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Level 3

714 points

OnyX for Snow Leopard, How has been your experience with it?

What is OnyX? it's in the apple download page, I know it is a maintenance tool. However I have a few questions about it, it is safe to use? Can it cause system instability? (Cache out X does that), How has been your experience with it?

I'm asking this just to know if its worth installing in my Mac, because I don't want a tool that says it will increase system performance, and then when you run it, you'll end up with an under performing system giving you a lot of error logs that take hard drive space away.

Thank You.

2.53GHz Core i5 Macbook Pro 15", Mac OS X (10.6.4), 500gb HDD @ 7200rpm, 4gb 1067mhz ddr3 ram, Intel HD + Nvidia 330m 256mb

Posted on Aug 20, 2010 10:18 AM

Best reply

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Posted on Aug 20, 2010 10:52 AM

Tools like OnyX, CacheOut, etc, can be useful if they are used for their intended purpose. If your Mac is having some sort of problem, they can be useful at fixing it (i.e. clearing out corrupted cache files, etc.)

But they should not be used if on a Mac that is running well. As you say, clearing out caches unnecessarily will cause one's Mac to run slower, not faster.

I think many people use OnyX, etc as "preventive maintenance" utilities, and run them often and when not needed, expecting them to keep their Mac "optimized". But IMO this is a mistake. Mac OS X does a very good job of keeping itself optimized. The third party "optimization" tools can be useful for fixing problems. But running them unnecessarily is a waste of time at best, and can cause problems at worst.

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34 replies

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,314 points

Oct 24, 2010 12:26 PM in response to vea1083

but I would like to ask if OnyX can inadvertedly delete some Core OSX files.

There's always the possibility that a third party app could purposely do malicious damage. However, OnyX has been around for quite a while and has a solid reputation. As mentioned, I've been using it for years with zero problems. I keep OnyX on every Mac with every version of OS X I've ever owned.

vea1083 Author

Level 3

714 points

Oct 24, 2010 12:46 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Kurt Lang wrote:

but I would like to ask if OnyX can inadvertedly delete some Core OSX files.

There's always the possibility that a third party app could purposely do malicious damage. However, OnyX has been around for quite a while and has a solid reputation. As mentioned, I've been using it for years with zero problems. I keep OnyX on every Mac with every version of OS X I've ever owned.

Agreed! If OnyX was making harm to the OSX machines it wouldn't be in the Apple Recommended Dowloads page, and it would have not been on CNET's page. Thank You.

Is that my Mac has unexplainedly gained some HDD space with no apparent reason other than maintenance scripts. The gain has been of 317MB over the last 3 months. Have you experience some HDD space gains after installing software updates? (I know I have gone off topic) you can post your answer here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2625142&tstart=0

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,314 points

Oct 24, 2010 12:58 PM in response to vea1083

It's that my Mac has unexplainedly gained some HDD space with no apparent reason other than maintenance scripts. The gain has been of 317MB over the last 3 months. Have you experience some HDD space gains after installing software updates?

Can't say I've seen an increase in available space after most updates. Nothing of any noticeable size, anyway. Sometimes, but not often, a program update will reduce the size of the application a bit. But most of the time, they get a bit larger.

vea1083 Author

Level 3

714 points

Oct 24, 2010 1:01 PM in response to Kurt Lang

I can talk about iTunes 10, since I remember that an iTunes 9 update would be a 100+ megabyte dowload, buy now with Version 10 the downloads are about 80+ megabytes.

OnyX for Snow Leopard, How has been your experience with it?