Level 1

36 points

CleanMyMac reputation question

Hello,

I've recently purchased a bundle of applications (10 non-free applications that you purchase 95% off). I did this because at least one application in the package was one I use often, so I assumed the bundle was not garbage.

In this bundle, CleanMyMac was also included. I've read a lot of posts in this apple discussions forum that say “don't use or install it”, but, outside of this forum, a lot of guys seem to like it.

Anyway, I gave it a try, to make my own opinion.

•I find it easy to use

•It reminds me to do maintenance stuffs (as far as I remember, MacOS X executes maintenance scripts at 3 am, which is quite useless). I think it can be changed, but, still I prefer to do it on my own time.

•It shows me where my big or duplicate files are (having between 10TB and 20TB of data, with some duplicate files, this is a big help)

•It centralises update notifications and execute them once I tell it (I have so many applications, each checking for updates only if I open it, that I'm almost to the point where I upgrade the OS before I update all apps). Having a single app for all this is nice.

•It tells me directly when an application hangs. Having usually between 15-20 applications open at the same time, I can't monitor them all, even using the Activity Monitor (the app would appear in red, right, but the list of processes is too huge too see them all, and apps can hang with 0% of cpu or 100% (or in-between) so sorting by CPU is no help either). I'm not aware of a single other application that does that (unless, perhaps, if you keep the force-quit window open all the time…).

To me, this seems all good points.

I don't [yet] use its other functions.

So, are there real examples showing that CleanMyMac is actually bad?

In this forum, I see 3 “explanations” why some people think it looks bad:

• Beginner users may delete things they don't know about, up to the point of having a non-functional computer. Ok, I assume CleanMyMac isn't for beginners (why would a beginner use such a tool in the first place?), but I can fairly destroy an OS myself, even not being a beginner.

• Some people compare CleanMyMac with Mac Keeper. This really looks absurd to me. I've already seen Mac Keeper installed in friend's Macs, those asking me for help. MK often showed inaccurate and, possibly, junk messages (I don't remember 100%, but I thought this was indeed junk when I saw it) and was really a pain to uninstall (ton of launch agents/launch daemons and other hidden “helpers”, “proving” the software don't like to be uninstalled). This isn't the case with CMM.

• Another group would tell a Mac doesn't need to be “manually” cleaned or tuned. First, when the Mac is set up with really lot of things (like mine), I think this statement tends to become false (I know, CleanMyMac actually helps me…). Second, a “unneeded” thing isn't the same as something to avoid, especially if the statement lacks a good reason to avoid it.

In the end, using it everyday since around a month, I only see good points in this application (malware cleaning looks poor, according to some websites, but I don't use this function). Also, I even saw a quote telling even Apple approved this application (outside of Apple's or CCM's makers' websites).

Yet, it's still an application to avoid? Please, tell me why.

Mac Pro

Posted on Sep 4, 2019 11:08 AM

Top-ranking reply

etresoft

Level 9

56,326 points

Posted on Sep 7, 2019 5:12 PM

Anic264b wrote:

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…

I don’t remember when Apple changed this. I’m pretty sure it dates back to 10.8 or perhaps earlier. I’m sure it is related to when they started selling mainly notebook machines that are often sleeping with the lid closed.

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).

What’s the attraction in having all apps updated anyway? That seems risky. I know one app, that I won’t mention, recently released an update and changed from a free app to a paid subscription. If you just update everything without checking first, you could have serious problems.

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.

The beach ball cursor means an app has stopped responding to the system. The most likely cause of this is a buggy app. But if the problem happens to more than one app at a time, it could be a more systemic problem. For example, an older machine with limited RAM and a mechanical hard drive running a modern version of macOS will likely beach ball quite a bit. Modern versions of macOS expect lots of RAM, use all of said RAM, and expect to have a fast SSD to pick up the slack with virtual memory. If you have lots of RAM and an SSD on a 2008 Mac Pro, you should not be seeing beach balls.

I 100% agree with you: ads should not exist, and if CMM uses them, that's a bad point.

That’s not what I said. Most people don’t mind ads every now and then. Even those spooky personalized ads actually are something one might be interested in. I’m talking about truly blanketing parts of the internet.

