CCleaner - Free junk file cleaner. CCleaner is one free and top Mac cleaner to delete cookies, search.
Clean your Mac of old clutter. Clear up your recycle bin, temporary files and folders, broken permissions and more. Remove installed programs with the click of a button. Advertisers and websites track your behavior online with cookies that stay on your computer. CCleaner erases your browser search history and cookies so any.
by Anna SherryUpdated on 2020-09-07 / Update for Mac OS
What is the best free Mac cleaner? It is a question often asked by users who have been using a Mac for quite a long time and are looking for a utility to clean their system up. If you also find your Mac's performance to be sluggish, cleaning it up with a good Mac cleaner will resolve your issue and let you get the most performance out of your sturdy Mac machine.
If you perform a quick search on Google for best Mac cleaner free, you will come across dozens of apps to choose from. However, you should be cautious that not all of those apps do what they claim to be doing. Many of those advertise features like they clean up your entire system in a single-click or so but that is often not the case.
To help you out, we have put together this guide that tells you about some of the best apps you can use to clean up your Mac.
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Part 1. What You Should Consider When Choose a Mac Cleaner
When you choose a cleaner app for your Mac, there are a few things you should keep in your mind. These things are actually the criteria that defines whether an app is worth obtaining for your Mac machine.
1. Efficiency
The first thing that a good cleaner should have is efficiency. Here are some aspects you should consider.
Does this app launch automatically on startup?
Does it let you schedule automatic maintenance?
How deep is the scan?
Can you review the items before deleting them?
Can you exclude any items from scan results?
Does it support the new Apple File System (APFS)?
2. Safety
Another thing to look for in a Mac cleaner is how safe it is to use it. You must make sure it does not corrupt your hard drive and also does not steal any of your information from your Mac.
Does this app corrupt your Mac's hard drive?
Does this app steal your personal information?
If the app you are considering does not meet this requirement, you should let it go and move onto a better one.
3. Price
The third criteria to look for is the price of the app. It could be a free app that you are looking at but does it really do what it should do?
Is this app free?
Is this app worth the cost?
Sometimes it is worth spending money on a good cleaner app but again the cleaner must meet the above criteria or you end-up losing your money.
Part 2. Top 5 Free Cleaner for Mac - 2019
If you have not been able to find an app that fits into the above criteria, the following list of some of the best free cleaner for Mac should help you out. It lists out some of the good cleaners you can use to clean junk stuff on your Mac machine.
1. Dr. Cleaner
When it comes to cleaning Mac machines, Dr. Cleaner is a great choice. It comes with a number of features including the cleanup feature that allows you to get rid of unwanted items from your Mac easily.
Be able to optimize memory, clean Disk and monitor System
View real-time network usage and CPU usage in the menu bar
1-click to reclaim memory from closed Apps
Clean temporary files, incl. logs, mail caches, iTunes and iOS temporary files, etc.
1-click scan of big files (customizable size from 10 MB and above)
Keep your Mac optimized for the best performance
2. CCleaner
CCleaner has been in the market for quite a long time and it has helped numerous users clean their Mac of any junk and unwanted files. It works on both Mac as well as Windows PCs.
1 click to remove junk and unused files.
Clear up your recycle bin, temporary files and folders, broken permissions and more.
Erass your browser search history and cookies
Customise what you want cleaned and choose which cookies to keep or delete.
Real-time Monitoring
3. MacClean 3
MacClean 3 is preferred by the users who want a straightforward and an easy way to get rid of unwanted files from their Macs. This app lets you do just that without any hassle.
Completely remove all unused, developer-oriented, and extraneous junks out of your Mac
Clear up aches, cookies and session files to protect from online privacy threats.
Erase your trace of recently opened apps, documents, file folders and web servers you have been connected with.
keep your Mac away from Malware, Trojan, Spyware, Worms, Scareware, AdWare and viruses.
Easy to use.
4. OnyX
In addition to being one of the best free Mac disk cleaner, OnyX lets you perform many other tasks as well on your Mac machine.
Verify the structure of the file system on the start-up volume
Repair disk permissions
Configure certain parameters hidden from the system and from certain applications
Delete system cache files, large log files and erase trash or specific files securely.
Let you automate routine tasks you may use Onyx for
Easy access to many hidden Mac features
5. AppCleaner
AppCleaner is actually an app uninstaller for Mac machines. It lets you list out your installed apps and then helps you remove the apps you do not want along with their associated files from your Mac.
Uninstall an app along with all of its associated files
Remove such app-related junk as Caches, Logs, Diagnostic reports, Libraries.
SmartDelete option, which works when you simply drag the application to Trash
Offers advanced preferences that safeguards important apps from accidental deletion
Simple to install and use
Bonus Tips: The Best Mac Data Recovery Software 2019
While most cleaning apps ensure they do not delete your important files, some of them do end-up deleting the files that you wanted to keep. If this has happened to you, you might want to use a data recovery software to recover your files.
