should I buy clean my mac 2 or is there another app I should use?

wpcrumbley wrote:

when your hard drive starts getting a little full and with one click of a button you can free up several Gigs of not needed data, that is pretty sweet.

The problem here is that CleanMyMac encourages you to believe that a full hard drive can be solved with a click of a button and the removal of "unneeded" files. That is absolutely wrong.

The files that CleanMyMac removes are NOT unneeded, and the majority of them will end up being re-created by the system over time. This will cause a performance hit as caches (which are supposed to keep your Mac running faster) are rebuilt and will result in the newly-freed space being used again. Which leads to a nasty cycle of cleaning followed by your OS recovering from said cleaning.

If your hard drive is full, delete some of your files (or third-party apps) or get a bigger drive. Those are the only two reasonable solutions.

For the first 5 years my Macbook Pro (mid 2010) behaved itself. My memory is maxed out, I swapped the disk to one with 1 TB and, upgraded everything as they became available and all was well with the world. My wife's MB Air (2011) also acted nicely without ever having upgraded the original OS, as did my 2010 Mini Mac, running Lion. (notice that we're a Mac family). Until Yosemite, that is. First, my wife's Time machine backups began to fail. Many of her work related files, especially the recorded film files and some Powerpoint presentations, suddenly became "read only." Running the Disk Utility on the disk showed me that everything was okay. Yet the backups kept failing. So we began deleting those "problematic" files. Yet the more files that we deleted the more appeared as read-only. To make matters worse, when I attempted to restore an earlier backup, TM didn't allow me to. Running disk utility on that backup disk resulted in an inability to repair it, suggesting we copy as much data as possible from it, and reformat it. Not a single file came off this backup disk. I leave the rest to your imagination.

Then my Mini Mac suddenly crashed. It wouldn't load. Following Apple's instructions, I created a Yosemite bootable startup drive, only to find out after many attempts that this was rejected by the Mini mac. When I wanted to reload the OS via the Internet, it too rejected Yosemite, but reloaded Lion instead. I decided to leave it al Lion with a minimum number of apps.

Lest we forget my Macbook Pro - in the first 5 years I suffered hard system crashes less than a total of 5 times. Within a period of the last three weeks, over 30 times. I tried Disk Utility - everything was fine. I ran an anti-virus app (AVG). It found 7 suspicious files which I immediately removed. Crashes continued. I used Clean my Mac 3, carrying out all of its functions, freed up disk space, fixed permissions, directories, etc. Crashes continued. So I thought that I had developed a hardware problem, but before I started panicking I consulted Dr. Google. It seems to that the main culprit for many thousands of other users as well is Chrome. So after performing many save functions (passwords, bookmarks, etc) between crashes, I totally deleted everything Chrome related, switched to Safari, etc and I thought all was well with the world. I suffered a hard system crash after 3 days of quiet, and as I write, am fearful of continuing folly.

So why am I writing this? To rely on Apple's advice, that maintaining a system properly would ensure the it takes care of itself is a naive response and smacks of self denial. Systems will crash. Maintaining them properly will certainly be healthy, but what if there is, in fact a problem. Relying on Face Time backups alone is not a solution. My wife is witness to that. Using Disk Utility to identify and fix problems doesn't necessariy work. And creating a OS, bootable drive to reinstall the operating system in case of problems seems to work only some of the time, especially since it requires a re-download of the system from the Apple Store of that OS. Did I mention that the Apple Store didn't allow me to do that? And going to the Genius Bar to have a problem solved is certainly not a solution since 9 times out of 10, they will wipe your disk, reinstall the OS and you're on your own when it comes to reinstalling your apps and files.

The bottom line is Yes, you sometimes need third party proven applications to identify, locate and offer solutions to problems. So today, I backup with Face Time on one disk, and Carbon Copy Cloner on another. I use Disk Utility and Clean my Mac and Disk Warrior to hopefully solve any problems I may have. I use a firewall and anti virus software to keep the nasties out and last, but certainly not least, I pray that my system doesn't crash before I finish this long tale of woe. (note: if I bored you, I apologize)

How come the experienced posters on this forum always advise against this app and similar ones, while those recommending it are always folks with no track record on the site? Why is that? Can never figure that out...

