Driveaway—Clean and eject drives to be free of junk files

Clean and eject drives to be free of junk files

Requires macOS Ventura 13.5 or later

Sharing files with Windows or Linux users? Using a FAT32 drive on an electronic device? They don’t need to see your .DS_Store files, Spotlight indexes, and AppleDouble resource forks cluttering things up.

Driveaway removes macOS metadata from external drives before you eject them. USB drives, SD cards, external hard drives, and more.

Menu Bar

Eject icon with optional volume count badge
Volume Detection

USB, SD cards, optical discs, Time Machine, disk images
Metadata Removal

Clears unecessary stray files left by macOS and Windows
Per-Volume Settings

Toggle cleaning for individual volumes
Eject All

Eject all external volumes at once
Launch at Login

Auto-start with macOS

Volume Management

Monitors external volumes in real-time
Detects many types of volumes
Eject, unmount, or eject all at once
Tracks unmounted volumes
Open in Finder or Disk Utility

Cleaning Operations

Removes macOS metadata files before ejecting:

.DS_Store - Finder folder settings (recursive)
._* AppleDouble files - Resource forks (recursive)
.Spotlight-V100 - Spotlight search index
.fseventsd - File system events log
System Volume Information - Windows system folder

Cleaning Configuration

Each cleaning type can be individually enabled/disabled
Per-volume “Clean Before Eject” toggle
“Prevent Spotlight Indexing” creates .metadata_never_index
Excludes read-only volumes, optical discs, Time Machine

Eject icon in menu bar
Optional volume count badge
Show/hide unmounted volumes

Security & Permissions

macOS best practice access to volumes
One-time authorisation per volume
Bookmarks survive app restarts

System Integration

Launch at Login
Progress and completion notifications
No dock icon - menu bar only

Optimised