Is there a Mac Cleaner to make it go faster?

There is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

Please don't fall for any third party:

• Cleaning apps
• Antivirus apps
• Maintenance apps
• Security apps
• VPN apps

That is unless you would like your Mac to become slow, unstable, appear buggy and offer nothing that Mac OS cannot do all on its own. To keep your Mac running as new, simply keep it up-to-date and restart the Mac about 1x per week.Other than that, please simply use it and let Mac OS do its job.

If you suspect your iMac is not running as quickly as it should then please do the following:

It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again. 

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211 It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Desktop.

ekajjake wrote:

EtreCheck report

Mac is slow to start up and launch apps, generally not too bad while using the same app, but very slow switching from one to another.

If anyone can advise on some solutions I'd be most grateful.

That’s the i5 8 GB HDD, and though it’s a Fusion model which is somewhat better than the lowest-spec HDD model, but the Fusion is Busy Busy. Basically, you’re out of RAM for all of what’s been loaded here, and that not-all-that-speedy i5 is now attempting to compensate for that lack of memory by hitting the Fusion hard. Hard. And hitting a Fusion hard runs at HDD speeds. Slow. Slow.

Remove the VPN add-on apps; Proton, Tunnelbear, etc., and remove the hosted file services, too. Likely remove the Google apps, too. Remove anything you don’t absolutely need.

Here’s why HDDs are slow: Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community

Your Mac hits that Fusion HDD whenever it needs to shuffle stuff to or from the Fusion SSD.

Moving to an SSD might help: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

But an i5 8 GB Fusion isn’t ever going to be speedy.

There is no Mac Cleaner that should ever be installed. They will only cause problems and the worst of them is CleanMyMac. Feel free to use the Search option at the top of this page to view the problems other users have had.

As for making your Mac more efficient, check  > System Settings > General > Login Items, and review what is being run on startup and what apps are allowed to run in the background.

For a more detailed look at your system, use this link to download EtreCheck and run the free scan and post the report here using the Additional Text option. EtreCheck was developed by a fellow user here on these forums to give a snapshot of everything that is being run on your Mac and the report does not include any personal information. Others here will be able to look at this and provide suggestions that will make your Mac run more efficient.

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

Macs—catlike—clean themselves and have for about 20 years.

Apple built elegant and automated self-maintenance routines into macOS so you don't have to clean nor let anyone else do it. Those routines do ALL housekeeping needed, including auto-defragging.

You paid Apple good money to include that elegance. Do not pour garbage over that marvel of modern coding, and do not fall for fear marketing.

Carolineoies wrote:

In fact, you can free up tons of storage space in Terminal with 'rf' command…

The rm command (not rf):

rm -rf

or with long switches:

rm —-recursive —-force

is the command line file removal command. When combined with the -r recursive switch it can delete all files in all directories in and below the file path specified. With the -f force switch, the command ignores any command syntax errors. One or more entire hierarchies of files can disappear. Quickly. With no trashcan to retrieve the files. And an errant unescaped space in a path somewhere can delete a whole lot more that might have been intended. Be cautious with rm -rf.

And caches are present to allow quicker access to data. Log and temporary files are maintained by macOS and apps, and are removed on schedule. Deleting caches and logs and such might save some storage space short term, but those temporaries and those caches are almost inevitably rebuilt and returned to use.

On the plus side, an errant rm -rf command won’t blow away macOS itself anymore, but it can definitely still damage your own data and your own apps and install. If y’all decide to use the info in that Gist, have complete backups first. (Why the risks are omitted, and why it is best to have backups are not mentioned in that Gist?)

The only thing that will speed up your 2017 21.5" iMac is to get an external SSD and use that as your start up drive. You could do that however because the computer is nearing old age (from a computer point of view) you may want to consider replacing it with a current mod Mac mini that would be considerably faster and not nearing obsolescence. You can get a nicely configured new one including a nice 27" display for about $1200. If you decide to get an external SSD, you will spend about $200-$300.

If you opt to go with the external SSD use the instructions in How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk and the SSD I'd recommend is the OWC Envoy Pro SX .

Hi Mama2six,

Remove Webroot. It is unnecessary and takes up a lot of background task activity.