First, note that none of the problems you describe are things that CleanMyMac could do anything about. That would not be an appropriate troubleshooting step in those cases, and in fact, using it could have made the problems worse. Using Disk Utility also might not have been an appropriate step... it's impossible to know whether or not it would have been without more information.

There is NO magic app that can cure all problems. There's not even a collection of several magic apps that can, together, cure all problems. As long as you continue to rely on such things, rather than attempting to gain an understanding of the cause, or seeking the assistance of a trained professional or other expert, you'll continue to see these kinds of problems repeat periodically.

As you say, things do inevitably go wrong... but the trick to making sure they don't keep going wrong, or go from wrong to total meltdown, lies in appropriate troubleshooting.

I'm no techie but I ran CleanMyMac for a while because I thought I should ⚠ and found that it really slowed down my iMac. So I uninstalled it and that solved my problems. The one thing that seems to matter most is maxing out your RAM - that made everything run much faster.

sabapete wrote:

...

Relying on Face Time backups alone is not a solution

...

So today, I backup with Face Time on one disk,

Perhaps you mean Time Machine?

First off,

You keep referring to OS X Time Machine backup app as FaceTime. This is wrong and two differently entire things. FaceTime is Apple's video chat app and NOT a backup app.

You are completely clueless about how to maintain a Mac and you need to search these forums so you CAN learn many ways you can maintain your Mac's system without using fraudulent, "garbageware" third party Mac hard drive apps that more or less are making false claims about how these apps can supposedly "clean" your Mac of all of its ills.

You are probably a former Windows PC convert.

If you use CarbonCopyCloner, this is THE best app to create a bootable clone of your Mac's entire system provided that the clone was made prior to any major issues or after all of your Mac's ills have been cured and you have a fairly clean system to clone.

FYI,

IF you are nor running Windows on your Mac, Antivirus software is unnecessary on a Mac running OS X.

Antivirus software is NOT needed if the Mac you are running is only running OS X. Antivirus apps interfere with normal performance and operation of a Mac because they program too many controls (program extensions) into the main OS X system software impacting/impeding general performance of a Mac.

Here are some of my tidbits of advice on how to avoid viruses in the future, if you encounter a virus, again.

Some anti-virus solutions can slow down your Mac, but to be honest, the best anit-virus app is you, the user and your brain.

Don't visit questionable websites or website you are unsure about.

Don't use Torrents or engage in "Torrenting"

Don't install pirated software or software downloaded from a questionable or unknown websites or untrutsted sources.

Java is still a vulnerability concern, if you do not need it, don't use it.

Use a browser filter and pop-up blocker

Don't open email attachments from email addresses that you do not recognize.

Install security updates when they become available

Educate yourself as to what threats are common and active.

In effect, use your own brain as the antivirus filter.

Follow that advise and in MOST cases, you will be fine and won't risk your Mac to potential Trojans, malware or viruses.

If you feel you need some baseline virus protection that is minimally invasive on the Mac OS X system, install

ClamXAV

http://www.clamxav.com/

DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!

Apps like MacKeeper, MacSweeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, SpeedUpMyMac, MacCleanse or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac.

Plus, these type of apps aren't really necessary OR needed. They really aren't.

There are manual methods to clear off unnecessary data off of your Mac that are safer and you have complete control over your Mac and not just leave a piece of auto cleaning software in charge of clearing off data off of your Mac. Their potential of causing OS X issues outweighs the implied good and benefits these types of hard drive or memory "cleaning" apps are written to do.

These types of system 'cleaning" apps are very poorly written and are really a scam to rob newbieand novice Mac users of their hard earned cash for a poorly written maintenance program that will do much more harm to a perfectly normal running OS X system than the good that the app developers purport these types of apps will do.

Plus, the software companies that write these apps make it hard to easily uninstall these apps if something DOES go wrong and these apps work in a way where you have no recovery or revert function to return your Mac back to its former, working state in the event something does go wrong.

