Is there a Mac Cleaner to make it go faster?

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.

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)....

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?

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.

VPNs are good to a point.

Their upside, you get access to international sites that otherwise may not let you have access.

You do have to still be careful of copyright rules in your own country.

You also have to keep in mind when a VPN is active your WiFi networkable printers may no longer work over WiFi, or any WiFi sharing within your place because those depend on the IP your Mac is transmitting, which differs when it is on VPN. Printers are easily enough to resolve because you can print to PDF and print the PDF later when off VPN.

Many offices and schools limit your access to their network by giving you a VPN to connect to. Keep in mind while you are on their network, they may want you to install keyloggers so they can monitor your work with them.

The downside of VPNs, is they open you to a gateway where the VPN owner can treat your machine as a file share and inject in your machine malicious files unless you setup your sharing preferences right, and their access to the internet may be slowed by the VPN host.

We can carry on the discussion on VPNs on a separate thread since that's really a different topic.

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.

"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 are on a public WiFi, you need to learn to share the bandwidth with anyone else on the public wifi.

If you are going to hog the traffic with an ultraslow VPN, you are going to hog their bandwidth.

You know, I go on a public WiFi on a bus every morning to work. That's my only change to play Simcity, and it barely is able to manage the traffic of that. Probably because someone else is trying to VPN stuff over it at the time. Be mindful that others need the bandwidth just as much as you.

VPNs are shared resources anyway, and take a lot of traffic on any resource.

System Preferences is the utility under the Apple menu to access System Settings on Mac OS Monterey (12.x.x) and earlier. System Settings replaces preferences on Ventura (13.x.x) and later. We are now at Sonoma (14.x.x). This is where it is essential that you start your own topic thread (clck on Ask the Community above) so you can get focused solutions that are relevant for your configuration.

Totally, there are a bunch of tools out there designed to clean up your Mac and give it a little speed boost. But honestly, I've found that you don't always need to go straight for those third-party cleaners to see a difference. Sometimes, just doing a bit of digital housekeeping yourself can work wonders.

[Edited by Moderator]

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.

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

Please start a new topic thread regarding this issue. You may need to run Apple hardware diagnostic if possible.

If not, bring it to an authorized service provider if you have a chance to backup your data after holding the shift key on startup to run in safe mode. If you still restart automatically a lot, there is likely a hardware issue with the computer that can only be solved by an authorized service provider on http://www.apple.com/buy

"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?"

Public wifi sites do not have the bandwidth to do streaming video. You end up hogging the bandwidth of anyone else on that public wifi. Don't do that. It is selfish and rude to do so.

This sounds silly but my mac has System Preferences and no Login Items under General. How do I get to System Settings?

If you have System Preferences, then you are not running macOS Sonoma.

Login Items are in Users & Groups

CLASSIC dont buy those buy these lol

CLASSIC dont buy those buy these lol

I guess you chose to do no research on "these." "These" does not purport to clean your Mac or do any sort of maintenance at all. And, you don't have to buy it.