Sep 20, 2016 Worry not, we have listed top 10 Mac optimization apps for your help. These are the best mac cleaning software that will allow you to remove all unwanted apps and files in no time. 10 Best Mac Cleaner and Optimizer 1. Disk Clean Pro: This is the best Mac cleaning software. It lets users clean out clutter on their Mac in a jiffy. Jump to Top 10 Disk Doctor - Here are the top 10 best Mac cleaner to optimize and maintenance your Mac hard drive, you can select the application you.
4:29 The only place I like seeing a beach ball is at a beach or in a stadium during a baseball game or concert. The one place I least like to see a beach ball is on my aging MacBook Pro, where the spinning beach ball has become an altogether too familiar a sight. If your Mac has become frustratingly slow, there are a number of ways you can speed it up again. Before you engage in any maintenance, I would urge you to take caution and back up your data. For Macs, it's easy: grab an external drive and run. With your Mac's drive freshly backed up, you may proceed.
Replace your Mac hard drive with an SSD Moving from a traditional spinning hard drive to a solid-state drive (SSD) is the single best thing you can do to improve the performance of an aging MacBook. Follow Sharon Profis's instructions on.
You'll be shocked at not only how easy it is to do but also at the huge impact it has on performance. Really, the hardest part of the whole thing was tracking down a size 6T torx-head screwdriver for the four torx screws that help hold the hard drive in place. Add more memory (RAM) While you have your MacBook opened to replace its hard drive, take the opportunity to add more memory. Like the replacing a hard drive, adding more memory is a straightforward, simple process. First, you need to find the right type of memory for your specific MacBook model.
The brand doesn't matter much, just be sure to buy the right amount, type, and speed. Apple has a handy that shows the memory specifications for a variety of models, along with an illustrated guide to replacing the memory. In my case, my early-2011 MacBook Pro has two DIMM slots, each of which is occupied by a 2GB module. Since I don't have any free slots, I will need to replace those two modules with two 4GB modules. I need DDR3 memory with a speed of 1,333MHz. After finding the right RAM for your MacBook, follow the photos below to install the new memory.
Clean your Mac's hard drive Sometimes, all your MacBook needs is a data clean-up. Over the years, you've probably cluttered your Mac with files and applications you no longer use or need. Uninstall old Mac apps To get started, let's look in the Applications and Downloads folders. If there are apps in there you can't remember installing, odds are you can live without them. Move them to the Trash to reclaim some hard-drive space. There are files associated with every application you install, however, and they are left behind when you simply move an application to the Trash.
Since Mac OS X doesn't have a built-in uninstaller, can uninstall apps and the related files. It's free for the first five zaps, after which you'll need to pay $12.95. Clean up applications you still use Next, let's clean up the applications you are keeping. When you install an app on your Mac, the piece of software arrives as part of a package of files, including permissions that tell OS X which users can do what things with specific files. Over time, these permissions can get changed, resulting in your Mac lagging, freezing or crashing.
Repairing these disk permissions, in the most basic terms, amounts to reshuffling and re-dealing these permissions so that they return to their rightful place. To address this, OS X has a built-in tool called Disk Utility that does just the trick. Read my previous post on for a step-by-step guide. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET Find out which apps are using the most resources If your Mac acts like it needs a nap every afternoon, when you are at the height of multitasking, there is an easy way to see which of your open applications is using the most system resources. Open the Activity Monitor. The numbers are constantly fluctuating, but they show you the amount of CPU and memory resources each app is using. After watching the Activity Monitor for a while this morning, I see that generally takes up more CPU resources and more than triple the memory resources.
Perhaps it's time for me to abandon Firefox and use Chrome exclusively. Also, I found that the sluggish iTunes isn't nearly the resource hog I thought it was. My apologies, iTunes. Delete big, unused files Now that you've paid some attention to your applications, it's time to look at the files cluttering your drive. You can use Finder to search for huge files. To do so, open Finder and select the volume you'd like to search. Next, choose File Find (or hit Command-F).
Click on the Kind pull-down menu and select Other. When the Select a search attribute window opens, check the box for File Size, uncheck any other boxes, and click OK. Change the 'equals' pull-down menu option to 'is greater than' and then change KB to MB. Enter a minimum files file size such as, say, 100MB. You can then delete any files that show up on the list that you no longer need - or move them to an external drive at the very least. Reduce login items If your Mac is slow to boot up, the problem may be that there are too applications to open at startup.
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It's likely you never set them to launch at startup - they launch by default. Go to System Preferences Users & Groups and then click on the Login Items tab to see a list of the apps that open when you boot your Mac.
Highlight the apps you don't want to open at startup and click the minus-sign button below the list of apps. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET 5. Keep current with OS X Apple releases new versions of OS X as free upgrades, so there is no reason not to stay current. New versions of OS X contain performance enhancements and security improvements to keep your Mac running smoothly and safely.
Spring comes with its own rituals. Here at Macworld, we like to throw open the windows, beat the dust out of the rugs, and straighten up our Mac desktops. Don’t stop at cleaning your home this season.
Clean up your Mac. If you're using macOS Sierra, it has a feature that will help tremendously with your Spring cleaning: Optimize Storage. You can use Optimize Storage to activate the Store in iCloud option, remove iTunes videos you've watched (they can be re-downloaded), set it to empty the Trash automatically, reduce clutter caused by large files and downloads, and a lot more. Optimize Storage is especially handy if you're using a Mac laptop with flash storage. You usually don't get the same amount of space as you would with a hard drive, so managing your space becomes more important. Beside Optimize Storage, there are other way to keep your Mac digitally clean. These tips from our editors will help you keep your Mac fresh and organized, whether you're using macOS Sierra or an older version of OS X.