Most of these cleaning apps have NO revert function AND no proper uninstaller app to get rid of their "garbagewares" out of your Mac's system.

This is how badly written these apps are!!!!

It is best to never, EVER download and install these types of apps.

The risk to your system and important data is too great a risk!

Here are some of my general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible

You should never, EVER let a computer hard drive get completely full, EVER!

With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.

If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.

Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.

Have you emptied your Mac's Trash icon in the Dock?

If you use iPhoto or Aperture, both have its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.

If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.

If you are an iMovie/ Final Cut user, both apps have their own individual Trash location that needs to be emptied, too!

If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!

Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.

Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.

STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!

Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.

Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.

Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.

To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.

http://www.omnigroup.com/more

Also, Find Any File

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.

move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.

If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.

Moving iTunes library

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

Moving iPhoto library

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506

Moving iMovie projects folder

http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2289

A disclaimer,

Things to consider before moving your iPhoto Library Folder to a new or external location like an external hard drive.

If you make movies on any iDevices using iMovie for iOS,, then transfer the video footage, the IOS version of iMovie saves the footage as a movie file in IPhoto for IOS and will automatically get transferred to iPhoto for the Mac when you upload the video from your iDevice.

Newer versions of iMovie will work and link those video files found in your iPhoto Library on your Mac, but those links can be lost if you move your iPhoto library and you will not be able to relink that video afterwards as the current versions of iMovie seem to not have a relink option for the video portion of the files (ironically, current versions of iMovie HAVE the ability to re-link the audio files from the video footage, though (The inability to re-link the video files could be a possible bug or oversight in current versions iMovie).

The lost video links show up as "blacked-out" video blocks with no content.

Before moving the iPhoto Library

If you make movies with iMovie using iPad or iPhone video then 'Consolidate' the files before you finish. This will gather (albeit by duplicating) all the relevant files in the project in one place. After consolidating/duplicating all of the audio and video footage to a seperate, independent location,it should be safe to move your iPhoto library.

The potential way to circumvent this issues maybe to try and import iPad and iPhoto video directly into iMovie which would be another solution.

Many of us that provide Mac troubleshooting advice and solutions have been using Macs for decades. Myself included.

When we advise solutions, we are providing these solutions based on our many years of experience and knowledge of Macs, Apple products and Apple's operating systems.

The things you are doing to your Mac is why none of your Macs are running well.

Stop using antivirus and third party hard drive "cleaning" software, period!

Good Luck to you!

If your Macs are still experiencing issues, you either do not have enough RAM installed (if your Macts are running OS X 10.7 or greater) and/or you have things installed on your Mac that are affecting all of your Macs' performance.

For installing RAM,

Correct, compatible and reliable Mac RAM can ONLY be purchased from online RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (http://www.macsales.com).

DO NOT PURCHASE RAM FROM LOCAL COMPUTER OR ELECTRONICS STORES!

Macs are picky about RAM and RAM from local sources will NOT work in a Mac.

It would help us to help you if we could have some more technical info about your iMac.

If you like, please go ahead and download, install and run Etrecheck.

Etrecheck was developed as a simple Mac diagnostic report tool by a regular Apple Support forum user and technical support contributor named Etresoft.

Etrecheck is a small, unobstrusive app that compiles a static snapshot of your entire Mac hardware system and installed software.

This is a free app that has been honestly created to provided help in diagnosing issues with Macs running the newer versions of OS X.

It is not malware and can be safely downloaded and installed onto your Mac.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Copy/paste and post its report here in another reply thread so that we have a complete profile of your Mac's hardware and installed software so we can all help with your Mac performance issues.

Thank You.

Thomas_r, in my experience, a manual system clean up of OSx has fixed a dying iMac:

About two months ago, my 27" 2013 iMac had black screens of deaths daily, opening an application would lead to watching the beach ball for 5 minutes before the app would actually launch, and in general it was just crazy laggy and I was about to throw it out because I was convinced it had hardware damage and was no longer covered by applecare but it turned out I had a few months of applecare left so I thought woohoo I'm going to get a brand new iMac cause this one has to have a fried motherboard.

