There are so many MacBook Cleaner Apps out there

LindaSchminda wrote:

Thanks you Ruskes, My problem is I'm so tech challenged, will EtreCheck highlight the files it thinks I can delete?

Thanks.

Etrecheck is an excellent program that will provide a comprehensive report and may allow us to pinpoint areas of concern. Working with this app is pretty simple:

• Download it here: Etrecheck
• (You really only need the free program at this point).
• When you have it scan your Mac, it will ask you what issue you're dealing with. Selecting "...just checking" is fine.
• After a minute or two, your report will be ready. You'll then want to copy the entire report to your clipboard, then come back here to this discussion. Create a reply, and click on the Additional Text icon (third icon from the right at the bottom of the Reply window). Paste the report from your clipboard into this Additional Text field.

At that point, we can examine it and offer suggestions on things you may want to delete, as well as look at other issues like disk performance, available RAM, etc.

Hope this helps.

My immediate response is that using an App for this is not a good idea. The ones that are trustworthy don't seem to do a great deal, and macOS on its own is quite good at cleaning up. In particular, Apps with "Clean" or "Cleaner" in the name tend to be a problem. If you can give us an idea of what you mean by "extraneous files" (caches? duplicates? files that you did not intend to be there in the first place? large files the purpose of which you can't identify?) I am sure people here will have specific suggestions.

I use an app called OmniDiskSweeper. It will scan a selected disk and display in a list indicating how much disk is used by different folders. It is up to you to decide what to remove and what not to remove.

With that said, you should only remove items in your home folder and never touch anything else. And in your home folder you should not touch the Library folder unless you really know what you are doing.

There are graphical apps that give you a visualization of disk usage such as Grand Perspective (free) or Daisy Disk (paid).

To remove unwanted apps, check with the app vendor to see how to properly uninstall the app.

Good suggestions above. One good thing to do periodically is to restart the Mac in the Safe Mode. Hold down the Shift key on restart. Be patient as it takes several minutes while the Mac does repairs on its OS and clear its caches. Then restart normally

Linda, doing a Safe Start will have no impact on any of your passwords or the computer's settings. Also, unless one knows exactly what they are doing, it's best to not try to do cleaning in the operating system's folders. Accidental damage may result. iBoostUp is an app I occasionally use to do safe cleaning of caches, etc. What it does is also remove browser history, and the result is an increase in hard drive storage. Otherwise, one can just remove no longer needed files or apps.

LindaSchminda wrote:

Thanks Woodmeister50!

Yeah, I am not that tech savvy.... I don't know the difference between the Home Folder and the Library Folder.

There are a couple of Library folders. One is the system-wide Library folder, at the top level of your hard drive (e.g., right off "Macintosh HD"). That's where all sorts of support files for macOS and applications go. Another is a user-level Library folder, in each account. It's also a grab-bag, and it is where applications store a lot of user preferences. It's a good idea not to mess around in either folder unless you know what you're doing.

A while back, Apple changed Finder to hide the user-level Library folder. Now you won't even see it unless you do something like:

• Holding down the Option key while using the Finder's Go menu. (This causes a Library choice to appear in the menu.)
• Using shell (command line interface) commands in Terminal.

Can I use Mac's own disc utility to clean up my Mac?

Disk Utility is not a cleaner program. It lets you erase disks, sub-divide disks, check and repair filesystems, and work with disk images. As to deciding what to keep and what to toss, it leaves that to other parts of the OS (that manage cache files) or to you.

There is safe software to use, which will only point out useless files and let you decide what to do with them.

It is called EtreCheck