I’ve been using CleanMyMac since 2012. It completes macOS by offering various tools to maintain and review the system status easily from the dashboard.
CleanMyMac doesn’t do anything special. You can replicate its features by executing commands in the Terminal or install other utilities. For example, you can uninstall the app using AppCleaner, purge the DNS with a terminal command, or free up some space with Monolingual.
Only, if you’re bothered to put these utilities together and actively maintain them.
The most significant CleanMyMac feature comes from how well these small pieces of tasks fit together as a single app.
1. Clean Uninstall App with Alfred
CleanMyMac offers a menu bar companion utility to monitor the number of free space on your Mac. What makes the menu bar utility useful is that it will help you clean uninstall whenever you move an app to Trash.
I‘m not a fan of having another background task running, so I decide to proactively uninstall the app by using Alfred’s Open With… action command. You simply search for the app you want to uninstall and choose to open with CleanMyMac.
2. The macOS Maintenance Tasks
There aren’t many things you have to deal with by using macOS as your operating system, but you do have to run some tasks from time to time. I like the Maintenance section where I can execute commands to maintain the system. Each command includes a brief explanation of what it does and how often you have to run it. For example, if you encounter problems with your “Open with…” list of apps, you can run Rebuild Launch Services which reset the list of indexed apps.
3. The CleanMyMac Menu Item
The menu item provides you with the overview of your Mac health and performance. You can quickly free up inactive memory which can be allocated for other active processes. It diagnoses and monitors any problems Mac and reminds you about it before you even realize something is wrong with macOS. You can learn more about CleanMyMac Menu here.
4. Reclaiming Free Space
The initial design for CleanMyMac is reclaiming as much space as you can. It achieves its goal by removing unused languages from each app and freeing up the caches that are no longer in uses. Removing caches can be a sensitive issue because some apps perform better with caches left on the hard drive. For example, Spotify caches the music you often play, so it doesn’t have to load them from the server.
This is an area that even CleanMyMac is still improving. If you’re not careful, you might remove the settings in your Safari extensions. I recommend that you’re not removing anything from your browsrs and use the built-in clear caches feature instead.
Most of the times, you can run Smart Cleanup and remove those unnecessary caches without encountering any significant problems. Take note that that the system is imperfect. You probably don’t have to clear the browser caches every day if you visit the same sites often. I recommend that you run this option once every two months.
5. See Every Extensions Installed
You will find an Extensions section under Utilities. This is my favorite section, and it’s where I spend most of my time while using CleanMyMac. It shows you every extension that is enabled in each app.
Extensions are mostly hidden inside the system folder. Most Mac users don’t know how to see which extensions are installed on their system. This section shows you these enabled extensions so you can disable the one you’re not using.
Quick Look Plugins is a collection of extension to make Quick Look more useful in previewing file contents. I shared some must have Quick Look plugins before, check it out if you haven’t done it.
Services, on the other hand, is the list of commands that you can run whenever you select a file, text, or image. You can run it in the menu bar or event with the secondary click. Some apps come with pre-built services. For example, CleanMyMac comes with a service to securely erase files, and Spark comes with a command Create an Email from Selection.
CleanMyMac does a decent job at listing all the apps with their services, but in term of layout, Services Manager (no longer supported in macOS Sierra) does a better job and toggling the services.
Conclusion
Overall, CleanMyMac is a nice utility I would love to have on my Mac. It’s the best app for cleaning up your Mac where they can also focus on educating the users with information to keep your Mac healthy. There are many similar apps out there, but you can rarely find the apps that are built with such detailed animation and robust underlying system to be future-proof.
You can also support my works by purchasing CleanMyMac with my referral link.