CleanMyMac 3 is a safe, all-in-one Mac cleaner that removes apps, data, and gigabytes of unnecessary junk. How safe is it? Well, it has a Safety Database, uses safety alerts, and is safe enough to get some serious awards from the Mac community. CleanMyMac 3 is the world's best Mac cleaner. It allows you to clean up and speed up Mac; maintain and optimize your Mac computer with two simple clicks.
If you aren’t quite sure how CleanMyMac 3 works on your Mac or what makes it safe to use, this article is for you. Our team has come together to share CleanMyMac 3's Safety 101.
Smart Cleanup
So, what happens after you click the Scan button in CleanMyMac 3’s Smart Cleanup? Smart Cleanup one-by-one starts all CleanMyMac's cleaning modules, which are System Junk, Photo Junk, Mail Attachments, iTunes Junk, Trash Bins, and Large & Old Files:
These modules scan through all essential locations on your computer and automatically sort out junk or useless data generated during regular Mac usage and daily activities. The choice is based on sophisticated analytic algorithms and a set of rules provided by CleanMyMac's Safety Database. This approach eliminates the risk of losing useful data and is called Smart Selection.
Safety Database
The Safety Database has accumulated MacPaw's expertise in cleaning Macs and resolving various application compatibility issues. Basically, this database gives CleanMyMac a list of instructions on how to clean up junk produced by a variety of system and custom apps. Our developers regularly update the Safety Database with rules for new apps as well as verify CleanMyMac's compatibility with current app versions.
The Safety Database guarantees accuracy and reliability of all cleanup operations, that's why you can click the Clean button without even reviewing smart-select items.
Cleaning tools
System Junk
Like any other cleaning module, System Junk can be used as a separate tool or as part of Smart Cleanup. After you start the scanning, CleanMyMac 3 runs its algorithms to find unneeded files generated by your macOS and apps. For the most part, found items are temporary, outdated or unused files, like additional languages, old logs, cache, or extra binaries. CleanMyMac selects for automatic removal all files found in the System Junk module, except leftovers and the Module Cache folder in Xcode Derived Data.
Now, let's take a closer look at System Junk items.
Log files
Broadly speaking, system log files can be described as notes that are taken by your Mac to document the way apps and services are running. These logs are mostly used for debugging purposes, that's why deleting them doesn't affect performance or stability of macOS. Similarly, user log files are notes created by the apps you use. These notes are numerous and the amount of space they occupy may be quite impressive. However, they rarely bring any value, especially if generated long ago.
Cache files
Generally, cache files allow the system to improve startup time and launch your apps faster. However, if cache data is getting stockpiled, the results are just the opposite - slow startups and poor performance. By cleaning your caches, you simply force apps (or the system) to generate new lightweight cache files automatically, when there's a need.
Language files
Your Mac has a built-in support for over a dozen languages, which are included just in case you might need them. They come preloaded and ready for spontaneous use, allowing you to easily switch between languages within apps and the system itself. Anyway, you probably use just a few of them, don't you? Therefore, let CleanMyMac deleted those localizations (language files) you don't need to free some space for more useful data.
Universal binaries
Some applications are designed to support multiple system architectures, which may double the number of files provided within their binaries. It's typical for apps developed for old PowerPC Macs.
Anyway, keeping only the architecture that supports your Mac is totally safe. This means that you can clean universal binaries to free up some extra space. Besides, Macs are now Intel-based only, so there's no need to keep PowerPC code in any of your apps.
Leftovers
If you delete a widget, extension, plugin or application by dropping it onto the Trash, it may leave behind some preference files or other similar types of files. These leftovers are completely useless without the app and, therefore are can be removed if you don't mind it.
Broken app data
Occasionally, your apps can get stuck with corrupted data that no longer works with your app. CleanMyMac 3 can sweep this up to keep your apps running smoothly.
