What software can I buy to clean my Mac or run a system check?

The Sophos Antivirus for Mac is free and will keep you clear of viruses.

MainMenu is a cheap cleaner and utility app that you can configure to do many cleaning functions as a batch file, such as:

Secure erase free space on volumes owned by user

Find large files

Repair volumes owned by user

Clear user cache

Clean Dashboard cache

Archive Desktop

Clean browser cache

Clean browser history

Remove .DS_Store files

Remember clipboard history

Clear clipboard history

Free up memory

Rebuild Launch Services

Vacuum Apple Mail Index

Secure delete files

Force delete files

Remove .DS_Store files in folder

Show invisible files*

Disable download warning*

Change screenshot file format*

Disable screenshot window shadow*

Turn on screensaver

Quit all applications

Force quit and relaunch applications

Restart Wi-Fi

Relaunch Finder

Relaunch Dock

Relaunch System Menu Bar

These are the tasks that I run with MainMenu on a daily (at least) basis:

Finally, Onyxis a superb freeware utility that can do basically all the things that MainMenu can do, but without the convenient menu bar position and batch processing.

My best advice is to stay away from any and all cleaners. 99.99% certain that "cleaning" will not help, may damage or destroy files and may make things worse. There can be many reasons for slowdowns. I run Sophos, but in your situation it is not needed, since it is almost completely certain that what is happening has nothing to do with malware. That it is from malware is a common assumption made by Windows users, but not applicable to Macs. If anything an AV program will only slow things down more...or cause more problems. To get started, you should post an EtreCheck report.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Also read The Myth of the Dirty Mac

http://www.thesafemac.com/the-myth-of-the-dirty-mac/

You don't need to do any of that stuff in the last poster's screenshot, at least not regularly, and most of which is irrelevant.

Oh, and about the embedded links. Read The Safe Mac on Adware (not the same as malware.)

http://www.thesafemac.com/mac-adware-menace-continues/

http://www.thesafemac.com/art/

Pandabear@1977 wrote:

My Mac is running slow and has embedded links to other sites I don't want to go to.

Let me guess... they're all underlined green?

For an explanation and a possible solution read How to install adware

Do not search for or use anything that offers to "clean", "protect", or "shine" your Mac. All those products are scams.

"Cleaning" caches, logs, or similar actions are a waste of time.

To add,

Apps like MacKeeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, 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 newbie and 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!

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

You should never, EVER let a conputer 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 user, iMovie has its 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

Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php

When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.

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

Good Luck!

I must concur with those who replied not to use "supposed" cleanup software. Most of it does more harm then good. The same is true with AV software on a Mac.

I must say that I completely disagree with Skippy and his reply.

Allan

Three more suggestions:

(1) Repair permissions - you can use Disk Utility or Onyx or MainMenu to do this.

(2) Get an app like Disk Inventory X.app, which will show you large files that may be occupying your hard drive without your knowledge.

With regard to the suggestion of one of the other users here, that you do not need AntiVirus software on your Mac, use your head: Do you really want to rely upon someone's assurances rather than actual software designed to keep your Mac safe? Sophos has interrupted access to malicious content on my computer.

Neither MainMenu nor Onyx does anything that your operating system does not already do by itself.

• Clearing logs? They are supposed to be cleared. mac osx daily maintenance clears logs.
• Clearing caches? They are supposed to be cleared. Caches are temporary storage that frequently hold corrupted files that could be causing problems with running one of your apps.

The same goes with the other cleaning operations performed by Onyx and MainMenu.

Finally, (3) there are RAM-clearing apps -- which I predict a bunch of people in this thread are going to inveigh against -- like Memory Clean, which will clear your computer's memory. Normally, this is not necessary, because Mac manages memory pretty well; but if you use an app that gobbles up memory, e.g., Firefox, having the available RAM showing in your menu bar can alert you if it is happening, and you can either switch to a different app or close the app or else clear your memory.

EDIT: This was meant to be a reply to the original post.

I inadvertently posted my reply to a reply, rather than to your original post.

SkippyTheWonderLizard wrote:

... Sophos has interrupted access to malicious content on my computer.

Access to what malicious content, Skippy?

I think that the repair of permissions is highly over rated. Once upon a time back in the days of 10.2 and 10.3 there may have been some need for it but recently I have found it to be next to worthless.

Also the clearing of cache is another myth that is overly rated and used to much. The data in cache is keep there so that ti can be reached quicker then the original data and thereby speed up your computer. So if you clear cache you are in fact slowing your computer down until it is able to undo that.

On my Macs I think it has been well over three years since the last time I have done either of these.

As far as Memory Clean goes it is worthless. It in fact is doing the opposite of what memory management of Mavericks is doing so I say it is something to avoid.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Sophos since the last time anything happened, so my Quarantine Manager is empty.

How convenient.

I smell Troll...

Yes, it is certainly beginning to smell like that.

TThx for your clear list of what needs cleaning up, I'm working on my wife's MacBook, she's let it get completely full, so I'm trying to identify what I can move! I'm probably going to just install a new bigger HD and let her fill that up!

These are from the Sophos log:

com.sophos.intercheck: Info: Exclusion: /Volumes/OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro/ at 03:00 on 13 September 2014

com.sophos.intercheck: 2014-09-13 03:17:40 -0500 Threat: 'Mal/BredoZp-B' detected in /Users/xxxxxxxxxxxx/Documents/Apple Mail Archives/Sent 2012.mbox/Attachments/19887/2.2/Delta_A_Ticket_Print_Document_3528.zip

com.sophos.intercheck: Cleaned up threat

com.sophos.intercheck: 2014-09-13 03:19:43 -0500 Threat: 'Mal/Generic-L' detected in /Users/xxxxxxxxxx/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/installer.exe

com.sophos.intercheck: Cleaned up threat