Enter Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery, the only software that you will need to recover any kind of files from your Mac. It supports a number of file formats and provides a quick and easy way to restore your files.
Step 1 Download and launch the software on your Mac. Select your hard drive and click on Scan.
Step 2 Preview your files, select the ones you want to recover, and click on Recover.
Step 3 Select a folder to save your recovered files in
That is all you need to do to recover your lost files.
Sum Up
If you are wondering what is the best free Mac cleaner, the above post offers some of the best ones you can use to clean your Mac of any junk stuff with minimum efforts. We hope it helps you out.
So you’ve had your Mac for a while, and things don’t feel as fresh and clean as they used to? Although Macs don’t require a lot of maintenance for cleaning, those temporary files, app leftovers, and system cache do accumulate. These files may slow down your machine and take up a lot of valuable space. In this article, we share quick and easy ways to clean up your MacBook. Let’s get started!
How to clean your Mac automatically
Here’s a simple diagram to explain the most common types of computer junk, sorted by size. Some of these, like Trash bin files, are easily reachable, while others are stored away in hidden system folders. Sadly, there’s no easy way to clear them up without special skills.
If you don’t feel like spending the next several hours cleaning your Mac manually, you can use a powerful cleaning tool CleanMyMac X to find and remove all the clutter your Mac contains. It knows which files are useless, how to find them and remove completely. CleanMyMac has everything to finish the 3-hour task of a Mac cleanup in under 5 minutes. It will even clean up the junk you didn’t know about and give your computer a speed boost.
How to clean up system storage on Mac with CleanMyMac X:
Download CleanMyMac X for free here.
Run the app and go to System Junk.
Click Scan.
Press Clean to get rid of all junk.
Done! Now your Mac looks much better!
How to Clean Mac Hard Drive Manually
If you never performed an automatic or manual system cleaning — it means that your Mac has been collecting unnecessary files and clutter for years. You can quickly clean up your Mac with these easy steps.
1. Clean up cache
You’ve probably heard “Remove your cache” as a web browser troubleshooting tip. In fact, your Mac stores a lot of information in files called caches, allowing fast access to that data and reducing the need to get it from the original source again. Unfortunately, those files take a lot of space on your Mac, and instead of speeding the things up, they slow your computer down. Therefore, if you want to give your system a boost, clean your Mac from the cache files.
There are two ways to do that: you can delete them manually or use a MacBook cleaner like CleanMyMac X to do the job for you. Of course, the second way is an easy and fast one. However, if you decide to clean up the cache manually, check out a comprehensive guide on “How to Clear Cache on a Mac.”
2. Uninstall apps you don’t use
The applications you’ve installed on your Mac take up space, of course. And over time when your Mac becomes full of different apps, it may start running slowly. How to clean MacBook? In the first place, you need to remove the apps you no longer use or need. To do this, right-click on the app you want to remove and choose Move to Bin.
You may be surprised to find out that sending an app to the Trash will not uninstall it completely because the app leftovers still remain on your Mac taking up a lot of storage. So, if you want to be a responsible Mac user, you need to uninstall applications the right way. Here’s a step-by-step guide on “How to Uninstall Apps on a Mac.”
Extra step: Trim down your login items
Login items are applications that run automatically upon startup. Nowadays, every second app tries to become as prominent as possible and get into your Login Items. First of all, you may not even know what they are (not all of them appear in the Dock). Secondly, such apps consume memory. That's enough reasons to get rid of extra login items you don't need.
Open System Preferences.
Go to Users & Groups.
Choose your nickname on the left.
Choose the Login Items tab.
Check startup programs you want to remove.
Press the “–” sign below.
You’re done.
3. Clean out useless duplicates
Identical photos, music tracks you’ve added one time too many, saved and re-saved PDF files… all of that sits on your Mac and gobbles up storage. The storage that could be used for better purposes.
So how do you quickly weed them out? The fastest way is to use Gemini 2: The Duplicate Cleaner.
Download and launch the app
Click “Scan for Duplicates”, and watch as it quickly fetches them from different corners of your Mac.
Once the scan is done, hit Review Results and check which copies you want to remove.
Click Smart Cleanup to delete everything you’ve selected.
That's it. Now your Mac should be completely duplicate-free.
4. Empty the trash
Even though you’ve deleted the files, they reside in your Trash bin taking up a lot of storage on your Mac. They are just waiting to be removed completely. If you want your precious hard drive space back, you need to empty the Trash.
Here’s how to clean your MacBook from the trash:
Click and hold on the Trash can icon in the Dock.
Click Empty and then Empty Bin.
The process is quite simple, right? There is even a more effortless way to clear Trash. CleanMyMac X scans your Mac for junk and lets you remove all trashed files. To do that, launch CleanMyMac X and press Scan. When the scan is completed, click Review Details to see what exactly CleanMyMac X has found.