Document versions
While you work with a file and edit it, an application you use for this purpose saves your changes periodically (automatically, or following your command). This feature is extremely useful if you need to restore previous versions of your file or if something goes wrong and you want to revert the changes. However, every time the app creates a new version, another copy of your file is generated and stored on your disk. Eventually, the total size of these duplicates may reach a few gigabytes.
CleanMyMac doesn't offer to remove all document versions - it keeps versions made with more than 4-hour interval as well as the latest one in the range.
Old update
Some apps prefer not removing their old versions of updates, and they are getting accumulated on your hard drive. The trouble is that these files become outdated very quickly. Therefore, they just occupy space on your Mac for no reason. You can remove them safely.
Development junk
When you install an app or prepare it for the first launch, it may generate some supporting files that make no use afterwards. CleanMyMac finds and removes them.
Xcode junk
Xcode (which is a developer's tool) may create a substantial amount of intermediate build information. If you as a developer would like to delete it along with the project index, just let CleanMyMac do its job. Note that Module Cache and Archives aren't selected for removal automatically.
Photo Junk
The Photo Junk module analyses both Photos and iPhoto library to reveal data that can be removed without harm to your images. This data includes heavy RAW originals of images, local copies of photos stored in iCloud, Faces and Photos cache.
RAW images
If you import images in the heavy RAW format to Photos, it keeps the original but also creates a copy of the file in lightweight JPEG. However, RAW images are mostly used for professional photo editing, and if you are not a photographer, they just take up the disk space.
If you'd like, CleanMyMac 3 can replace your RAW images with JPEGs of the similar quality. This way you'll be able to reduce Photos' space consumption. Note that this operation isn't performed automatically and requires your manual choice.
Photos and Faces cache
The Photos app comes with some great features like Faces but these new features may have their own cache. Obviously, the cache is intended to improve the app performance but it may become data logged over time. CleanMyMac 3 takes care of the general Photos cache and its Faces cache too. This data is completely safe to remove because it's naturally regenerated as you use the app.
iCloud local copies
When you view images residing in iCloud via Photos, they remain stored on your Mac as local copies. CleanMyMac doesn't smart-select this type of files because you'll need an Internet connection to open these photos after the cleanup. Anyway, they will still be available in iCloud.
Mail Attachments
Every time you open an email in the Mail app, it creates a copy of the file you view. Thus, all numerous .zip files, PDFs, signatures, company logos you've ever opened on your Mac are now stored on your drive. For example, if you’ve received emails from Facebook, you’ve probably got multiple copies of the Facebook logo kept locally.
Mail Attachments finds attachments and downloads viewed via Mail and allows you to remove their local copies, while originals of these files are kept saved in your online mailbox. This module can reveal a lot of disk space by removing unnecessary copies of attachments which you can restore by simply reopening the corresponding email in the Mail app.
Note that CleanMyMac does't offer to remove a local copy of an attachment if you've edited it. All other items are smart-selected for cleanup.
iTunes Junk
The iTunes Junk module targets your iTunes’ outdated device backups, broken downloads, old iOS software updates, cached album artworks, and copies of iOS apps kept on your Mac. These files may occupy gigabytes of space, that's why CleanMyMac offers you to remove most of these items by default. The only exception is iOS apps and the most recent iOS backups.
Don't worry, your music and personal files are not subject to this module.
Trash Bins
The Trash Bins module finds all Trash folders on your Mac, including those belonging to some custom applications and external drives. In this module, CleanMyMac aggregates items you have earlier removed from Mail, Photos, Aperture, and Gemini so that you could easily remove them all at once.
CleanMyMac smart-selects for automatic cleanup all items found within this module (except for the Gemini Duplicates trash folder).
Large & Old Files
The Large and Old Files module finds rarely used and heavy files and groups them by size, access date, or kind. CleanMyMac doesn't select any files from this module automatically. It only simplifies the review process and lets you decide whether to get rid of something securely once and for all, move it to another folder or Trash, or leave everything as is.
After the Smart Cleanup finished scanning, you can either run quick Smart Cleanup or review all selected items by yourself to make sure that nothing useful is selected.
