CleanMyMac reputation question

Question

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

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

etresoft

Level 9

56,326 points

Sep 7, 2019 5:12 PM in response to Anic264b

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.

Reply

Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,918 points

Sep 7, 2019 8:22 AM in response to Anic264b

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.

And this is where the fun starts: a number of apps will not run if you remove the localisations, cleaning photo libraries can - and often does - lead to significant dataloss, especially in the hands of inexperienced users - and database corruption, the Finder sees all the trashes except ones that are app specific, for instance, in a photo manager but then these can only be emptied by the app, not any other app. It should not ever empty the trash in other users accounts as that data is private to them, and I doubt it can, and clearing caches is the "repair permissions" du jour: a nice piece of utterly pointless hoodoo, that can be achieved effortlessly and for free by a simple safe-mode restart.

Reply

Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

155,360 points

Sep 4, 2019 1:54 PM in response to Anic264b

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.

Reply

Answer 4

Sep 4, 2019 12:04 PM in response to Anic264b

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.

Reply

Answer 5

John Galt

Level 10

155,360 points

Sep 4, 2019 1:50 PM in response to Anic264b

Yet, it's still an application to avoid?

Yes.

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.

Such products are very aggressively marketed. They are all scams.
They generally operate on the flawed premise that a Mac accumulates "junk" that needs to be routinely "cleaned out" for optimum performance.
Trial versions of those programs are successful because they provide the instant gratification of greater free disk space.
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.
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.

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."

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.

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.

Reply

Answer 6

Sep 4, 2019 11:25 AM in response to Anic264b

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.

Reply

Answer 7

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 4:14 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

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.

Reply

Answer 8

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,918 points

Sep 7, 2019 4:22 AM in response to Anic264b

As your very own post demonstrates, it's pointless. You offer five bullet points. One is autobiographical (you find it easy to use) but the other four points you make demonstrate it's redundancy. The OS does all these things already. And yes, if you're getting application hangs so frequently that you need continual updates then you have an issue that needs looking at. First step in troubleshooting: remove CMM.

Reply

Answer 9

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Sep 4, 2019 11:45 AM in response to Anic264b

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.

Reply

Answer 10

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 4:18 AM in response to woodmeister50

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?

Reply

Answer 11

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Sep 4, 2019 11:13 AM in response to Anic264b

Yes avoid it. It's at best scamware, at normal it's going to interfere with the OS, at worst it will gunk up your mac.

Reply

Answer 12

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 4, 2019 11:19 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

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.

Reply

Answer 13

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 4:09 AM in response to Allan Eckert

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?

Reply

Answer 14

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 5:20 AM in response to etresoft

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))

Reply

Answer 15

Anic264b Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 7, 2019 5:47 AM in response to John Galt

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.

Reply

CleanMyMac reputation question

Similar questions