Keyboard shortcuts

lu-cleaner has two interactive screens:

• The picker opens with lu-cleaner, lu-cleaner clean, lu-cleaner devices, lu-cleaner worktrees and lu-cleaner artifacts. The last two skip the category overview and open directly on the item list.
• The analyzer opens with lu-cleaner analyze [path]: an ncdu-like explorer of any directory tree.

Press ? in either one to show the built-in help; any key closes it. Arrow keys and their Vim equivalents both work everywhere.

Picker

Navigation

Key	Action
↑ / k	Move up.
↓ / j	Move down.
pgup / ctrl+b	Page up.
pgdown / ctrl+f / ctrl+d	Page down.
home / g	First row.
end / G	Last row.
→ / l / enter	Category overview: open the category. Item list: show or hide the details panel.
← / h / esc / backspace	Back to the category overview.
tab / shift+tab	Next / previous category, from an item list.

In worktrees and artifacts, which have no category overview, ←, tab and shift+tab do nothing.

Selection

Key	Action
space	Item list: select or unselect the item under the cursor. Category overview: select every cleanable item of the category except caution ones; if something in the category is already selected, unselect the whole category instead.
a	Smart select the view: recommended items on, every other item off.
A	Select every cleanable item of the view, caution items included (items still being measured are left out).
n	Unselect every item of the view.
i	Invert the selection of the view.

"The view" is the current item list (after any text filter) when a category is open, and every visible item when you are on the category overview. Some items cannot be selected, and space on one shows why in the status line: report-only items, items still being measured (…), and items that need --force (orphaned worktree folders), which become selectable when you started lu-cleaner with --force or in Trash mode.

Nothing is selected when the picker opens, in every command: the status line says so once the scan ends ("Nothing is selected — space picks an item, a picks the recommended ones, d cleans the selection"), and d has nothing to clean until you choose. Smart select only runs when you press a, or once when the scan finishes if you opted in with --smart (lu-cleaner --smart, lu-cleaner clean --smart, worktrees --smart…). See Risk levels and smart select.

View

Key	Action
s	Item list: cycle the sort between size (largest first), age (oldest first) and name. Category overview: toggle between the default order and size.
/	Filter by text (see Text filter).
H / .	Show or hide empty entries that cannot be selected (size 0, informational only). They are hidden by default.

Actions

Key	Action
d / x	Clean the selection. Opens the confirmation dialog.
t	Toggle Trash mode: selected files and folders are moved to ~/.Trash instead of being deleted; worktrees and commands are skipped, since they would delete permanently. Space is only freed once you empty the Trash.
o	Reveal the item under the cursor in Finder (item list only).
?	Help overlay. It also lists the scanners that failed, if any.
q / ctrl+c	Quit.

Text filter

/ opens a filter line at the bottom of the screen. It matches, case-insensitively, anywhere in the name, location, kind, project or scanner id of an item.

Key	Action
Any character	Add to the filter. The list updates as you type.
backspace	Delete the last character.
alt+backspace / ctrl+w	Delete the last word.
ctrl+u	Clear the filter line.
↑ / ↓	Move in the list while typing.
enter	Keep the filter and go back to the list. The breadcrumb shows filter "…".
esc	Clear the filter and go back to the list.

A kept filter stays active while you browse. Press esc on the category overview (or in the worktrees and artifacts lists) to clear it.

Confirmation dialog

The keys depend on whether the selection contains caution items, selected or lying inside a selected item, or items cleaned only because of --force.

Selection	Confirm	Cancel
None of those	y or enter	n, esc or q
At least one of those	type yes, then enter	esc

While typing yes, backspace, alt+backspace, ctrl+w and ctrl+u edit the input. ctrl+c quits lu-cleaner without cleaning anything.

While cleaning and after

Screen	Key	Action
Progress	ctrl+c	Cancel: items in progress finish, the remaining ones are skipped as cancelled. Other keys are ignored.
Summary	any key	Back to the lists. Cleaned items disappear; skipped and failed items stay selected.
Summary	ctrl+c	Quit.

Analyzer

lu-cleaner analyze starts in your home folder; pass a path to start elsewhere. Entries are sorted by size and measured in the background.

Navigation

Key	Action
↑ / k, ↓ / j	Move up / down.
pgup / ctrl+b, pgdown / ctrl+f / ctrl+d	Page up / down.
home / g, end / G	First / last entry.
→ / l / enter	Open the directory under the cursor. Symlinks are never followed.
← / h / backspace	Go to the parent directory, up to /.

Marking and deleting

Key	Action
space	Mark or unmark the entry under the cursor, then move down. An entry the analyzer never deletes cannot be marked, and the status line says why.
esc	Clear every mark.
d / x / delete	Delete the marked entries, or the entry under the cursor when nothing is marked.

delete is the forward-delete key (fn + ⌫ on a Mac keyboard). The ⌫ key alone sends backspace, which goes to the parent directory.

Deleting always asks you to type yes and press enter (esc cancels), because anything can be selected in the analyzer. Every path still goes through the safety guard, and a verified linked git worktree is removed with git worktree remove instead of being deleted. Git repositories, submodules, git data and folders that contain a repository are never deleted from the analyzer. Without Full Disk Access, other apps' containers are shown as 🔒 app container — needs Full Disk Access and never opened. --dry-run and --trash apply here too.

While a deletion runs, ctrl+c cancels the remaining entries and quits once the ones in progress are done. On the result screen, any key returns to the list.

View and actions

Key	Action
s	Cycle the sort between size (largest first), name and age (oldest first).
.	Hide or show hidden files (dotfiles). They are shown by default.
r	Rescan the current directory.
o	Reveal the entry under the cursor in Finder.
?	Help overlay.
q / ctrl+c	Quit.

See also

• Your first cleanup: the picker, screen by screen.
• lu-cleaner analyze and lu-cleaner clean: command-line flags.