CleanMyMac reputation question

John Galt wrote:

Excerpted from Effective defenses against malware and other threats:

Never install any product that claims to "clean up", "speed up", "optimize", "boost" or "accelerate" your Mac; to "wash" it, "tune" it, or to make it "shiny". Those claims are absurd.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get why. When you add more RAM, it's usually nice. When you update “legacy” software, ditto (that's an optimisation). Setting preferences (even using Mac Pilot) is tuning it and is great.

I restart my Macs only when needed, so caches and temporary items tend to fill up space. I can manually clear them, as I bet the OS won't know whether a specific cache can be removed (I'd do), so an automated solution is good, right?

• Such products are very aggressively marketed. They are all scams.

I agree with you here.

They generally operate on the flawed premise that a Mac accumulates "junk" that needs to be routinely "cleaned out" for optimum performance.

That's my case, although I don't misuses my Macs. I just do “too much” things on them.

• Trial versions of those programs are successful because they provide the instant gratification of greater free disk space.

Could be. Full versions are rarely worse than trial ones, though.

• That increased space is the result of irreversible destruction of files, programs, or operating system components normally protected from inadvertent alteration or deletion. The eventual result will be unreliable operation, poor performance and random crashes that may not become evident for months or even years after their use, when updates to programs or macOS are eventually released.

Hmm… If you know what you remove, how is it unsafe? Caches and temporary items, localisations files are all valid items to delete. If you use it right, CMM just automates this (you still have to uncheck things, granted).

I agree deletions are a risk; that can be the same if you move an app/document to the trash and empty it (though, in both cases, you may recover them if you're lucky). Unless misused, CMM would not make damages, would it?

• Memory "cleaners" that circumvent macOS's memory management algorithms work by purging inactive memory contents to mass storage, which can only result in degraded performance and accelerated hardware failure.

CMM would then use the “purge” shell command (or equivalent)? I use that command myself when my RAM is full (especially before I upgraded my RAM), instead of restarting the computer. Inactive memory is like the cache, it's made to be freed if you know you won't need it (e.g. you won't use the same apps/libraries). By “degraded performance and accelerated hardware failure”, I assume you're talking about writing to the RAM/other components more than required. I agree with you (that's why I do it only when my RAM is full).

Advocates of such things often defend their usefulness accompanied by the vaguely pompous disclaimer "... if you know what you're doing," to which I reply "if you really know what you're doing, you wouldn't use those things to begin with."

I must agree that I'm not 100% sure of what I'm doing: since I'm trying CMM to see what it does (you can't really know what it does unless you try), I'm aware I'm using a new software. Such software may contain adware, malware or anything else (btw, if I make, myself, an app that deletes a file and don't distribute it, is it malware?). I can choose what I want to clean or not, in CMM. Still, it may do things I don't expect (I didn't made that application myself). This un-expectation can be a concern, I agree.

How can you expect “any” application you haven't done yourself to not do something “more” than the main task(s) it does, even if it's just a little additional thing (perhaps needed for possible compatibility purposes on hardware you haven't on your own Mac)?

Other than aggressive marketing there is nothing particularly unique or special about "CleanMyMac". I surmise it's made a few people quite wealthy. Among its users, the aggregate amount in terms of time wasted, money spent, data lost or all of the above is surely incalculable.

I guess there's nothing particular, as well (that's my whole point). I can't just make my opinion based on the fact that some users had troubles with CMM: people not having a problem with CMM won't have questions about it in the forum, modifying the good/bad visible ratio of the app.

If you want to throw away whatever money those things cost, go ahead. It makes the world go 'round. I can think of a number of better uses for excess cash, including burning it for heat.

I bought a bundle of around 10 apps. Some others are known to be good (Mac Pilot, for instance). My money hasn't been thrown away because of this. Now, I'm trying other apps in the bundle.

Well, I've seen that explanation before. But based on what is it built? Any real example I can see?

You know, I used to “hate” Windows, not even wanting to hear about it (having actually used it until 2004, forced to do so in “school”). In 2013, I was again forced to use it. While I continue to see absurd things in that OS (in my opinion, far lot than in Mac OS), I “changed my mind” and accepted it had some good stuffs (I still wouldn't use it for everyday use).

I'd like to avoid a product when I see why it's bad, not just because I'm told it is.

Thanks.

Allan Eckert wrote:

I agree with JimmyCMPIT that CleanMyMac is nothing but junk and should not be installed. It has been experience when called in to help with poor performance on a Mac, if I find any third party software such as CleanMyMac, MacKeeper or anti-virus apps, I first uninstall them and that general solve the performance problems.

So many of those outside these forums who like these apps appear to be shill who are in cahoots with the vendors of these apps.

I'm not related to CMM in any way (other than having installed and tried it), yet my Mac hasn't suffered [yet] from it. I'm just trying to understand what exactly is bad in this app. Is it badly coded? Is it misused? What's wrong other than opinions?

JimmyCMPIT wrote:

I'm not a mac fan boy if you are inclined to think thats where my distrust of this crapware comes from. these forums have not shortage of posts with mac users saying they're having issues, and after diagnosing the cause removing CMM cures the bad behavior.

If you want to see you can search for yourself.

and I actually like Windows, I like windows quite a bit. My Mac at home no longer has any OSX partition what-so-ever. It's a Windows 7/10 box.