Tidy up your desktop Light Pillar Software Light Pillar’s wonderful app ($8; available on the; requires OS X 10.8 or later) is a handy utility that cleans up your Mac’s desktop, keeping it free of clutter. It stores all desktop files and folders in a hidden Shadow Desktop, which you can access from the menu bar or in the Finder. That way, every file I download, each screenshot I capture, and every image I drag and drop to my desktop is stored and filed in an easy-to-reach location.
The utility quietly works its magic at scheduled intervals—as often as every minute or as infrequently as every seven days. It even organizes desktop items by file type, which makes finding and renaming files easy. —Leah Yamshon ( ) Delete unnecessary disk images For most people, the Downloads folder is a dumping ground where files pile up in forgotten heaps. Go to the Downloads folder in the Finder and type disk image into the search box. Select Disk Image under the Kinds header. Now, delete all of those downloaded DMG files that are just taking up space!
—Jason Snell IDG Find all those leftover disk images in your Downloads folder and clean them out In macOS Sierra, there's another way to delete disk images. Go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac, then select Storage and click on the Manage button. In the Reduce Clutter section, click on the Review Files button. In the main window, click on Downloads and the click on the Kind header to sort by that particular type. To delete a disk image. Click on it, and then click on the X button that appears. Empty out space-hogging Mail Downloads I get quite a few attachments via email—PDFs, ePub ebooks, Word documents, images, you name it.
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Most of the time I save those files to my desktop or my Downloads folder, but on occasion I make the mistake of double-clicking a file. When you do that, the document saves itself to your Mail Downloads folder, hidden away in your Library file.
Double-click enough files, and that folder can balloon in size. That’s why I make sure to check it and empty it every year or so. The easiest way I find to do this is to use Spotlight—press Command-Space to see a search field appear—and then type Mail Downloads. In the Folders section, you should see the Mail Downloads Data folder.
If this isn’t working for you, try getting to it the long way. In the Finder, select Go Go to Folder. Type /Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads in the text field. Click Go, and a Finder window will open showing the Mail Downloads folder. IDG With a few stray clicks, the Mail Downloads folder can balloon in size, holding megabytes' worth of files you didn't even know were there. Once you get to the folder, you can select all files and delete, or rescue the few files you want to keep awhile in a more permanent location—say, the regular old Downloads folder. —Serenity Caldwell Keep a clean cache We’ve all heard “Empty your cache” as a web browser troubleshooting tip.
As it turns out, a Mac stores a lot of information—not just browser-related details—in files called caches, allowing quick access to that data and reducing the need to fetch it from the original source again. Unfortunately, that information can sometimes become corrupted, or otherwise problematic. For example, you might end up looking at old data instead of the most current version of a website, or you may notice that a file’s icon doesn’t look quite right in the Finder. Maintain Maintain’s Cocktail utility can clear out your caches and perform a bunch of other maintenance tasks. Although you can manually go in and find some of OS X’s most commonly used cache directories ( /Library/Caches is a good place to start), plenty of tools will handle this job for you., from Maintain, is among the longest-running and best of these.
Not only can it clear your caches, but it can also perform assorted other maintenance tasks, such as deleting your browser’s cookies, looking for corrupted preference files, rebuilding certain databases, and way more. You can download it and use it for free for up to ten launches, but at $19, it’s a pretty good buy. —Dan Moren Purge unwanted apps Kumaran Vijayan Kumaran Vijayan’s AppTrap rounds up all the files associated with an app, so you can delete everything. As someone who reviews products for Macworld, I regularly try new apps and then delete them.
For the most part, you can drag an app from the Applications folder to the Trash, but often an app creates folders and files outside of the app package and in various locations on the drive, which makes those files and folders difficult to find and toss out. For this reason, I use, a free utility that installs as a System Preference pane and runs in the background. When you Trash an app, AppTrap finds all the associated files and folders and moves them to the Trash—there’s no need for you to find those files on your hard drive yourself. Sometimes, however, when your Mac is updating an app, you want to keep the associated files but discard the old app; AppTrap will ask if you want to leave the files (which you want to do) or move them to the Trash.
You can find other, just-as-capable utilities that do the same thing, but I’ve used AppTrap for years, and it has never given me problems or affected my Mac’s performance. In macOS Sierra, you can also remove apps through the Optimize Storage feature. In the Apple menu, select About This Mac.
Select Storage and click on the Manage button. In the left section, select Applications.
The main section of the window will show a list of your applications. Select the app you want to remove, and then click on the X button to remove it. One caveat with this method: Only apps downloaded from the App Store will have all its components removed. If you got an app outside of the App Store and use this method to uninstall it, all the components may not be removed. Under the Kind header, you can see if an app was from the App Store or not.
—Roman Loyola IDG In macOS Sierra, the Optimize Storage feature can be used to delete apps from the App Store that you new longer use Disinfect your grubby keyboard Choose an Apple-approved wipe, or just clean your keys gently with something alcohol-based. My ergonomic keyboard accumulates so much dust and crumbs that occasionally I have to turn it upside down and shake it just to get the keys to work.
But a thorough cleaning, even just once a year, can knock away the grime and germs. Unplug your keyboard or, if it is wireless, remove its batteries. If you’re cleaning a laptop, shut it down and unplug it.
Blow the dust out from between the keys with a can of compressed air. To finish the job, all you need is a package of disinfecting wipes. Apple recommends by brand name. The basic idea, however, is to wipe your keys gently with something alcohol-based. (Before you use a wipe, squeeze out any excess liquid.) As tempting as it might be when you’re feeling germophobic, do not use wipes with bleach, or spray everything with Lysol; you might damage the keyboard. —Scholle Sawyer McFarland Editor’s note: This article originally posted on March 21, 2013. It has been updated to reflect the current version of macOS Sierra.