This is a review of a Mac cleaning software CleanMyMac 3, in the article you will learn everything that you want to know about CleanMyMac 3, features, pros and cons, software reviews, etc. Read on and check the review now.
What is CleanMyMac 3?
CleanMyMac 3 is a mac cleaning software developed by MacPaw Inc. ( MacPaw is a company has been in business for 9 years and got A+ rating in BBB website.) As its name indicated, CleanMyMac 3 is a Mac Cleaner can help you clean, optimize, and maintain your Mac. CleanMyMac 3 will safely and intelligently scan and clean your entire Mac system, delete large files, unused files, reduce the size of your Photos library, uninstall unused apps or fix the ones that started to work improperly, manage all your extensions from one place and do much more to clear junk files and clean your Mac. In brief, the main features of CleanMyMac 3 are
- Clean Mac by finding junks files on Mac and deleting them.
- Maintain your Mac by providing some comprehensive maintenance features, such as maintenance scripts to keep a Mac running smoothly, repair Disk Permissions, verify and repair for HDDs.
- Monitor the health of your Mac and tell you how to fix the issues.
Is CleanMyMac 3 safe?
CleanMyMac 3 is a safe app without malware, virus or crapware, if you downloaded it from its official MacPaw page. And it got past all of the security check when Bitdefender Antivirus and MalwareBytes Antivirus scanning and checking on my iMac.
And it is safe to use CleanMyMac 3 to do cleaning and maintaining, if you know what you are doing and use it properly, that is you could check all of the preference and settings, and how you defined the smart cleanup before you starting clean. Well, you can decide what to remove, what can be done automatically, what should be checked when execute the cleaning task. As some reviewers said, CleanMyMac 3 is a software not human, some wrong decisions may occurred in rare cases, though it has sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to analyze patterns. And we also have to acknowledge that MacPaw has accumulated expertise in cleaning Macs and resolving various application compatibility issues. Followed properly operation, you’ll find CleanMyMac is very useful and the best cleaning app on the market for all mac users.
Reviews about CleanMyMac 3 from Mac Industry Experts
It’s hard to believe, but CleanMyMac currently has 5 million users. So we could know how popular it is for Mac users. And let’s read what Mac industry exerts reviews about CleanMyMac 3.
Chris Barylick reviewed CleanMyMac 3 4-stars (overall 5-stars) ratings on Macworld, and said it comes in handy in a world filled with incredibly fast but still relatively small solid state drives, where regaining a dozen or so gigabytes of space, it helped retrieve 18.1GB of storage space for him, and the computer ran without a hitch afterwards.
iMore editor wrote that CleanMyMac 3 is a cleaning tool, with it, you can get specific about what items stay and what gets cleaned out. And CMM 3 also is a utility for maintenance on Mac, you can ask the app to run maintenance scripts, reindex Spotlight, or repair disk permissions. The app will also now help do things like delete web cookies from your browsers, or get rid of unwanted extensions.
TheNextWeb editor Owen Williams reviewed that CleanMyMac 3 does cleaning Mac and get rid of the junk in a quick, attractive looking package. With an attractive user interface, CleanMyMac targets the useless stuff that piles up on your computer, like old log files, unused language files, iTunes backups, outdated caches and other items to help free space and tidy up broken files. It helped Owen picked up just over 30GB of space he could save, and another Mac found over 50GB junk files to clean. It wasn’t monumental, but it’s a decent chunk of space, particularly on machines with smaller hard disks. TNW think CleanMyMac 3 is worth if you don’t want to spend time hunting around your computer to save some space.
GRAHAM SPENCER wrote on Macstories, CleanMyMac 3 is a solid upgrade that brings improvements and completely new features. Like those who with an SSD laptop as the primary computer, Graham think storage space is always limited and he has been using CleanMyMac for a few years to get a little extra space.
What CleanMyMac 3 Can Do for You?
- Find junk files on the Mac and delete them (you can decide what to remove), helps to recover Mac cpmputer memory.
