Our favorite Mac cleanup tips In the spirit of spring cleaning, here are our favorite tips for keeping our Macs tidy and organized. 4 Best Mac Cleaner. Best Mac Cleaner - MacClean 3. Price: $19.99 (Offers you “60-Days Money Back Guarantee”, you can ask a refund if you find it doesn’t work well. Get It Now) MacClean is the best Mac cleaner 2017 for all Mac desktops and laptops. It is mainly for Mac users who want to clean up and free up Mac hard drive with no effort. Give the area around your Mac, whether it's an iMac on your desk, or a Mac Pro under your desk, a good cleaning—there's probably dust and grime built up around it. Give your Mac the best care possible, with free Mac cleaner software to keep it free from junk, clean and optimize your operating system, hard drive and memory. With Mac cleaning software, you can get your Mac running at peak performance once again. Mac Cleaner Software by Movavi. Movavi Mac Cleaner is a handy and effective tool for OS X systems that will help you tidy up your MacBook, iMac or any other Apple computer.
Just switched to Mac, new to everything. I'm wondering what's the best app to use for cleaning registry and keeping Mac fast?
Welcome to the Mac world!
Well, unlike Windows operating system, macOS does NOT have (or use) Registry. Thus there is no registry cleaner on Macs. If you find one that claims it does, beware that the app is probably a scam.
As for apps to keep your Mac clean and fast, you can try MacPaw CleanMyMacSerial terminal app for mac. — an excellent disk cleaner utility that automatically detects unnecessary junks, and by removing them, you can free up a lot of disk space and increase system performance.
In case you are interested, here's some information you can familiarize yourself along your Mac journey.
Windows Registries vs Mac Preference Files
On a PC, the Registry is a database that saves relevant settings and preferences for Windows operating system and third-party programs you install. Microsoft strongly recommends its users backup the registry before making any changes to them. Over time, after a number of software installation and uninstallation processes, the registry may become broken or outdated. Typical symptom is that you see some error messages popping up when you try to access specific programs.
Mac OS X (also called macOS since Sierra) is based on Unix, which doesn't have or need a registry. Instead, all the rules or parameters of third-party apps you've installed are stored in Mac's Preference Files (in .plist format). You can easily find these preferences files within your apps' contents. Learn the complete story of Preferences Files from this CNET article. The similarity macOS Preference Files shares with Windows Registries is that those preferences can also become corrupted due to events such as application crash, hard drive corruption, or sudden blackout, etc.
What to do if system preference files are corrupted on Mac?
Just delete them!
Don't get me wrong, deleting preference files is the best solution to fix the problem and the action is totally harmless. Because anyway macOS itself will automatically create new preference files for the apps and make them operate correctly again.
So how to delete a problematic preference file?
The manual method is to find the file first, then drag it to the trash and emptying trash. On your desktop, click Go > Computer > (your username) > Library > Preferences, locate the right .plist file and delete it. Watch this video if you are unsure how to do.
Another way (yet a safer way) is to use this app CleanMyMac. Again, the Mac cleaning utility we mentioned above. Once you install it on your Mac, open the app > select System Junk > click the Scan button; Soon, it will detect a number of unneeded system data, including the broken or corrupted preference files. Hit Clean to remove them.
Quick Summary
There are no such registry cleaners for Mac, as OS X doesn't have registries as Windows does. Due to the way OS X manages system preference files associated with third-party apps, the preferences might become corrupted. But you can often fix the problem by simply deleting them.
We hope this has helped you out. Feel free to let us know if you have any further questions regarding the matter.
Andreas is an Apple and Microsoft fanboy who works with his Mac and lives with a PC at home. While he is not reading technology journals, you’ll probably find him playing online games with friends or hiking in the wild.
How to maintain a Mac
1. Make redundant backups, keeping at least one off site at all times. One backup is not enough. Don’t back up your backups; make them independent of each other. Don’t rely completely on any single backup method, such as Time Machine. If you get an indication that a backup has failed, don't ignore it.