I’ve already cleaned Bin a couple of weeks before, but over some time, almost a gigabyte of trashed files has accumulated. Now, I can simply click Back to Summary and then Run to clean Trash and system junk.
5. Reduce clutter
Apple has already thought about the clutter that can be generated on the Macs and provided a possible solution. Here’s how to reduce clutter on your Mac:
Go to the Apple menu.
Choose About This Mac and then Storage. Here you can see how much free space is left on your computer.
Then click Manage.
Here’re some recommendations for saving space on your Mac. You can choose Review Files to examine apps, documents, and other files that are stored on your Mac.
You can choose any file in every category (Applications, Bin, Documents, etc.) and click Delete to remove it and optimize space. Look through other recommendations and make the necessary changes to use your Mac’s space more efficiently.
6. Delete large and old files
It has always been a rule of thumb among computer geeks, that you should keep a minimum of 15-20% of free space on your main hard drive. This is just a rough estimation, but the more free space you have, the faster your Mac works. A computer magazine once performed a test on this, which concluded that the difference in speed can reach as much as 35%. If you work with heavy graphics or video rendering, even more free space is recommended.
How to have more free space? Delete large and old files.
The first way is totally manual and requires you to find them one by one, while for the second way, you just need to make two clicks and CleanMyMac X will do the job for you.
How to clean up Mac with CleanMyMac X:
Download CleanMyMac X (a link to a free edition of the app)
Launch the program.
Go to the Large and Old Files section on the menu.
Click Scan.
Review the details, select what to clean and then click Clean.
That’s it!
7. Remove old iOS backups
Having your files backed up is a wonderful thing. But over time your Mac becomes overloaded with old backups that take gigabytes of storage on your hard drive. That’s why you should consider removing the old iOS backups you no longer need.
Each backup remains stored on your computer and is accessible via iTunes. To delete the old backups, you need to do the following:
Choose the Apple menu and then select About This Mac.
Go to the Storage tab and click Manage.
Here, choose iOS Files.
Select the backup you want to remove and click Delete.
Confirm and you’re done!
That’s it! The backup files are gone from your Mac forever.
8. Wipe out Language files
Unused language localizations take up about 1 GB of storage space. Mac applications come with language files for every language they support. It allows starting using the app in that language immediately. Cool, right? Not always. Just consider: when was the last time you used the app in Bengali or Korean? Since you don’t speak those languages, such files just waste space on your Mac. You need to remove the unnecessary language files and clean MacBook from that clutter.
How to delete the language files? Go to Finder > Applications, then right-click the app which language files you want to remove and choose Show Package Contents. Open the Resources folder and then find folders ending with “.lproj.” Every folder contains language files for one particular language. Note that for every app you should manually find and select the files to remove. But there is an automatic way to delete the language files that will save you tons of time — CleanMyMac X. Just download the application (for free) and it will do the job for you.
9. Delete old DMGs
Disk images (DMGs) often take up valuable space on your Mac. Here’s how to perform a Mac cleanup and get rid of those files:
Open Finder and type “disk image” in the search bar.
Then delete all files that have .dmg extensions. Don’t forget to remove them from Trash as well.
CleanMyMac X allows you to locate and delete DMGs quicker. With its System Junk module you can remove unused disk image in the single click of a button:
Just press Clean and it’s done!
10. Remove duplicates
Useless copies of your documents, files, and photos eat up your Mac’s precious space. Therefore, if you wonder how to clean up a Mac and boost its performance, try to delete the duplicates. Note that the process of finding and removing the duplicates requires either a lot of patience and time (if you decide to delete them manually) or a duplicate finder app. Whatever method you choose, make sure to check out this article on “How to Find Duplicates on Mac.”
11. Tidy up your desktop
Many people use Desktop as their primary destination for files. But this could be tricky because your OS treats every file on a desktop as an active window. When items on your desktop are too many, Finder gets substantially slower. This leads us to the most compelling advice in this article — cleaning up desktop does miracles!
Rather than just leaving every file on your desktop, organize them into folders. The latest macOS does that automatically thanks to the Stacks feature. You can also use Google Drive, Dropbox or any external storage device to save your files and keep your desktop tidy.
12. Clean your Mac’s keyboard
Our last but not least advice is to wipe your Mac’s keyboard. As you use your keyboard daily, it quickly gets dirty. Moreover, all those crumbs may live under the keys forever!
Registry Cleaner For Mac
If you were wondering how to clean Mac’s keyboard, there are no special rules here. You can try blowing the dust and other particles out of your keyboard once in a while. Disinfecting wipes and alcohol-based sprays may also prove useful. Just choose the piece of fabric and wipe the keys gently to make them clean and shiny!
All in all, be careful with your system files. Don’t delete things you’re not sure about. If you are not completely confident that you can manage the task by yourself, better use a dedicated utility like CleanMyMac X to get a fresh and clean Mac in just two clicks. Here's the video describing quick tips to clean up your Mac: