CleanMyMac X Review
Keeping your Mac computer in good condition takes a lot of time. If you neglect to do so, you may quickly find that your expensive Apple device has slowed down significantly due to a lack of space or maintenance. Many people will consider changing devices if they can afford it; however, this isn’t the only option. If your Mac is running slow, in many cases all you need to do is keep things clean and uncluttered on your Mac — the primary purpose of CleanMyMac X.
What is CleanMyMac X?
CleanMyMac X reduces clutter and increases the efficiency of your Mac computer. The developers of CleanMyMac X, MacPaw, claim that CleanMyMac X offers will “remove megatons of junk and makes your computer run faster”.
What features does CleanMyMac X offer, and how does it work?
CleanMyMac X offers a wide range of features crucial for your iMac or Macbook. After trying the app for a month or so on my Macbook, I’ve developed an understanding of the app, so here’s my summary of all the features you can find in the CleanMyMac X app. You can decide for yourself whether it’s worth your money, but I will give my own recommendations by the end of this article.
Easily accessible drop-down menus
If an app has a bad UI, even its best features will not be used. We’re happy to say, though, that CleanMyMac X is designed with a very clean user interface. A drop-down menu that sits neatly in the dashboard of your Mac has almost every option you need. This menu will give you a summary analysis of your Mac, including useful information such as the status of your CPU, RAM, and battery:
CPU usage and RAM tab
You can look at this tab to see how much work your processor is doing to run all your applications (even the ones in the background). The same goes for applications that use a lot of the short-term memory on your device (RAM). Closing these applications can significantly impact the processing speed of your Mac, and over time, you might have a lot of extra background applications which you don’t use. Looking at this tab can give you a good idea of which apps use up most of the processing power on your Mac.
Battery Usage Status
If CPU usage isn’t the problem you’re facing with your Mac, you may prefer to see which apps utilize more of your battery life. Through this tab, you can easily close those apps to give your battery life a boost.
Advanced and thorough cleanup
Even if you have installed extra storage space on your Mac, you may be surprised at how fast junk files will fill up your precious storage space. People use more storage in this day and age than ever before, with both picture and video files being more frequent and in higher definition (thus taking up more space on your hard drive). CleanMyMac X helps you remove junk files to make space for the files you really need.
Clearing Out Junk Files
CleanMyMac X will delete files that are unnecessarily stored on your Mac. The following are examples of such files that can free up substantial storage space in your Mac that can be put to better use.
- Photo Junk Files — These are temporary files that are usually left over after editing photos.
- iTunes — However useful iTunes is for music listening, it can quickly accrue a large chunk of storage space for storing backups (in multiple copies). Removing these backups can bring back a lot of your device’s space.
- Trash Bin — You’ve already decided to delete some files, but they linger around for 30 days in your Trash Bin (if you don’t manually remove them yourself). CleanMyMac X automatically clears out your Trash Bin.
- System Junk — iOS accumulates quite a few temporary files on a daily basis, along with files from installed apps. CleanMyMac X is designed to handle this cleanup efficiently without causing the loss of important data.
Optimization and application management
All of the aforementioned features have a combined effect of speeding up your Mac substantially. CleanMyMac also optimizes apps running in the background while also managing the startup apps on your Mac to avoid bloating your memory and processor with apps you aren’t even using. This can also help solve slow startup times on your device.
Safety features found on CleanMyMac X
Before getting into the safety features offered by the app, it’s useful to investigate whether CleanMyMac X is safe to use. We’ve tested this app with multiple antimalware apps, and the results are consistently clean. Additionally, the fact that you download the app directly from the App Store proves that it is a trusted app Apple app, and their testing have found no malware in CleanMyMac X.
Now that we’ve set your mind at ease, we’d like to show you how the app can help protect your Mac in a number of ways:
- Scanning newly installed applications for malware
- Removing malware, adware, spyware, viruses, and other unwanted software. Although there is a relatively lower risk of these showing up on a Mac (compared to PC), it never hurts to be extra careful
- CleanMyMac X also helps protect your privacy by clearing up all the files (for example, temporary files) that can make your private data vulnerable
Additional Features
These are some additional features that we found in the CleanMyMac X app that are also worth mentioning:
- Application updater and uninstaller — with this option enabled, CleanMyMac X will automatically update your apps and prompt you as to which apps you’re using daily. You will only have the latest version of your apps and only ones you actually use
- File shredder — a feature that removes traces of deleted files from your system to ensure they can never be recovered
- Space Lens — a visual representation of your device’s storage status and other information on your device. This will help you understand how storage is distributed on your Mac.
Pricing Plans
A free trial of CleanMyMac X is available, but with limited capabilities (removes only up to 500 MB of junk)
As of June 2021, these are the current prices to buy CleanMyMac X (or rent for one year):
- One Mac Device: $89.95 as a One-Time Purchase (or yearly subscription of $39.95)
- Two Mac Devices: $134.95 s a One-Time Purchase (or yearly subscription of $59.95)
- Five Mac Devices: $199.95 s a One-Time Purchase (or yearly subscription of $89.95)
Final Verdict — Should You Buy CleanMyMac X?
Overall, CleanMyMac X is intuitive, and the price is not too high — around 90$ for a lifetime of cleaning. If you’re a Mac user who can manage clean-up efficiently on your own and have the time to do it, then maybe this app is not for you. Indeed, there are many tools that can do what CleanMyMac X does but for free, for example, Grand Perspective to visualize your Mac’s disk usage. However, most Mac users either don’t have the skills or the time to manage their storage to keep their devices running smoothly. If you fall in the this category, we recommend that you use CleanMyMac X to keep your Mac running clean.