I was not assuming you're a Mac fan, I just talked about my own story about Windows to tell it was hard to me to change my mind. Once you think something is bad (or good), it can be tricky, sometimes, to see how things have changed (again, I'm talking about my experience).

I actually searched in this forum before posting my question (using the results that appear between the initial query and the final posting). I don't see clear explanations of what's wrong with CMM. It could be badly written, misused but I'm doubting about compatibilities issues.

woodmeister50 wrote:

To add to what others have stated, from all my observations CleanMyMac

seems to be a ticking time bomb. It seems to be quite innocuous and

maybe even useful then suddenly issues will start occurring and are not fixed

until it is completely removed.

Maybe I'm just too naive, I don't know. I still can't see what does CleanMyMac that could be responsible of disastrous facts (other than misuses of the user). Well, I'm betting I'll have unexplained troubles in the future, if that's true; but instead of just removing that software, I'll check how the eventual problem is linked to CMM.

Until then, I can just assume it was often misused, right?

etresoft wrote:

>I don’t use CleanMyMac so I can’t give any specific advice about it. But I can give your more information about these specific issues:

Thanks.

>macOS does not run maintenance scripts at 3 am. If the system needs to perform any background work, it will do so when the machine is connected to power and idle.

Ok, good to know. So I bet it was the case earlier, as my “assumption” of the OS doing so at 3 am should come from somewhere. In OS 10.8, or so, perhaps? Well, I'm not up to date, usually keeping earlier versions of the OS…

I actually recently jumped from 10.11 to 10.14; always new things to learn…

>You can also get this information in Apple > About This Mac > Storage > Manage > Reduce Clutter

Great! I'll look deeper to compare them both, but having a built-in solution for that is nice!

>The App Store app does this for any Mac App Store apps. I’m skeptical that CleanMyMac could do this for all Mac apps. 

You're right. I'm actually using almost non-Mac store apps (while I understand the benefit of sandboxes, apps in the Mac app store are too-strictly controlled in my opinion; apps may be rejected just because the developper uses APIs that Apple just don't want to be used…). I actually never sent my own apps to the Mac app store (too expensive), but apps directly downloaded from the developer's website are “usually” safe and not restricted.

So, for Mac app store, yes, I also think CMM isn't the ideal tool for that. But for other apps, having a centralised way to update is nice. I'd have to use all apps frequently to update them otherwise (nothing annoys me more than waiting for an app to update when I want to use it; my Internet connexion is famously slow here).

In other words: I may as well make an app that updates all apps (exactly as CMM does); I'd still not understand what's bad here.

(P.S.: sorry for answering the same post using several posts, but I tried in a single answer and the sending just hangs…; that's also why quotes aren't formatted (I backed up my text in TextEdit))

>That’s not normal you know. If you have apps that are regularly going unresponsive, you have a problem.

Again, you're right (and I thank you about that, as I'm so accustomed in having a busy Mac all the time that I had forgiven the unusual nature of that fact). The colour wheel indicates something's “not normal”; in my case, I know what's not usual: I'm using a 2008 Mac Pro (still “fully” functional, and recently updated (RAM, USB 3.0 and SSD)) and a lot of apps running at the same time. Any Mac can be used to its full-specs limits if you want it (not sure about the new Mac Pro…); in such cases, even if nothing's wrong in the software, you'll see applications hanging (e.g. they may exceed the USB bus limit, accessing the same bus tree). That's where I want to monitor them. Again, I don't know of other apps that do it.

>I think people may be finding similarities between Clean My Mac and MacKeeper due to their advertising practices. Both of them  blanket huge swaths of the internet with ads. Ads are inherently malicious. The essentially take part of the screen (the screen you paid for) and use it to try to sell you something. If you ever try to use the internet without an ad blocker, it is just obscene. 

Hmm… I can't comment here. When there are ads, I do the most I can to not look at them, so I don't know how frequent they show adds. I 100% agree with you: ads should not exist, and if CMM uses them, that's a bad point.

I'm not sure selling apps using ads means the app is working bad in the first place, anyway (certailny, but not obvious).

>I would agree with those who say your Mac does not need to be “cleaned”. Modern versions of macOS already do their own automatic removal of cache files and other temporary data if more storage is required.

Just for the record (so we know what cleaning CMM does), it cleans temporary files, apps localisations (I'll probably never use any app in, say, Norwegian), photos libraries, Mail attachments, iOS obsolete upgrades, iTunes damaged downloads and trashes (I'm guessing it includes trashes the Finder doesn't see, like others user's on different startup volumes). I also think it clears caches.

The last time I read about that, temporary items were cleaned upon system starts, btw.

So, I still see CMM useful in these cases:

•unneeded localisations of apps;

•obsolete iOS installation bundles (that usually take some GBs) and are useless since you normally can't install the same iOS version twice on a given device;

•damaged downloads that clutter your folder(s) for no reason.

•you want to have as few bytes on your drives as you can (e.g. you plan to use it to store a group of things).

I don't clean attachments nor do I use the photo library at all, since I archive everything myself, so I can't comment on these functions.

>Apple does not “approve” software. Apple does not actively police software for utility, value, or scams.

I too found it weird when I read <the text I read>. Unfortunately, I read it quickly and don't remember where I saw it nor how it was written. I guess I can safely ignore that statement and forgive CMM was “approved” by Apple (which would indeed be weird).