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.

You don’t want a 3rd party app doing any of that stuff.

1) There is no need to “clean” temporary files. The system will do that when it restarts. If you start deleting temporary files at other times, the system could still be using them. That could lead to, I don’t know, beach balls?

2) You definitely don’t want to “clean” app localizations. That will corrupt the app and invalidate the signature. A properly designed app should be checking its own signature and would fail to run if you deleted localizations. You would only save a few KB of data, and depending on file system allocations, maybe nothing at all. Apple publicly said at the WWDC this year that unsigned apps will not run by default in future versions of macOS.

3) Photos and Mail. You most definitely never want some 3rd party app modifying files in apps like Photos or Mail that maintain databases with index files. That is a guaranteed corruption and loss of data.

4) Caches are designed to speed up your system. If you are deleting them, that could cause, again, beach balls.

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24 replies

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,912 points

Sep 7, 2019 7:15 AM in response to Anic264b

. 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?

That stopped a lot earlier than that. 10.4 or so IIRC. Even then, if your Mac wasn’t running at 3 am it would simply run the scripts next time the Mac was run. A total non-issue and that way for years.

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 8:14 AM in response to John Galt

John Galt wrote:

etresoft wrote:

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

Most of the time, that problem is the "cleaning" app, or the (often latent) effects of having used it at some time in the past.

As a rule, I completely erase and reconfigure any Mac that has ever been affected by any such things.

I don't know. How do you know that's “most of the time”?

I'd like to trust you (and other's opinions), if there are facts I can see.

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 8:17 AM in response to Yer_Man

Terence Devlin wrote:

. 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?

That stopped a lot earlier than that. 10.4 or so IIRC. Even then, if your Mac wasn’t running at 3 am it would simply run the scripts next time the Mac was run. A total non-issue and that way for years.

10.4? Wow… Looks like I haven't see any info when this changed.

Thanks to all the answers so far!

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,138 points

Sep 4, 2019 4:53 PM in response to Anic264b

The primary reason is the software is completely worthless. It serves no purpose. macOS doesn't need any cleaning, optimizing, protecting, or any type of maintenance for that matter.

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 8:15 AM in response to Barney-15E

Ok. I can understand macOS doesn't cleaning (in general, at least). But what about the points I have listed?

dialabrain

Level 10

135,869 points

Sep 7, 2019 8:25 AM in response to Yer_Man

I think the phrase "pointless hoodoo" describes CMM to a T.

etresoft

Level 9

56,326 points

Sep 4, 2019 12:37 PM in response to Anic264b

I don’t use CleanMyMac so I can’t give any specific advice about it. There are lots of apps I don’t use that I don’t comment on. But I can give your more information about these specific issues:

•I find it easy to use

Score one for CleanMyMac.

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. When this happens is quite complicated with modern Apple computers, most of which are notebooks. In fact, many of these traditional UNIX maintenance tasks aren’t run at all anymore on modern versions of macOS. There are no logs to rotate any more.

•It shows me where my big or duplicate files are (having between 10TB and 20TB of data, with some duplicate files, this is a big help)

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

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

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

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.

I would agree with those who say your Mac does not need to be “cleaned”. I don’t know what kind of “cleaning” Clean My Mac does. Modern versions of macOS already do their own automatic removal of cache files and other temporary data if more storage is required.

Apple does not “approve” software. Apple does not actively police software for utility, value, or scams. As long as the developer complies with the letter of the law with respect to all applicable Apple Developer agreements, then Apple doesn’t care. On very rare occasions, individual Apple employees many recommend specific apps in specific cases, but this is not official Apple policy.

dialabrain

Level 10

135,869 points

Sep 7, 2019 4:29 AM in response to Anic264b

FWIW, you can use CMM if you so choose. No one will arrest you for using it. However, as has been mentioned Macs do not require cleaning/maintenance programs. Personally I own 7 Macs and have never needed such programs. To me, they just take up drive space. They serve no useful purpose and are known to cause damage whether it's the apps fault or misuse. If it's not installed, it can't be misused.

Good luck.

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 5:21 AM in response to John Galt

>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).

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