How to read a receipt
A receipt is Hedroom's proof. It compares your Mac before an action with your Mac after it, and says what it could and could not measure.
These steps describe Hedroom 1.0. The app is not released yet, so the examples below show the wording the app is built to use, not results from real users.
Where to find them
Open Receipts in the main window. Each row is one action. Open a row to see the detail. A fix that is still measuring says "Measuring. The result lands here in about 5 to 15 minutes."
How a receipt is measured
Hedroom compares 5 minutes of readings before the action with 5 to 15 minutes after it. The first 30 seconds after are skipped while things settle (60 seconds after a relaunch, because the app has to reload). It can finish at 5 minutes if the readings are steady, and keeps measuring up to 15 if they are not. The same explanation is behind the How a receipt is measured link in the app. More on how it works.
What it measures depends on the action:
| Action | Main measurement |
|---|---|
| Relaunch | The app's memory, plus memory pressure and swap. |
| Quit | The memory the app held, and what happened to the whole system. |
| Pause | The app's CPU use. |
| Efficiency cores | The app's own power in watts when macOS gives a counter for it, otherwise the Mac's chip power. |
| Sleep tabs | The whole browser's memory. |
| Storage cleanup | Free space on the disk. It is read straight from the disk, with no waiting window. |
| Display change | WindowServer's CPU use. |
| Startup item | Memory five minutes after your next login, compared with your last three logins. Nothing is claimed until then. |
The parts of a receipt
The top of a receipt shows the main number, then three small tags: the verdict, how sure Hedroom is, and where the action came from.
The verdict
- Measured. The change was big enough to count: at least 100 MB of memory, 10 percentage points of one CPU core, 0.3 W, or 50 MB of disk. Display changes have their own, stricter limit.
- No effect. The change was smaller than that, or went the other way. The receipt says "No measurable effect." and takes no credit. This is a useful answer: it means the action did not help, so you can stop doing it. If three receipts in a row for one rule say so, Hedroom flags the rule as not helping and offers Turn rule off.
- Not measurable. "Other apps changed too much at the same time to measure this one fairly." Another app moved by more than 1 GB, a new app opened using more than 500 MB, other apps were quit, the Mac slept or woke, or it was plugged in or unplugged. These receipts stay in the list but are not counted in your totals.
- Cancelled. You undid the action, or Hedroom quit, before the measurement finished. Nothing is claimed.
- Measuring. Still taking readings.
High, medium or low confidence
- High: at least 5 minutes of readings before, steady readings after, and nothing else changed.
- Medium: one weakness, such as another Hedroom action nearby.
- Low: two or more weaknesses. Hedroom labels it rough and leaves it out of totals. If Hedroom had just started, the message reads "Hedroom had about N of the 5 minutes of readings it wants before the action."
Where it came from
The tag says whether you did it ("You, in Hedroom", "You, from a notification", "You, from the menu bar") or which rule did. See the rule opens it.
The chart and the numbers
The chart shows the main measurement, with the before and after windows shaded and the action marked. Hedroom keeps raw readings for 48 hours. After that the chart is gone, and "The numbers on this page are kept."
"In your totals"
This says whether the receipt counts toward totals such as "memory given back". Only receipts with medium or high confidence do. Measured receipts for relaunch, quit and tab sleep add to the memory total.
Examples of the wording
These show the style the app is built to use. They are examples, not results.
- "Mail relaunched · 8.7 GB back · healthy in 40 s"
- "Teams on efficiency cores · 38 → 4% of a core · −2.1 W"
- "Caches cleaned · 12.4 GB freed · 2 GB came back as apps rebuilt them"
- "Docker paused 2 h · no measurable effect"
Cleanup receipts: Put back and Empty
A storage cleanup moves files to the Trash. The receipt says so: "moved to the Trash. Space frees when the Trash is emptied." It claims free space only when the space is really free.
- Put back returns items still in the Trash to where they were. If something new is now in that place, they go to a "Hedroom Restored" folder in Downloads and nothing is overwritten.
- Empty these from the Trash removes only the items that this cleanup moved. It asks for a separate confirmation each time, and it is permanent. After that, Put back can no longer return them.
What a receipt is not
A receipt compares two stretches of time on your Mac. It is not a controlled experiment. A small real change can read as "No measurable effect", because Hedroom prefers to miss a small win than to claim one it cannot show. See Receipts for the limits.