Is there a Mac Cleaner to make it go faster?

In fact, you can free up tons of storage space in Terminal with 'rf' command without installing any software, such as system caches, log files, tmp files, iOS backup files and email attachments. Here is a simple tutorial you can follow:

https://gist.github.com/Orismann/7d9ba47020d08525577ee0755c2816d3

However, you can opt for a 3rd-party Mac cleaning app if you don't want to play with commands. This types of apps will do the cleaning staff automatically, which saves time and effort.

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.

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.

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

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.  

I don't put much stock in "cleaner" apps that claim they're going to automatically find and remove stuff for you.

There are tools that you can use to find which of your own files are taking large amounts of space. E.g., while I don't use it, I have heard of "Daisy Disk" (which seems to be available through the developer's site and the App Store).

https://daisydiskapp.com/

What's wrong with subscribing to a (reputable) VPN for security when using public Wi-Fi on a laptop when not at home, and to change your apparent location for streaming services?

The first assumes you are actually getting more security. Despite their claims, there aren’t millions of crooks intercepting your data transmissions. Part b of that assumes those companies aren’t doing with your data what they claim to be protecting you from. You have nothing but their “good” word.

Apple’s software already anonymizes your internet connection.

The second implies violating a license agreement you have made with the streaming service.

ttreen1950 wrote:

What's wrong with subscribing to a (reputable) VPN for security when using public Wi-Fi on a laptop when not at home, and to change your apparent location for streaming services?

If you have a question about a particular VPN service, it may be best for you to provide a new post along with the name of the service to help you better understand that issues that may arise. That topic would be better suited in a new thread as opposed to one about Mac Cleaners.

In the meantime, you should use the Search option on the top of the page to find specific information about the service and the use case in general. As for your scenarios provided, on a public Wifi I would never make financial transactions that would require privacy from a VPN or trust the VPN service with the financial data that I am sending to them. If the service is a free VPN, you must ask yourself how they are making money. I can guarantee you that they are monetizing the information that is sent to them. The latter is simply illegal for violation of sites intended use. I'm not implying that you would be charged in such a case, but if this is what the VPN service is promoting to you, that should tell you how "reputable" they are.

TimCroninAustin wrote:

Having trouble with TimeMachine - can't run backups. Deleted LocalSnapshots and still cannot backup. Moved Downloads to an external SSD (~20GB) and Emptied the Trash (~19GB)....

<EtreCheck Report Michele Monterey 2024.02.10.log>

Ran EtreCheck, which tells me I'm dangerously low on space on my 500GB SSD, but 45% of it is "Unknown" in the pie chart. Ran "Storage" and "Clean up" after granting Full Disk Access, but EtreCheck reported it could not free up any storage space.

Attached my EtreCheck Report... Any suggestions?

I suggest removing BitDefender with the uninstaller for the app and doing a new post otherwise it may get lost under this thread. I would also include the new EtreCheck report after BitDefender is removed.

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.

Note that deleting files will not result in any performance improvement whatsoever. All it will do is slow you down while 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.

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.

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?)

pebceb wrote:

Am I doing something wrong?

Yes. You are trying a Terminal command that can't possibly work and was wrong as soon as it was posted. Don't type thing into the Terminal that you see posted on the internet.

Nektony is another in a long list of one-trick ponies.

Any cleaner that optimizes by cleaning system caches can potentially cause caches to corrupt and make your system unable to launch apps. Any cleaner that updates prebinding can potentially cause problems for running apps.

Your best bet as I said before is to read the tip I wrote here:

Amended comments to MacKeeper tip - Apple Community

We've already answered Ozonaguy's question. Please start a new topic thread if this one does not help you.

Mac OS does its own cleanup, and backing up your data, removing optimizers, using non-automatic malware removal tools and keeping your hard drive from being over 85% full will yield the best performance. Using Apps that are spec'ed for your Mac's hardware is also important.