What do you think of CleanMyMacX?

[Brian K. Mitchell]

Recently I have seen a lot of short commercials on Youtube about an app called CleanMyMac X.

I am curious if anyone here uses it or an alternative to it?

[dandennison]

In general I recommend against third-party utilities that claim to clean, speed up, or improve your computer experience.

[Chun Kit Chris Wong]

May you tell us why?

[dandennison]

For PCs, this general Medium blog post describes the situation: https://medium.com/level-up-web/why-pc-cleaning-software-is-a-scam-and-how-to-actually-clean-your-pc-7a60fc5fa822

 

Searching around yields this specific thread for CMMX:

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by dandennison

[Brian K. Mitchell]

@dandennison thank your the reddit link! I found it to be rather entertaining. Most of what people had to say about CleanMyMac X on that reddit thread both those who used it and who didn't use it appeared to be rather emotional. But, one thing I can gather from that Reddit thread is that those who are techies do not need ClearnMyMac and that those who are not find it helpful.   

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I agree with @dandennison. I haven't tried CleanMyMac, but I've tried other utilities, and usually they've cased more headache than resolved any issues.

 

I generally manually cleanup old files after I remove an app off my Mac, as well as just leverage Apple's built-in maintenance scripts. So far so good.

[Lawrence]

@Brian K. Mitchell

 

I took a quick look at the review on PC Mag's website - <https://au.pcmag.com/antivirus/91831/cleanmymac>. I use a PC platform at the moment, though I've used Macs extensively in the past. Here's my opinion based on that review.

 

It appears to delete three categories of things:

1. System Junk (no further detail in the review).

2. Portions of programs (Intel binaries on Apple silicon and vice versa).

3. User data - trash, downloads, temporary files.

 

On #1, consider the scenario of installing CMMX just before Sonoma arrived. Would you trust it to delete stuff that it deems to be 'system junk'? I'm not confident that any software can know for sure that a piece of code is junk - especially with ongoing system updates and upgrades.

 

On #2, this is probably ok. But messing with an app package can be dangerous. Browsers that try to 'clean' downloads by deleting bits of them isn't quite the same thing, but it is pretty close, and it left Accordance 13 in a very buggy state for me when I first tried Accordance.

 

On #3, these are things that you're better off deleting as you go.

• Emptying the trash is simple to do yourself.
• Downloads might be needed later ("Honey, where are the recipes I downloaded two weeks ago?" "They're not in your download folder? Maybe the computer ate them.").
• Temporary files are there for a reason. There was a thread recently on these forums asking for more extensive auto-backups. Auto-backups are usually done in temporary files (at least, that's how Microsoft does it). It would be unwise to install an app that automatically sweeps them up and throws them away - the files might be only temporary, but you might still need them.
• Mail attachments aren't always "unnecessary", and they don't stay on the server forever. So it can be risky to delete them.

There are other features, but the above is enough for me to not like it.

What's worse is that in order to do its job, CMMX needs to have permission to view your files. In our connected world, this means that it's possible for CMMX to scan your files, find sensitive information, and send it across the internet to malicious agents. Now, just because it can doesn't mean it would, but it's a risk. Some risks are worthwhile (e.g. the OS can see all your data and your passwords as you enter them, but you take the risk because you want to use the computer). With CMMX, the promised trade-off is that you get extra space on your drive and maybe use your RAM somewhat more efficiently etc. Storage is fairly easy to expand these days, and computers often come with more memory than needed. By the time you're really bumping into system limits, it's probably time to get a new computer.

 

PC Mag is only one review, but the categories of things that it touched on with CMMX sound legitimate. You'll need to decide based on your own usage patterns, but looking at those categories as outlined above, the potential hassle from lost data etc isn't worth the potential benefit for me.

[Brian K. Mitchell]

@Lawrence thank you for your very informative and detailed post! It helped me finally make up my mind on the issue. I just deleted the CMMX form my MacBook.

[Rick55]

If you would like to fully uninstall an app or program off your computer;

the best way to completely remove the program and all related files you would do the following: (please find attachment) 

 

Select all and delete 

[Brian K. Mitchell]

@Rick55 that is a useful tip! Thank you for sharing!

[A. Smith]

I use it regularly and recommend it. Techie or not, it does some things much simpler than I would do manually. It's quick and convenient. Yes. You've got to monitor what it's doing and pay attention before letting it clean your hard drive. But that's just good sense anyway. 

[Brian K. Mitchell]

1 hour ago, A. Smith said:

I use it regularly and recommend it. Techie or not, it does some things much simpler than I would do manually. It's quick and convenient.

@A. Smith thank you for your comments. It is good to get an alternative opinion.

I am new to MacOS so there are a lot of things I do not know how to do and I found the app helpful because it did a touch of button what is going to take me a while to figure out now that I have deleted it. I thought it was a pleasant app to look at, but some of the issues about the app people raised on this thread are a little concerning. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

AppCleaner is a good way to remove files when removing an app. It's free and basically does the same job as if you're manually deleing the files themselves. Way safer than a system optimizer app.

[Brian K. Mitchell]

@Nathan Parker thank for the tip and the recommendation!

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

My office uses PCMatic for our antivirus solution (billed through Cyber Team US). It seems to do some light system optimizing on all my devices (Mac and Windows) without any issues. My office mainly uses it since we needed the "whitelist" security feature.

[dandennison]

The real solution for malware and unwanted software is whitelisting. My organization has used an earlier version of https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Carbon-Black-App-Control/index.html for this purpose. It's definitely overkill for end users, but the idea is sound. If you don't pre-approve which apps can run, your computer will run anything.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

True. I've had good luck with whitelisting here once I was able to control the whitelist adding the custom apps I've needed. 

[Brian K. Mitchell]

On 11/5/2023 at 10:56 PM, A. Smith said:

I use it regularly and recommend it. Techie or not, it does some things much simpler than I would do manually. It's quick and convenient.

@A. Smith your comments sound very much like those at the company I work at who encouraged me to try Clean My Mac X. And, I agree this application offers one convent place to automate a number of different tasks. And, it gets things done far more quickly than I can doing everything manually. 

[Brian K. Mitchell]

On 11/5/2023 at 5:07 AM, Dr. Nathan Parker said:

as well as just leverage Apple's built-in maintenance scripts

What are "maintenance scripts"?

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

13 hours ago, Brian K. Mitchell said:

What are "maintenance scripts"?

 

It's a built-in feature on Macs you usually don't see. Apple runs automatic maintenance of your Mac at a time you're not using it.

 

You can manually trigger it with Terminal or an app like OnyX, but I usually just let Apple handle it for me.