2. Keep your software up to date. In the Software Update preference pane, you can configure automatic notifications of updates to OS X and other Mac App Store products. Some third-party applications from other sources have a similar feature, if you don’t mind letting them phone home. Otherwise you have to check yourself on a regular basis. This is especially important for complex software that modifies the operating system, such as device drivers. Before installing any Apple update, you must check that all such modifications that you use are compatible.
3. Don't install crapware, such as “themes,” 'haxies,' “add-ons,” “toolbars,” “enhancers,' “optimizers,” “accelerators,” “extenders,” “cleaners,” 'doctors,' 'tune-ups,' “defragmenters,” “firewalls,” 'barriers,' “guardians,” “defenders,” “protectors,” most “plugins,” commercial 'virus scanners,” 'disk tools,' or 'utilities.' With very few exceptions, this stuff is useless, or worse than useless.
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The more actively promoted the product, the more likely it is to be garbage. The most extreme example is the “MacKeeper” scam.
As a rule, the only software you should install is that which directly enables you to do the things you use a computer for — such as creating, communicating, and playing — and does not modify the way other software works. Use your computer; don't fuss with it.
Never install any third-party software unless you know how to uninstall it. Otherwise you may create problems that are very hard to solve.
The free anti-malware application ClamXav is not crap, and although it’s not routinely needed, it may be useful in some environments, such as a mixed Mac-Windows enterprise network.
4. Beware of trojans. A trojan is malicious software (“malware”) that the user is duped into installing voluntarily. Such attacks were rare on the Mac platform until sometime in 2011, but are now increasingly common, and increasingly dangerous.
There is some built-in protection against downloading malware, but you can’t rely on it — the attackers are always at least one day ahead of the defense. You can’t rely on third-party protection either. What you can rely on is common-sense awareness — not paranoia, which only makes you more vulnerable.
Never install software from an untrustworthy or unknown source. If in doubt, do some research. Any website that prompts you to install a “codec” or “plugin” that comes from the same site, or an unknown site, is untrustworthy. Software with a corporate brand, such as Adobe Flash Player, must be acquired directly from the developer. No intermediary is acceptable, and don’t trust links unless you know how to parse them. Any file that is automatically downloaded from a web page without your having requested it should go straight into the Trash. A website that claims you have a “virus,” or that anything else is wrong with your computer, is rogue.
In OS X 10.7.5 or later, downloaded applications and Installer packages that have not been digitally signed by a developer registered with Apple are blocked from loading by default. The block can be overridden, but think carefully before you do so.
Because of recurring security issues in Java, it’s best to disable it in your web browsers, if it’s installed. Few websites have Java content nowadays, so you won’t be missing much. This action is mandatory if you’re running any version of OS X older than 10.6.8 with the latest Java update. Note: Java has nothing to do with JavaScript, despite the similar names. Don't install Java unless you're sure you need it. Most users don't.
5. Don't fill up your boot volume. A common mistake is adding more and more large files to your home folder until you start to get warnings that you're out of space, which may be followed in short order by a boot failure. This is more prone to happen on the newer Macs that come with an internal SSD instead of the traditional hard drive. The drive can be very nearly full before you become aware of the problem. While it's not true that you should or must keep any particular percentage of space free, you should monitor your storage consumption and make sure you're not in immediate danger of using it up. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of free space on the startup volume for normal operation.
If storage space is running low, use a tool such as the free application OmniDiskSweeperto explore your volume and find out what's taking up the most space. Move rarely-used large files to secondary storage.
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6. Relax, don’t do it. Besides the above, no routine maintenance is necessary or beneficial for the vast majority of users; specifically not “cleaning caches,” “zapping the PRAM,” 'resetting the SMC,' “rebuilding the directory,” 'defragmenting the drive,' “running periodic scripts,” “dumping logs,” 'deleting temp files,' “scanning for viruses,” 'purging memory,' 'checking for bad blocks,' or “repairing permissions.” Such measures are either completely pointless or are useful only for solving problems, not for prevention.
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The very height of futility is running an expensive third-party application called “Disk Warrior” when nothing is wrong, or even when something is wrong and you have backups, which you must have. Disk Warrior is a data-salvage tool, not a maintenance tool, and you will never need it if your backups are adequate. Don’t waste money on it or anything like it.