Rule Cleanup

You block a domain for an app. A year later the app is gone, the domain has moved, or a broader rule you wrote in between already covers it. Nothing about the list changes: the rule still sits there, still looks like a decision, and quietly does nothing.

Rule Cleanup is the page that goes looking for those. It reports what it finds, with the reason next to it.

• App uninstalled, rule still standing. A block against something that is no longer on the Mac.
• A rule another rule already shadows. cdn.example.com next to example.com: the parent rule decides first, so the longer one can never fire.
• A domain Tracker Shield already covers. The rule is not wrong, just redundant: the shield stopped it before the rule was ever consulted.
• An app rule a general rule has superseded. The broader rule handles the case; the narrow one adds nothing.

Findings arrive in two groups. Ineffective is the list that can go: each row carries a Delete rule button, and a Delete all for the group. Inform only is the list that cannot: a rule that simply has not been triggered in 30 days is reported there, with no delete button attached.

Each finding is stated as a claim you can check, in words rather than a severity colour. Nothing is deleted automatically. You delete what you delete: the button is there, and pressing it is your call.

After months of use, when the list has grown past the point where you can hold it in your head. After uninstalling a batch of apps. And after switching a domain from a per-app rule to a global one, which is the moment the older, narrower rules become dead weight without ever announcing it.

A rule list you no longer trust is one you stop reading, and a list you stop reading is where a wrong rule survives for years. Removing what cannot fire is not cosmetic: it is what keeps the remaining rules readable.

Which is also why cleanup deliberately stops short of one thing. A rule that simply has not fired in 30 days is not listed here as removable. It appears in Rule Insights as a hint, without a delete button, because rarely used is not the same as dead.