CleanMyMac is a utility for Mac OS X from MacPaw that helps keep your Mac running smoothly, and recovers disk space from your hard drive by removing files that you don’t need on your system. Being a Mac user for some time now, I’ve become accustomed to just dragging an application from my Application folder to the trash when I no longer want it on my MacBook Pro or Mac Mini.
However, unwanted files are always left behind which were used by whatever program is deleted, and these not only take up disk space, but can cause OS X to run slowly and get in the way of your productivity.
During my testing of CleanMyMac, it has become the most essential utility I’ve ever used on OS X, and does a great job of keeping my Mac in good shape. When you first open CleanMyMac, you may want to take a look at the various preferences which are available to you, which allow you to select which language translations you don’t need for your applications and enable options such as the automatic application uninstaller.
This launches CleanMyMac every time an app is dragged to the trash, ensuring that not only the application file, but also all files related to that application that you’ll no longer need once it’s gone, are deleted.
The first time I used the utility, it recovered 1.3GB of space on my hard drive by removing unnecessary files. I found the whole process to be extremely efficient and thorough – it even knows if you’re on an Intel machine and gives you the option to remove Universal Binaries which most applications are compiled in, providing legacy support for PowerPC machines as well as the newer Macs.
With this selected, unnecessary code is removed from these applications so that they have a lighter footprint on your system and free up space for other things. I was especially impressed with the Language Files management, which allows you to select only the languages that you need (I selected only English) and deletes all the other language translations associated with installed applications.
As well as being efficient and thorough when re-claiming disk space, I also found CleanMyMac to be exceptionally easy to use and cannot praise the developers highly enough for creating not only a great utility, but making it intuitive, simple to manage and flexible to the needs of the user. With only three buttons on top of the window: Scan, Preferences and Help, it’s impossible to get confused when navigating around and altering your settings like you find with similar utility applications.
There’s even an option to remove .DS_Store and .Spotlight-V100 folders, added by OS X to removable devices, upon the eject of a drive. This is especially great if you use a pen drive with both OS X and Windows, as these files are visible in the Windows Explorer and make it more annoying to navigate around the drive.
After spending some time using CleanMyMac, it’s not only a great utility but most probably the most indispensable application on my computer and well worth the $29.95 fee for a lifetime license (a 6 month license can be purchased for $14.95).