Clean up space on your hard disk. You are right at the 15% empty point of diminishing returns where the computer will be automatically generating swap files to manage memory, and it has no place ot put them.

AVHelper is not needed either.

If you don't know what Rakutan Cash Back is for, remove it.

libdispatch.dylib: BUG IN CLIENT OF LIBDISPATCH: Unbalanced call to di

indicates you have some untested software installed on your system that should be removed, and is crashing a lot in the background.

Please start a new topic thread with any questions.

Caches themselves are used to optimize performance. Some in fact, if not not present or corrupted will prevent you from being able to launch Application such as System Settings/Preferences. So optimizers that do anything with system caches should be treated with kid gloves. They can in fact make your system less stable than more stable. We don't control the fact that Apple has allowed certain system cache cleaners to be available on the Mac App Store, when all are inherantly dangerous for that behavior. Some like AppleJack are the closest to being able to manage it safely, because they launch before the GUI in an administrative mode if properly setup. But any system that already is having trouble with caches, may in fact have more trouble when something non-system tries to clean them. You are better off backing up your data, and freeing up at least 15% free space, and removing non-essential applications if you are experiencing slowness.

I do not trust any cleaner. These one trick ponies are in fact more damage than good.

Backup now, or forever hold your peace - … - Apple Community

has several utilities that backup the data on your Mac, which should be done prior to using any utilities, as utilities can erase important files.

https://freemacsoft.net - has an AppCleaner that does just one good thing and that's remove unnecessary apps and their dependent files. You may need to boot in safe mode (shift key at startup) to ensure all components get removed.

Etrecheck - the handy reporting tool for … - Apple Community

helps identify background apps that can or should be removed if there is no need for them.

Amended comments to MacKeeper tip - Apple Community

is a tip I wrote to discuss alternatives to cleaners for optimizing.

The problems with most cleaners are they either -

1. Delete system caches that are used to optimize Mac operations.
2. Run in the background creating conflicts for programs that use system level files.
3. Duplicate functionality that the Mac does on its own when it is left on overnight in screen saver instead of energy saver mode.
4. Create crash files which can become really big when an application doesn't know why a resource is not available.

In short, you should avoid them at all costs.

Hi Ekajjake,

How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support

May also help if you find it is split.

Or bringing your Mac to an authorized service provider who can exchange your fusion drive for a completely solid state drive. Fusion drives are only solid state on their first 128 GB.

Remove the Google Chrome Helper App. It is creating excess traffic on your notifications. You may find this in the Extensions of your Google Chrome browser.

The only reason to run a VPN is if your company or school uses it. Network traffic is limited on VPNs because of their shared environment. If you are using a VPN to evade copyright infringement detection, we can't discuss that at all on this forum since we can only discuss legal activities. Both Proton and Tunnelbear are likely competing for network bandwidth with each other.

You have two Canon drivers installed. If you only have one Canon printer remove print queues for the other printers.

This is where it would be helpful for you to start a new topic thread. We'd have to ask you about Solstice, and Soundtree and other apps, and their necessity. Any Launchatloginhelper is not essential and should be removed.

etresoft wrote:

Note that deleting files will not result in any performance improvement whatsoever. All it will do is slow you down because you have to restore from backup after your system is irreparably corrupted. Hopefully you have a backup after following random instructions posted on GitHub.

But at least as a side benefit, if you use "rm" to remove a bunch of files, you will likely notice that you have less free space than you did before.

If you just want to optimise your storage space using macOS built-in functions see below.

Optimise storage space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

mama2six wrote:

Can you help? My Mac is restarting quite often and I am getting the busy ball ALOT!

Seems typical performance for a low-spec (8 GB, 256 GB memory) Mac with a whole lot of heavy apps (Adobe, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft OneDrive, Google, a coupon app doing who knows what, etc.).

This Mac is very much out of memory, which usually means off-loading some of what’s been installed and active here that isn’t strictly necessary.

On little or no evidence, I’d probably start with that coupon app, and probably then OneDrive and the Google apps. I’d clean up that dangling Canva plist, too.

Mac cleaning software is not nessecary, it will only slow down your Mac instead of speeding it up, so I would recommend against using any mac clean up software