Mac OS X installs a lot of files that you would never use. It comes with language files, universal binaries, and trash files accumulate over time eating into your hard drive space. Although hard drive space is cheap, you would still want to make the best use of that space. Besides, the more files you have on your Mac, the slower it gets.
Clean My Mac
We’ve seen some file cleaners that remove universal binaries, language files, cache files, but most of them perform a single task. When we came across Clean My Mac from MacPaw (note that ad above?), I didn’t know what to make of it. After a quick install however, I found that this app does it all, with one single click.
With a single click, it will go through caches, logs, language files, universal binaries, and give you a estimate of how much space you will save on cleaning it all up. With this two week old install of Leopard and a few apps installed, I managed to clean out 3GB of space. With my previous 6 month install it was 8GB, but I wish I had a screenshot to show that off.
There’s three other options that are allow you to manually remove any widgets, an app uninstaller, and an option to securely erase any file you don’t want any more. I personally would never use an app or widget uninstaller, as dragging an app to the trash is more than enough. I do use the quick erase option which allows you want to delete a file without cleaning out your entire trash. I don’t know why OS X doesn’t have a direct delete option like in Windows.
Missing features
If an app wants to do it all, it should allow me to narrow down on very large files on my Mac. It should also go dig out any large unused files so I can review and delete if necessary. The app should also be able to tell me if my iPhoto trash is full, and remind me to delete some old podcasts that I’ve listened to. I’m not sure whether this is technically possible to do, but I’d like a clean up app to do those things.
While I’m on the negatives, I should mention that the ‘home screen’ has this extremely hideous picture of a yellow flower. I also noticed some UI glitches as well as tacky english throughout the application.
The Verdict
Clean My Mac costs $20 for a 6 month license, $30 for a 1 year license, and $50 for a lifetime licence (you get MacHider free with a lifetime license). The trial will show you how much space you can free up. This is a first time I’m reviewing a time based application, and a lifetime license is totally unreasonable. If I were to buy it I wouldn’t go beyond a 6 month license, but they definitely should have offered the lifetime license at $30.
The question is do you need this app? If you find yourself with oodles of free space on your many hard drives, I wouldn’t spend $20 on getting a clean up utility. I did notice some speed improvements (especially with Spotlight) after cleaning up my Core Duo iMac, but then that’s just perceptual and not based on actual statistics. If you do have something like a MacBook with limited storage, Clean My Mac will definitely help you keep the noise down to a minimum, with little or no effort on your part. Yellow flower aside, the application works like a charm.
Disclosure: MacPaw is an SA sponsor, but unless mentioned otherwise, our reviews come untainted with sponsor love.
I am still laughing about the yellow flower. We were planning to change it in our next release anyway 
