Our review today is of CleanMyMac or Clean My Mac is basically ONYX for mac, but you have to pay $29.95 for it. (Short summery: We highly recommend the free, ONYX for Leopard or Snow Leopard, its the one we all use)
Claiming to be a clever piece of software designed to be an “all-in-one-suite utility that helps keep your Mac clean and healthy”. We’re going to give it a review today, starting first with a test. Its going to be tasked to clean my iMac.
Now, I’m not really a messy person, but my iMac’s file structure could be more organized. It doesn’t run slow (2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM) or anything, so we’ll see what it’s like after a quick wash with clean my mac.
Download & Install
First off, the download is quick. The app’s footprint is around 15MB. Even the most “spatially challenged” hard drive can squeeze this app on. Install is as usual with any mac app, just drag it over to your applications folder and ping, its done. I boot up the app.
Here’s what my machine looks like before Scanning:
I hit scan. It takes around 3 minutes.
The app managed to find 11GB extra space. Where it found it I have no idea. Well, actually I do. The interface tells me it found 7.5GB from caches, and 3.9GB from Universal Binaries. I do the scan again just to double check.
It comes out the same again. That’s amazing. This mac is only around a year old, it gets used everyday as my work machine, so its had a lot of use, but still that’s a lot to find. The app would no doubt have saved me more, as I deleted the surplus language files last year and saved a few GB’s from the unneeded files.
Here we are mid clean.
I can only imagine the amount it would save on a mac that’s a few years old, it would be a size able chunk to say the least.
Now I’ve scanned for the extra files, I can hit remove in the lower right corner, and everything’s removed. Before the install of CleanMyMac I had 117GB free, now I have 128.60GB. That’s really cool. It’s spurred me on to do a bit of spring cleaning around my computer in general.
After I cleaned my mac though, my mac was having some serious problems, programs did not launch, and lots of other problems.
Overall then, I am a bit hesitant to buy this Software, as you have to re-buy it after only 6 months. I would recommend looking at the original, and well used/tested ONYX for mac.
Download the original free (and the software everyone here at Apple Reviews uses) ONYX for Leopard or Snow Leopard
Keep your eyes out for our upcoming review of ONYX for Snow Leopard! If you have any questions please feel free to email us.
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Neil November 19, 2009
Thing is though, you CANT purchase the software … just a yearly license!
Sorry, but I dont want to pay a yearly subscription for a piece of software, especially not this type of app!
Justin November 19, 2009
Hi Neil, Totally agree with you. Onyx is a much better and secure option.
cantubury December 31, 2009
will the company be in business “forever”. hi tech companies come and go and we have no guarantee that they will be around. I cant pay the price, not because I dont trust this particular company, but no one can guarantee business immortality.
Gatsu January 4, 2010
What scares me is that it touches universal binaries and development junks, and I’ve read on the web that some softwares, like some Adobe’s ones, check their own binaries to see if they are missing something.
So, once CMM has modified those files, the softwares will not be working properly anymore! You’ll need to install them again or go back with Time Machine, because on CMM you can’t reverse the action.
Ben Gribbin January 6, 2010
I run Master Suite CS4 and have never experienced any problems with CMM altering registries e.t.c
rh205 January 13, 2010
Ben–
I ran CMM about a week ago as part of my regular system maintenance and now am unable to update Acrobat from 9.2 to 9.3. (App still works fine, BTW.) Not sure if there’s a definite correlation, but IIRC mucking around with language localizations in Adobe apps renders them unable to update. (I had assumed that CMM had a built-in whitelist of apps not to touch, but I may be wrong.)
Ben Gribbin January 14, 2010
Hi Ralph, your probably best contacting CMM direct about this one!
toyn July 5, 2010
i love clean my mac.
just recently that happened to me, i was not able to update adobe reader, that is the only thing, so i just uninstalled and reinstalled.
Franz February 21, 2010
“3.9GB from Universal Binaries”
That’s more a one-time thing. Just like for example Xslimmer, you can size down apps from unused code.
I would be way more interested in how it compares to Onyx. CleanMyMac is a payed app and Onyx is totally free. From what I see the only advantage of CleanMyMac is that it removes unused binaries and comes with a nicer interface. Otherwise Onyx does actually have a larger number of options and configurations.
I’m very hesitant to buy the software. If the developer offers another discount I’d love to get a licensee for 2 or more family Macs to make it easier for them to maintain the machine.
JOHN May 3, 2010
i downloaded the trial version and it slowed my mac up. some preferred opinion crap/app that takes you to a survey website. i don’t trust the clean my mac app. if you have to pay for it i don’t want any sneaky apps to come with it.
Greka May 31, 2010
Hello John!
I actually represent MacPaw Customer Support, I won’t be hiding that and I would like to let you know that our business is as clear as it could possibly be at all.
Our app is free to download and test and it just has a button that can take you to our site. That is absolutely fine when you can go to a developer website from the app.
If you do not like it – you can easily uninstall it using CleanMyMac itself and it never leaves any traces.
Speaking about your particular problem – if you do not have a CleanMyMac license – it could not actually remove all the found items from your Mac. However, if you’ve read our User Guide, it actually recommends to restart your Mac after the very first total cleanup – this will make it faster, because all the cache will be refreshed.
If you have used a cracked copy, however – we can’t comment on any drawbacks it could possibly have.
CleanMyMac speaks for itself by holding the leading position as the Most Popular Utility according to Apple Downloads and that says everything.