MacPaw's CleanMyMac CleanMyMac X also helps protect your Mac against viruses.
CleanMyMac X speaks 13 languages and is the most downloaded tool in the world among Mac users.
This article tells you what to expect from CleanMyMac X's features and how to use them to optimize your Mac.
All CleanMyMac functions at a glance!
How do I delete unnecessary files on my Mac?
Unnecessary files take up unnecessary disk space. It is therefore advisable to delete unnecessary files regularly. You can do this by dragging each app individually to the trash and in this way delete apps that you no longer use. However, this is often not enough.
There are many more unnecessary files that take up disk space on your Mac. These include old language files from apps, temporary files that apps use, system and user logs, and old email attachments.
You can delete all of these files individually, if you know where to look. CleanMyMac X can detect and delete these files. The result is that gigabytes of disk space can be freed up by running a “Smart Scan” with CleanMyMac X.
Start with a single click on the Scan button to perform a Smart Scan. During a smart scan, unnecessary files are detected and displayed in an overview.
You can then decide for yourself what you want to remove or leave it to CleanMyMac All files can be safely deleted, but you still have control.
You will see an overview of what unnecessary files have been detected. The data is displayed in GB (Gigabytes).
If you want more information about which redundant files have been detected, click “View in detail”.
You will see that unnecessary system files, mail attachments and trash files have been found. By clicking on it you will see more specifically on the right side what kind of unnecessary files it concerns. These are user cache files, system cache files, system logs, old language files, and user logs.
If necessary, you can keep any type of unnecessary file by deselecting it. If you then go back to the overview, you can delete the unnecessary files by clicking on the “execute” button.
CleanMyMac X will now optimize your Mac system by removing various unnecessary files.
You can have each individual part cleaned up on the left side. These different parts are located under the heading “Cleanup”. This concerns system files, email attachments and trash bins.
How do I protect my Mac against malware and viruses?
CleanMyMac X is excellent at detecting malware and viruses on your Mac. CleanMyMac does this by using a constantly up-to-date database with detections for the latest viruses and other malware.
If you still think that your Mac cannot get infected with a virus, then think again. Because CleanMyMac periodically performs scans on your Mac computer, your Mac remains protected against viruses. These scans run in the background and no further action is required. If you have any doubts, you can also perform a scan manually.
On the left side under the heading “Protection” click on malware and then on the Scan button to perform a malware scan on your Mac.
Your Mac will now be checked for malware against a database of the latest virus detections. This database is updated every day.
If malware is detected, you will see an overview of which malware it concerns, with more information about what exactly the malware does and an option to remove the malware immediately. There is no need to get started yourself. CleanMyMac If necessary, you can contact MacPaw and they will assist you further.
Protect your privacy on your Mac
Privacy is an important part. CleanMyMac X can also help you with this. If you use the internet on your Mac, you leave traces. This includes browser history, but also log files from different apps you interact with and even app permissions.
With a single click you can detect and delete traces on your Mac. This way you can delete data stored by the browser(s).
Click the Scan button to start detecting privacy-sensitive data on your Mac.
After the scan, you will see an overview of which privacy-sensitive data you can delete with CleanMyMac X. All privacy-sensitive data in the browsers on your Mac is detected. This includes auto-populated data, saved passwords, browser history, cookies, download history and sessions of the last opened tabs.
You can select or deselect each component individually to clean up this privacy-sensitive data.
Not only can you delete browser data, but also restore permissions of apps. Here you can see an overview of which apps on your computer have which permissions. You can view these authorizations and revoke them where necessary.
You will also see somewhat privacy-sensitive data in Finder. These are the recently opened files such as documents, but also recently opened servers and programs. You can also erase these traces.
Every time you connect to a Wi-Fi network, the network name of this Wi-Fi connection is saved on your Mac. It is also possible to delete recently connected Wi-Fi connections via the privacy module in CleanMyMac
This way you can, for example, delete public Wi-Fi networks. This poses a danger because every time your Mac comes close to a public Wi-Fi network to which it has once been connected, it automatically reconnects to this public network. If you do not want this, check the list of connected Wi-Fi networks and delete the Wi-Fi network you do not want to connect to automatically.
How can I optimize my Mac?
Optimizing your Mac is something you should do every so often. Optimization is about improving your Mac by cleaning up old launch agents.
Launch agents are tools that apps use to launch parts of their apps. It is often these startup agents that can significantly slow down your Mac during startup. Some knowledge is required to disable these starting agents. It is part of the CleanMyMac features to view these launch agents and disable them where necessary. However, without knowledge of a specific starting agent, it is not advisable to simply disable a starting agent.
To get an overview of all starting agents, click on “Optimization” on the left and then on “Starting agents”.
By double-clicking on a launch agent you can enable or disable it. I would recommend first disabling a launch agent, restarting your Mac, and if you are not having any issues with the app in question, then actually uninstalling the launch agent.
If an app has ever crashed, or if there are apps that are major consumers of your Mac by exhausting system processes, you will see these apps in the “Changing apps” or the “Major consumers” overview. If necessary, you can then delete these app(s).
How can I maintain my Mac?
Every Mac requires standard maintenance. Performing maintenance on your Mac can free up RAM, free up disk space, run maintenance scripts, clear the DNS cache, and more.
Various tools are available in CleanMyMac X to maintain your Mac. You can use each of these tools to maintain your Mac yourself without running complicated scripts.
Free up RAM
Here's how you can free up RAM on your Mac. If the memory on your Mac becomes full, apps will respond slowly and your Mac will also slow down. Freeing up RAM helps to instantly make your Mac faster again by freeing up occupied RAM.
