files?
No. Cleanup only touches regenerable caches, logs, and temporary files, and every automatic action is logged in History so you can see exactly what happened. Deep uninstall and snapshot deletion are manual, one-click actions you initiate yourself.
Is this a subscription?
No. Basic is free, and XR ($49) and MAX ($199) are one-time purchases that include free updates for your version line. There is no auto-renewal and no monthly fee.
Does it need an account or an internet connection?
No account, ever. The licence is verified once at activation; after that MacGuardian makes no network calls during normal operation, and all learning, prediction and decision-making runs on your Mac. The single exception is opt-in: if you choose to connect your own Anthropic or OpenAI key so the Guardian answers with a frontier model, that chat goes online on your key. It ships off.
What does it run on?
Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, tested through macOS 26 Tahoe. Intel Macs are not supported. The app is Apple-notarized.
How is this different from the other Mac cleaners?
Most of them run fixed thresholds and a one-time scan. MacGuardian builds a statistical baseline of your machine (Welford's online variance, per process, per hour), gates leak claims behind an R² > 0.7 regression fit, and audits its own throttles 30–90 seconds later to check they actually worked. Every claim it makes is explained in plain English.
What if it doesn't help?
Start with the 7-day trial — full features, no card. If you've already paid, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee: email support@macguardian.app and you get a full refund, no questions.
Can I stop it from touching a specific app?
Yes. The protection list guards about 20 critical system processes by default, and you can add any process you want left alone in Settings → Protected Processes.
Let your Mac tune itself.

7-day trial, no card required. Full feature access. If MacGuardian doesn't make a noticeable difference in a week, you walk away with no friction.

30-day money-back guarantee on any paid plan: not satisfied within 30 days of purchase, email support@macguardian.app for a full refund — no questions.

Start Free Trial Compare tiers