Mac App Store vs Direct distribution (from experience) 💡
If you’re building a macOS app, this is one of those decisions that sounds simple but isn’t. When I started building Room Service, I assumed I’d ship it on the Mac App Store. That’s the default path. But pretty quickly, it became clear it wouldn’t work. Not because of distribution, but because of what the product actually needs to do. Room Service looks at developer machines in depth: files,...
What I learned building a “Mac cleaner” for developers 💡
When I started Room Service, I thought I was building a Mac cleaner for developers. That sounds simple. 🩻 Scan files 📦 Show what’s big 🚮 Let people delete things But after working on it for a while, I realized I was solving the wrong problem. Developers don’t really struggle with cleaning. They struggle with understanding what’s happening on their machines. A few things became very clear over...
Build Watchers and Dev Ports: seeing more of what is happening on a developer Mac 🔭
Room Service 0.9.0 moves the product further in a direction I care a lot about: helping developers understand and manage what is happening on their machines. The biggest addition is Build Watcher monitoring. Project-backed watch and build tools can now surface in Room Service even when they are not attached to a local port. That means CPU and RAM-heavy processes from things like frontend...
Docker cleanup shouldn’t feel like a ritual
docker cleanup is basically “delete everything and hope nothing breaks” or remembering a bunch of commands like: docker image prune -a docker container prune docker builder prune -a docker system prune and still not being fully sure what you’re deleting I got tired of that and built something that actually shows unused images, containers, and build cache before cleaning anything curious how...
Dev Ports now supports LAN sharing, QR codes, and better local server context 🚀
A little while ago I shared Dev Ports in Room Service as a way to see and manage active local development servers across a Mac. Since then, I have made it much more useful. Dev Ports now does a much better job of telling you not just that a local server is running, but whether it is actually shareable on your network and what you can do with it. The biggest additions in this update: Copy LAN...
Why is port 3000 always in use?
At some point every dev ends up here you run a project something fails you try again and suddenly port 3000 is already in use so you open terminal run lsof grep awk kill and repeat this loop more times than you’d like to admit I got tired of this and built something into Room Service that shows all active local servers in real time and lets you kill them instantly curious how others deal with...
Dev Ports: seeing and managing local dev servers across your Mac
We just shipped Dev Ports in Room Service. A new way to see and manage active local development servers across your Mac. Dev Ports brings local server visibility into the parts of the app where it is most useful: Home, the menu bar, smart notifications, Ops Feed, and the command panel. The goal was simple: make active local servers easier to notice and easier to act on, without constantly...
A new way to turn repeatable cleanup into reusable workflows on macOS
We just shipped Recipes in Room Service. A new way to turn repeatable cleanup into reusable workflows on macOS. Recipes lets you turn common cleanup jobs into built-in or custom routines, instead of rebuilding the same flow every time. You can add schedules, approvals, and sharing, so routines are easier to reuse across your own setup or with other people. The goal was to make recurring cleanup...
Projects: inspecting local repos in a new way
We just shipped Projects in Room Service. A new way to inspect your local development folders and understand what’s actually taking up space. Projects analyzes each repo and groups its contents into things like assets, generated data, git storage, and logs. So instead of just seeing folders, you can understand what each part represents and why the project is large. It also surfaces things you...
Command Palette is now live in Room Service
I just shipped a new Command Palette in Room Service. Instead of navigating through menus, you can now search across cleanup categories, tools, and actual cleanup items, all in one place. You can also trigger actions like scans directly from the palette. The goal was simple: make cleanup feel faster, more direct, and closer to a keyboard-first workflow.
Room Service update: better Docker cleanup, browser caches, and dev-focused improvements
Been iterating on Room Service quite a bit recently and wanted to share a quick update. As more people started using it on heavier dev setups, a few patterns became really clear: Docker cleanup needed to be more structured Browser caches were taking more space than expected Reviewing what’s safe to delete still needed better control So the recent updates focused mostly on that. Added a...
From “Mac is full” to “what is actually filling it?”
After launching Room Service, one thing became very clear: This isn’t just a “developer problem” anymore. AI tools, local models, game dev workflows, code editors… they’re all silently filling up disk space in ways people don’t fully understand. So instead of just improving cleanup, I started focusing on visibility first. Here’s what I’ve been shipping recently: Added an AI Storage category...
AI tools, game dev, vibe coding… same problem
I knew there was a gap here when I started building Room Service, but I honestly didn’t expect this much interest. What surprised me is that it’s not just a developer problem anymore. With all the AI tools, game dev workflows, and this whole vibe coding shift, a lot more people are running into the same thing: their Mac fills up, but they don’t really know why. That’s what I’m trying to solve....