Free up space
There are a lot of files on your Mac that could be freed up. These files immediately free up disk space when you clean them up. Normally, these files are only deleted when disk space is running low. By deleting these files immediately you will immediately get more disk space.
Run maintenance scripts
macOS comes with standard daily, weekly, and monthly scripts that perform a number of tasks. These include tasks such as checking log files, clearing temporary files, and system optimization scripts. Running these scripts helps maintain your Mac. You can execute these maintenance scripts immediately.
Clear DNS cache
If you can't connect to a particular website, or the network is slow, clearing the DNS cache may help. In macOS, DNS requests are kept as a cache. Clearing this cache will help rebuild this DNS cache. In this way, new references are made, resulting in a network or internet problem being solved.
In CleanMyMac X, you can clear the DNS cache with a single click.
Make mail app faster
If the mail app becomes slower, for example due to old references and an abundance of attachments that need to be loaded. Then you can make the mail app faster via CleanMyMac This way you can reindex the mail app database and improve search speed. This is safe, no emails or attachments are deleted.
Reindex Spotlight
You can search on your Mac via Spotlight. This is done via a database with references to apps, settings and files. Reindexing this database can help find files, but also speed up the search process.
Repair disk permissions
If you have access problems on a specific drive, you can use this tool to restore permissions. By using this tool you can instantly check and fix file and folder permissions across the entire Mac system.
Minimize TimeMachine backups
Your Mac will create backups through TimeMachine if enabled. These TimeMachine backups take up significant disk space. By reducing the size of these backups you immediately free up disk space, but the data remains unaffected. Your backups via TimeMachine are therefore not affected and remain intact, but they are reduced in size (compression).
How do I remove apps that I no longer use from my Mac?
The longer you use your Mac, the more apps you will install. Apps are indispensable on a Mac.
However, over time there are also apps that you hardly or no longer use. Deleting apps every now and then is a good way to keep your Mac in top condition.
If you want to delete an app, you can do this by dragging the app itself to the trash. The entire content including the app will then be placed in the trash after which you can delete the app.
Dragging is an option, but you can also remove an app by running an “uninstaller”. This is a specific file that performs the removal process for you. By using an uninstaller, the app often also deletes configuration files and other files located on your Mac's hard drive.
To make things easier, there is also a “removal tool” in CleanMyMac. This feature helps you display all apps on your Mac in a clear overview. You can also sort this overview by “Unused”, “Leftovers” and even by “Suspicious”.
Delete unused apps
Unused apps are apps that you haven't opened for 6 months or more. Select the app that you no longer use and then click the “delete” button to delete the app immediately.
Delete app leftovers
By clicking on “Leftovers” you can also remove components that apps leave behind after manual uninstallation. This way you can remove even more “old apps” components and clean up your Mac.
How do I update apps on my Mac?
Updating apps to the latest version is an automatic process in macOS. All apps you have downloaded via the AppStore are also automatically updated by the AppStore.
To get an overview of which apps on your Mac have a new version available, open the “Updater” overview in CleanMyMac .
Select the app(s) you want to update and click the “Update” button to download and install the latest version of this app.
How do I delete old and large files on my Mac?
It is often not possible to check your entire Mac for old and especially large files. This just takes too much time and you have to manually search every corner of your Mac. To make it easier to search for large and old files on your Mac, you can use the “Large and Old” feature in CleanMyMac X.
By having this function search for old and large files, you will immediately see an overview of which files you have not opened in the last 6 months. It is then your choice whether you want to delete these old files.
Start by clicking the “Scan” button to find old and large files on your Mac.
When the search is completed, you will see an overview of which files were found. You can sort these files in different ways.
This way you can sort the overview by “Type” of file. These are Archives (zip, and rare files for example), Movies and Other files.
To sort the files by size, you can use the “Huge”, “Medium” and “Small” sorting method. This makes it easy to sort files by a certain size.
Finally, you can sort the overview by “access date”. These are filters that only show files that you opened, for example, a year ago, a month ago, a week ago or last week.
If you have made a selection of old or large files, click on the “delete” button at the bottom to delete the files.
How can I delete files without leaving traces?
Do you have junk files on your Mac and want to erase them with no way to ever recover them? Then this is possible via the “Shredder” function in CleanMyMac X.
The shredder helps you erase files that are beyond recovery. This means that software that may be aimed at recovering files via file history can no longer recover the file. Not only it helps to erase junk files without traces.
This “shredder” feature also helps erase files locked by macOS system processes such as Finder. So if a file is in use, you can still delete the file via the “shredder”.
Select the file with the shredder and delete the file without leaving any traces.
If you are going to use CleanMyMac
With CleanMyMac If necessary, you can quickly start an optimization.
I often use this quick menu to gain insight into the available RAM on my Mac. With a single click on “free up” I immediately free up RAM, after which my Mac responds faster again.
You will also see the “real-time malware monitor”. In the malware monitor you can see when and especially which file was last scanned. If necessary, you can download the latest malware definitions for the malware monitor by clicking “check now”. Your Mac is then immediately protected against the latest virus and malware apps.
At the bottom you will also see the network connection. Here you can perform a test to measure the internet speed. This is useful if you suspect that your internet has become slower on your Mac.
If you have linked Dropbox, you will also see the status of your Dropbox account here, for example how much space is still available on your Dropbox account.
The recommendations are at the top. These are optimizations you can perform periodically to keep your Mac in top condition. If you forget to perform an optimization after a specific time, the recommendation will help you remember.
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Thank you for reading!
CleanMyMac is a useful app that I recommend