Mac clean up

Most long time posters recommend not using any cleaning or antivirus application because they can ruin your computer's normal operation.

It has been my experience with the Macs I have repaired for others that any and all so called "clean up" application cause far more harm then good. My recommendation is they are all to be avoided.

If you Mac is 'dirty' enough to need utilities you may be better of backing it up, erasing & reinstalling the OS.

You can move old user data back via Migration Assistant but it is best to reinstall apps that you need.

Post a little more info about the issues you are having & why you think it needs cleaning, many utilities are little more than snake oil that don't really help anything, others are just plain scams that need to be avoided.

Please recommend an Apple approved utility for cleaning out un-necessary files on a Mac.

macOS "Sierra" includes that feature. Read Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support.

Do not install any non-Apple product claiming to do that.

Excerpted from Effective defenses against malware and other threats:

Never install any product that claims to "clean up", "speed up", "optimize", "boost" or "accelerate" your Mac; to "wash" it, "tune" it, or to make it "shiny". Those claims are absurd.

• Such products are very aggressively marketed. They are all scams.
• They generally operate on the flawed premise that a Mac accumulates "junk" that needs to be routinely "cleaned out" for optimum performance.
• Trial versions of those programs are successful because they provide the instant gratification of greater free disk space.
• That increased space is the result of irreversible destruction of files, programs, or operating system components normally protected from inadvertent alteration or deletion. The eventual result will be unreliable operation, poor performance and random crashes that may not become evident for months or even years after their use, when updates to programs or OS X are eventually released.
• Memory "cleaners" that circumvent OS X's memory management algorithms work by purging inactive memory contents to mass storage, which can only result in degraded performance and accelerated hardware failure.

... these ‘Clean Up’ utilities do nothing.

It wouldn't be so bad if they did nothing. The problem with them is that they are destructive in nature. It's what they do and how they work.

They also capitalize on OS X upgrades, in that performing a Google search on a Mac will result in the delivery of targeted advertisements for various products alleging the need to "clean up" your Mac in preparation for that upgrade. The reason is that performing a Google search reveals the browser you are using and the Mac OS X version it is running, which Google uses to find advertisements they deem appropriate so they can target you for them. Those advertisements often imitate Apple's trade dress in blatant violation of state and federal law, leading Mac users to erroneously assume Apple has somehow approved or endorsed those products – or even that they are Apple's own.

If installing those products followed by the poor performance they will cause leads a user to conclude his Mac is somehow inadequate, too old, or just not worth fixing any more, and that user goes out to buy a new Mac, I suppose Apple won't mind either.

The unholy alliance of interest-based targeted advertisements for garbage products is very successful and extremely lucrative for all the parties involved in them. The only beneficiary missing from that perverted relationship is you.

Always do a full backup before a major upgrade.

If you want to start with a cleaner system, that is easy.

1) Make a full clone of your present drive, using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!

2) Erase the drive and do a clean install of Sierra

3) Use Migration Assistant to bring back only the user accounts and documents, not settings or applications.

4) Install only the applications you really use. The App Store makes this pretty painless.

Now it is nothing like the old days (having to fetch DVD that were stored somewhere you can't find, and enter a bunch of serial numbers, etc; hours or days to get everything working again...).