CleanMyMac X 4.6.2

I am wondering if I should add this program to my collection of utilities. Does anyone care to comment on their experiences with it?

Rarely needed as there are free ways to do just about everything it offers. Can be dangerous in the hands of novice users. May be useful to expert users as it provides simpler ways to accomplish a variety of features.

But in general terms, I never recommend the use of any such utilities as I don’t know enough about your computer skills and would not want to be responsible for inadvertent damage.

Al,
Thanks for your response — I just saw it today for some reason. It makes sense. I consider myself expert (I have a lot of Take Control books and I am good at copying error messages to Google) and have advised others not to use CleanMyMac but instead use Apple software (Disk Utility) to fix Apple computers whenever possible. I do have Disk Warrior and Data Rescue for times when Disk Utility can not solve an issue. But I myself have never tried CleanMyMac.

RE: CleanMyMac

I have used it for years with no ill effects.

It now has a list of apps that have available updates and can update some of them.

It has a clean uninstaller.

It has a virus and malware checker.

It can find big or old files taking up room on the HD and you get to decide what if anything to do with these.

And it cleans caches, logs, and other junk files, and empties the trash.

It does Apple recommend daily, weekly and monthly cleaning tasks

But you can control exactly what it will or won’t do if you don’t like their workflow.

It is an annual subscription.

I like it.

Thanks for the feedback. I will your points in mind.

I had a previous version but was trying the latest. All of a sudden one of my virus programs warned me of malware downloaded - checked it out in the quarantine location and it was a prefs for CleanMyMac X. Deleted the program, which was not a favorite of mine anyway. Besides, I’m not big into annual subscriptions for so many reasons. Using other free options instead.

Apple does not recommend those tasks, it accomplishes them automatically for all users as scheduled. But truth be told, the are almost worthless processes left over from it’s NeXT Unix days and most don’t actually do anything for the average user.

A Unix expert named Jeffery Jones provided a description which I’ve updated for Mojave

Here is what the daily scripts do:

110.clean-tmps Delete temporary files in /tmp that have not been accessed for at least 3 days. The most significant thing the daily scripts do (in Leopard) is delete temporary files (in /tmp) that have not been accessed in at least 3 days. But /tmp is cleared as part of the startup process, so there will never be anything to delete on a system that is restarted frequently. The periodic scripts are mostly for “long-lived” systems, i.e., systems that have been up continuously for weeks or months at a stretch.

130.clean-msgs Delete old system announcements. This is relevant only for multi-user Unix systems.

140.clean-rwho Delete stale rwho messages older than 7 days. This has to do with Unix networks, and is irrelevant for almost everyone.

400.status-disks Writes some disk status information in the daily.out log.
Disk status:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on

420.status-network Writes some system status information in the daily.out log.
Network interface status:
Name Mtu Network Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Coll

430.staus-rwho Writes a system status message (mainly system uptime) in the daily.out log. This is just reporting, not maintenance.
Local system status:
e.g. 7:40 up 1 day, 11:48, 5 users, load averages: 1.30 1.16 1.14

999.local Normally not used.

That’s it, unless you or your system administrator have defined some local tasks. Unless you are running a Unix cluster or regularly using your Mac as a fax machine – and shutting the machine down every night, without exception – there is nothing urgent in the daily scripts.

The weekly scripts update two databases, of interest only to Unix users. If you are not a Unix user there is never any reason to run weekly.

310.locate The locate database doesn’t exist unless the user has used a Terminal Command to have it built. It’s only useful to a Unix user.

320.whatis The whatis database is an index of Unix man pages. It only needs to be rebuilt if you have installed new Unix documentation. In that case, the logical time to rebuild whatis is as part of the installation process, rather than waiting for the next weekly run. Again, if you are not a Unix user, you do not need to rebuild this database at all.

999.local Normally not used.

The monthly scripts may do two things.

199.rotate-fax Recycle fax logs. If you do not use your Mac as a fax machine, it is never necessary to run monthly.

200.accounting Write some accounting information in the monthly.out log.
Doing login accounting:
total 972.73
user 972.65
root 0.08

999.local Normally not used.

Somewhere along the line someone applied the term “maintenance” to the periodic scripts, leading many to believe that they perform some crucial tasks. In fact, it is only minor housekeeping. And they really do run automatically if needed, and the housekeeping is more minor than ever.

I agree that most users should never have to care about them, but they’re not all irrelevant either. Especially the temporary files one:

On more recent versions of macOS, this also purges per-user and per-sandbox temporary file directories.

Yes, they are purged at system startup, but there are quite a lot of Macs out there that only reboot when Apple pushes out a system update. It is far more common these days to put the computer to sleep (e.g. by closing a laptop’s lid) than to actually perform a shutdown when you’re done using it.

Depending on what version of macOS you’re running, it might be quite a while between reboots. And if you’re running a version that’s no longer updated, it might be an extreme amount of time. (e.g. my Mac mini server running Sierra has an uptime of 273 days).

Not recommended or needed, IMHO. I’ve seen way too many problems caused by programs/utilities like this. If any of the people I support think they have a problem, I tell them to restart in safe mode, then restart in regular mode. If they still have a problem, call me. Never, ever use a ‘cleaning’ program on a Mac - this includes Onyx, the darling of the ‘clean caches’ crowd. Happily, I get few calls, and the ones I do get are usually a hard drive or router (several of these lately) going south. Today’s MacOS isn’t yesterday’s.

No, the daily process is run daily, just like the name says. It’s run by /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily every 86,400 seconds as long the computer is awake, and if your computer isn’t capable of waking at that time it should run as soon as you wake it.

I’m not convinced that this specific process is also responsible for purging those other temporary files, so perhaps those files are only purged at system startup.

To check to see when it ran and what it did, open /private/var/log/daily.out in a text editor.

I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t say people should manually run these scripts - as you said, they should run automatically unless there is a problem preventing the “periodic” scheduler from running them. I was simply saying that they aren’t “almost worthless” processes.

Regarding the scope of clean-tmps, you’re right. The default configuration only cleans up what’s in /tmp. There must be another mechanism for cleaning the per-user and per-sandbox temporary directories.