So I called tech support ready to ask for a new iMac but first the tech guy had me do a manual system clean up by deleting old cache files and libraries. I wish I wrote down everything he did but at the time I 100% believed I was wasting my time having to go through and delete old Temp files thinking it was equivalent to "have you tried restarting the computer." Because coming from Windows where you absolutely have to reinstall the os every 8 months, I thought macs don't need maintenance but if all I have to do is delete some old files to get a new mac then so be it.

After the cleanup, he had me reboot the system and it ran like a brand new iMac (it's been about 2 months now and it's still speedy and there hasn't been a single black screen of death since that day.) So I have joined the other side, that yes absolutely OSx requires cleaning up every once in awhile.

I also have a second 2013 27" iMac that I bought new about a year ago and it's starting to get slow and behave erratically so I'm thinking an application like CleanMyMac could save me the hour on the phone with tech support every six months.

So in trying to decide if I should buy it I found this thread which is mostly people stating OSx absolutely never needs to be cleaned and only a handful of people saying I use CleanMyMac and I like it.

But since the same people saying that OSx never needs cleaning are also the same people saying CleanMyMac is garbage, how can I trust you guys when I've had an iMac resurrected by simple routine maintenance. And the CleanMyMac people even showed up in the thread so I think I'll go ahead and give it a try. I'll let u know how it goes.

DO NOT DO THIS!

i have outlined to other users in this thread how to manually clean extraneous data out of a Mac and OS X.

I will reiterate my previous advice that I have posted in many threads here and you should heed.

DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!

Apps like MacKeeper, MacSweeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, SpeedUpMyMac, MacCleanse or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac.

Plus, these type of apps aren't really necessary OR needed. They really aren't.

There are manual methods to clear off unnecessary data off of your Mac that are safer and you have complete control over your Mac and not just leave a piece of auto cleaning software in charge of clearing off data off of your Mac. Their potential of causing OS X issues outweighs the implied good and benefits these types of hard drive or memory "cleaning" apps are written to do.

These types of system 'cleaning" apps are very poorly written and are really a scam to rob newbieand novice Mac users of their hard earned cash for a poorly written maintenance program that will do much more harm to a perfectly normal running OS X system than the good that the app developers purport these types of apps will do.

Plus, the software companies that write these apps make it hard to easily uninstall these apps if something DOES go wrong and these apps work in a way where you have no recovery or revert function to return your Mac back to its former, working state in the event something does go wrong.

It is best to never, EVER download and install these types of apps.

The risk to your system and important data is too great a risk!

See my above replies to Sabapete(who never, ever replied back) on how to properly clean data out of Mac's hard drive.

Hi MichelPM,

thx for the warnings but so far so good, bought two copies of CleanMyMac 3 and 2 copies of Gemini, altogether cost me $65. Ran it once. It deleted 7.5 gb's of old logs and cache etc. then I rebooted no problems. So far so good. Plus, I like the "large & old files" feature that shows where all my largest files are on my drive. It showed me I had a 36gb folder of video files on my desktop that I didn't need but never clicked on "get info" to see how big the folder files were.

Anyway, I understand your aversion to "SPEED UP YOUR PC!!!" type gimmicky software, I know there's endless spammy versions of PC software that claims to make a 1998 computer run like a brand new computer but CleanMyMac doesn't have the vibe of those spammy kinds of software it feels like well made set of tools with a nice clean Mac software look.

And like you said I could learn to manually do what it's doing but I would rather have a program do it for me.

But believe me if it does kill my iMac I'll be back on here in 2 seconds yelling for the rep that posted in this thread earlier.

That being said, I don't keep anything mission critical on my iMac hard drive. Plus, I've reinstalled endless copies of windows, and was a linux distro hopping addict for awhile so if worst case scenario OSx gets killed by an overly aggressive file deletion I'll just reinstall the os.

Also, I don't need to keep CleanMyMac installed, I just need to run it every six months or so, so if I notice it doing anything weird on a daily basis I'll just uninstall it till I need to do another cleaning with no fear of it doing any auto clean daily (which I don't think it does do any auto cleaning I think u do have to click and approve what it's deleting, granted in a general way it doesn't give u a log of every specific file it's deleting at least not as far as I can tell.)

Anyways, thx for looking out and believe me if I run into any problems with it I'll be posting here but in my limited time with it so far I like it.

And again, how odd that the person suggesting using Clean My Mac has no recommendations on the forum, while all the folks who are experienced users with lots of reputation all argue the opposite?

Plus, I like the "large & old files" feature that shows where all my largest files are on my drive. It showed me I had a 36gb folder of video files on my desktop that I didn't need but never clicked on "get info" to see how big the folder files were.

Grand Perspective is free and the Finder - where you can sort by size, you know - is already on your Mac.

but CleanMyMac doesn't have the vibe of those spammy kinds of software it feels like well made set of tools with a nice clean Mac software look

Well as long as it looks good then it can't possibly do any harm, right?

But believe me if it does kill my iMac I'll be back on here in 2 seconds yelling for the rep that posted in this thread earlier.

Please don't. They run their own "support" so deal directly with them.

U mad bro? what's with the tortitude.

And again, how odd that the person suggesting using Clean My Mac has no recommendations on the forum, while all the folks who are experienced users with lots of reputation all argue the opposite?

I haven't suggested anything, I said I came here to see if I should buy CleanMyMac or not, I haven't suggested it to anyone. I decided to buy it because most of the posts against it had a trollish attitude like yours that makes me think u have an ax to grind against software doing things you can do yourself. Well you're level ten on an apple tech support forum, maybe cleaning your system manually is in your wheelhouse. I run a small video production company. The less manual tech support I have to do to keep my computers running the better. And I don't have a presence on this forum because if I have a problem with my mac I call apple care. But decided to post today because I bought the software and so if somehow I get burnt by it as you're implying I will, well then I can help reinforce your point and post here and say "hey I'm the guy that posted here a few weeks ago, listen to the trolls I just fried my iMac." But so far that hasn't happened.

Grand Perspective is free and the Finder - where you can sort by size, you know - is already on your Mac.

I don't mind paying for software, that's how good things thrive. I tried for two years as a software idealist to create all my videos on free and open source software, blender, ffmpeg, and an endless attempt to use one of the 20 free editing programs that never quite worked. It was painful. And the bitter pill I had to eventually swallow was that paying for software makes it better.

Also, folders don't sort by size, even if they did I don't want to go through dozens of external drives going through hundreds of folders clicking sort by size.

Please don't. They run their own "support" so deal directly with them.

You start your post implying I'm some rogue agent of CleanMyMac and then you end your post saying if I have any problems using it not to post here.

Anyway, I'm glad I bought CleanMyMac if only because it introduced me to Gemini which is exactly the program I needed but didn't know existed. I've got a 20tb drobo that's full and I knew there was a tangled mess of duplicate files in there but never wanted to take the time to find the duplicates. Now I don't have to.

I decided to buy it because most of the posts against it had a trollish attitude like yours that makes me think u have an ax to grind against software doing things you can do yourself.

So you did' search for the many, many posts from folks whose Macs were trashed?

My post was for the benefit of others, people who come here to see if they should buy crapware like CleanMyMac. You've already bought it so hardly my target audience.

Your entire post - and purchasing decision - is based on a fallacy:

Well you're level ten on an apple tech support forum, maybe cleaning your system manually is in your wheelhouse. I run a small video production company. The less manual tech support I have to do to keep my computers running the better.

There is no need to "clean" your system. That's the point you're missing. It doesn't get "dirty". This app is created to extract money from the gullible for services that are unnecessary. Along the way, if not use carefully, it will also damage your system - and sometimes does, even if used carefully. As your Macs are mission critical you might want to bear that in mind.

The reason for not posting your issues back here is some: it's all been answered before: If CleanMyMac hoses your systems, then the solution is two fold: restore from your backups and then trash the App.