- Safely scans your Mac system, iTunes, Mail, Photos library, Trash bins, and even old folders that have been secretly avoiding you.
- CleanMyMac 3 works as a smart Mac Cleaner cleans your Mac, including junk files, unused files, duplicates, mail attachments, useless cache files and heavy RAWs that take up space.
- Uninstall unneeded apps, it removes the app and all the associated files and folders an app creates. Which is much better than uninstalling by dragging an app from the Applications folder to the Trash which leaves a lot of stuff behind on your drive.
- Monitors HDD health for Mac (usually not an issue with the latest batch of HDDs), it will give you key alerts and tell you how to fix the problems.
- Provides comprehensive maintenance features including maintenance scripts to keep a Mac running smoothly, Flush DNS cache, repair disk permissions, verify and repair for HDDs, privacy to remove cookies and junk left behind by browsers, the finder and others, extensions lets you turn extensions on and off or remove them.
- Shredder that writes over disk space still occupied by deleted files.
- CleanMyMac 3 monitors your Mac and notifies you about the important changes on Mac, including assists you to fix no launch necessary apps, keeps you up-to-date on processor and memory usage.
What Users Like And Dislike on CleanMyMac 3
Likes:- Lots of options to find unnecessary files.
- The scanning works quickly.
- The Smart Cleanup feature works great to quickly free up a decent amount of hard drive space.
- Monitors HDD health nicely for many Mac users.
- It has the best memory recovery feature, and I’ve used most all of them.
- The cleaner function of does a great job finding junk on the Mac and deleting it (if finds, you decide what to remove).
- The uninstaller feature is quite comprehensive.
- Finds duplicate photos that can be storage hogs.
- Finds deleted files and you can choose to delete them or not.
- Great cleaning app for limited-memory Mac computers.
- Unexpected default behavior with application interrupts.
- 500MB limitation to cleaning in trial
Preferences of CleanMyMac 3
CleanMyMac 3 lets you personalize how it works on your Mac, check out the following list to learn how to personalize your Mac Cleaner.
Open it and click on CleanMyMac 3 in the top left hand corner of your Mac’s screen in the Toolbar. In the pop-down menu, select Preferences.
General:
- Play sounds for Mac Cleaner main actions or not.
- Control animations and warning dialogs.
- Language control: you can decide what languages you would like to remove or keep for your system or applications.
Smart Cleanup: You are able to specify the items you would like to include to Smart Cleanup and module scans.
Scheduler: It lets you to set how often you would like Mac cleaner remind you about cleaning up your Mac.
CleanMyMac 3 Menu: That is, you are allowed to activate and deactivate the CleanMyMac 3 helper in the top right corner of your Mac as Menu.
- You can set the alert to warn you when your system is running low on space or your trash bins are getting full.
- Monitor your apps activity: Offer to uninstalling apps properly or force quit the apps that stop responding.
Updates: Set whether updates automatically or not, and enable download and background updates.
Ignore List: Select applications or files which you would like Mac Cleaner to ignore scan or clean up.
Privacy: Your data are safe to set as disable anonymous sharing, also could disable extended logging of removed items.
Steps for Cleaning Up Mac Using CleanMyMac 3
- Download and install Mac Cleaning app CleanMyMac 3 from here.
- Start your fist scan with this Mac Cleaner. You can scan your Mac computer with the Smart Cleanup module.
- 2-1. Click Smart Cleanup in the upper left side of the CleanMyMac 3 window.
- 2-2. Click the Scan button at the bottom of the window.
- Get a results preview when all of your Mac data are analyzed.
- Click the Clean Button at the bottom of the window to clean up your Mac by removing files selected.
Get Support for CleanMyMac 3
CleanMyMac 3 is the best Mac cleaner and monitor for your Mac computer in my reviews, it helps you clean, optimize, and maintain your Mac via scanning every inch of your system, removing gigabytes of junk files in just two clicks. Take full control of your Mac system with this Mac Cleaner.
Any relevant support of Mac Cleaner – CleanMyMac 3 could be found in: