
It's an app that removes applications/plug-ins by checking the receipts and finding/removing associated preference files and application bundles. It's bad and will break things.Įdit: I don't put AppCleaner in the Mac Cleaning Software category. Tl dr: Don't install Mac Cleaning software. These apps push a narrative that they offer improvements on macOS, but the idea that a couple of dozen developers have stumbled on the secret way to make that experience even better is - while compelling - completely baseless.

They take OS design very, very seriously.

That aside, I'll give honorable mentions to Onyx (which isn't actively awful) and MalWareBytes (which does a decent job at finding and killing malware that's usually the result of the end user doing nuts and installing every sketchy application/warez/unsupported browser plug-in they can get their hands on).Īpple is a trillion dollar corporation that controls both the hardware and software of their products. I have, however, made a lot of money removing them and undoing the damage they've done when some bright spark decided to install them on a couple of thousand Macs and then watched performance nosedive, hit the ground, and then keep digging.

In that time I have never, ever seen one of these cleaning apps do anything remotely useful whatsoever.

The few that aren't straight bloatware trash just do the same basic set of maintenance tasks that macOS does all by itself - further, some of those tasks might look useful but are actually fabulously counter-intuitive and may actually degrade your performance.īona fides - I'm a full-time Apple Consultants Network member and have spent the last twenty-five-plus years professionally supporting macOS and Apple technologies in small-to-medium business environments.
