The short answer is: CleanMyMac X is a wonderful tool to use on any Mac. Its easy-to-use features will definitely help you to keep your system safe, clean, and optimized. If you are looking for an application that will protect your system and keep it healthy, CleanMyMac X is a great choice.
My name is Eric and as a longtime software engineer, I know the importance of computer security and keeping your system running smoothly. I have tested and used CleanMyMac X and it is one of the best. It makes it simple and straightforward to keep your Mac safe and healthy.
Keep reading if you would like to learn more about this app. I am going to cover a few common questions that you might have about CleanMyMacX and I will then review the protection and optimization features that are provided by this fantastic tool.
Contents
FAQs
Here are some commonly asked questions about this app, I’ll briefly answer each of them below.
Is CleanMyMac X a good antivirus?
Yes, it is. Although macOS itself is known to prevent viruses, CleanMyMac X gives an extra layer of protection and does a great job of finding and removing malware, ransomware, and other types of malicious software. It can also repair damage from many of them.
Is CleanMyMac X notarized by Apple?
Yes, CleanMyMac X is notarized by Apple (see it on the Mac App Store). Apple has found it to be safe and reliable for any Mac system. In fact, it has even won awards from the Mac community.
Does CleanMyMac X slow down the computer?
No, for the most part, you won’t even know when it is running in the background. I currently have it installed on my system (M1 MacBook Pro) and I have not noticed any type of slowdown. In fact, when you use the tools to optimize your Mac, it will help speed it up.
Detailed Review of CleanMyMac X
For this review, I am going to focus on the protection and optimization benefits that are provided by CleanMyMac X. I will briefly cover what they do and how to use them and I will then give you my verdict on how they perform.
Malware Removal
The Malware Removal tool provided by CleanMyMac X gives an extra layer of protection to you’re already secure macOS. Apple’s macOS is known for its great security and prevention of viruses and malware, but no system is 100% safe.
CleanMyMac X’s Malware Removal tool will do a complete scan of your system and look for any suspicious files that could harm your computer. To get started you just go to the menu on the left side and click on Malware Removal. This will bring up the Malware removal screen where you can click Scan.
CleanMyMac X will promptly begin scanning your file system, looking for any malicious software or files. The scan runs fairly quickly. For my machine, it was completed in a couple of minutes. If any issues are found you will get the option to remove the files and repair any damage that was done.
If the scan runs and no malware is found you will get a nice reassuring message stating that nothing was found.
My Verdict: The Malware tool is easy to use and scans your system very quickly. The ability to find, remove and fix malicious files provides great protection. Even though macOS does a good job at preventing malware, I find it very reassuring to have a tool that verifies this and provides a second layer of protection.
Privacy
In this age of constant information and technology, identity thieves, cybercriminals and even Big Brother are constantly after your information and trying to track your habits. Privacy is now as important as ever and CleanMy Mac X is another tool you can use to protect yourself.
Once again, macOS has pretty good privacy tools and features built into its system, but it can never be 100% effective, so using a secondary tool such as CleanMyMac X makes sense. Let’s take a look at the Privacy tool and see what it has to offer.
CleanMyMac X’s Privacy tool has a number of things it can do. First of all, it can remove what it calls Browsing Traces. This includes you’re browsing history, autofill forms, and other data that is saved by most browsers.
The tool will also sweep up your chat data. This means that it will clean up your chat history from applications like Skype and Messenger. It doesn’t end there. The Privacy tool can search for and clean data from other areas that may have the information you want to keep private and it will also take a look at what permissions other applications have to your system resources.
In order to look at and clean other areas that may contain private and personal information, and to check the permissions of other applications you will need to grant CleanMyMac X full disk access so that it can take a look at all areas of your file system.
You are given the option to do this during installation, but if you don’t allow it or change the setting at some point, the Privacy tool will help you do this by clicking the Grant Access button.
You click the scan button to begin the Privacy scan. This will check your system but will not take any actions until the scan is completed and you select the actions you wish to take. The scan only took a couple of seconds on my system and when completed it gives you a screen with information and actions you can take.
The resulting page shows you categories of what it has scanned. Most of them will be your browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or whatever browsers you use. From those, you can look at and clear history, cookies, autofill values, download history, passwords, and more.
You can expand each of the sections under each browser to see what is there and then select all or specific parts to remove. This is a really cool feature and extremely useful as you can see what is there and make your own decision on what to clean up.
I also really like the Applications Permissions category. When you select this you can see what applications use each of the types of permissions available on your Mac. For instance, if you want to see what applications have access to your camera, you can expand it and see which ones are there.
You then have the option to select the apps and remove them from that permissions set if you would like to do so.
You will also have the ability to look at and remove information from Finder as well as check your wifi connection history and remove any connections that you wish to get rid of.
My Verdict: At first, I didn’t really expect much other than a simple browser history sweep but after using and testing the Privacy tool, I can truly say that love this tool and its features. It is so flexible and makes it extremely easy to monitor, track and clean up history, permissions, and connections.
Optimization
Even out of the box, your new Mac may not have the optimal settings to ensure your system runs as fast and smoothly as possible. As we use our Macs, settings also get changed by applications and users. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes inadvertently.
There are many settings that can make a difference in how your system runs and it is nearly impossible for even the most tech-savvy to know what all of them are and how to set them to get your Mac to run its fastest and without issues. This is where CleanMyMac X can help a great deal.
The Optimization tool will help your Mac to run faster and smoother by giving you the ability to control what is running on it. You can manage the launch agents of your apps and manage your login items to run only what you need.
When you select the Optimization tool, you will see a button that allows you to see the items that can be optimized. Clicking the button takes you to the categories and items that can be disabled, or stopped in order to increase the speed of your system.
Launch agents can start up when you log in, and perform updates to your system, or other developer tasks. You will see a list of them and you will have the option to enable or disable them or even remove them if you wish to do so.
The Heavy Consumers section shows you applications and processes that are currently using a large number of your system’s resources. You will have the option to quit them or relaunch them, whichever you prefer.
If you have any applications or processes that are not responding, they will show up in the Hung Applications section. From there you can kill the applications or processes similar to the way that you can in Mac’s Activity Monitor.
My Verdict: The Optimization tool works well and is very useful. It basically does the same thing as Mac’s Activity Monitor, but it puts it in nice easy-to-read categories and makes it very clear as to what is happening on your system. It is a very worthwhile tool and easier to use than Activity Monitor.
Maintenance
No matter how good you are at cleaning things up on your system and keeping up with updates, you can’t keep track of everything that goes on with your Mac’s OS, filesystem, etc. After a while, clutter and falling behind on versions can really slow your system down.
Not only is speed a concern, but that valuable disk space begins to dwindle, and trying to clean and remove files can be painful and even dangerous to your system if you don’t know what you are doing. CleanMyMac X can do some of this for you with the Maintenance tool.
The Maintenance tool provided by CleanMyMac X can improve your Mac’s drive performance by making sure the file system and physical state of the drive are good. It can also get rid of application errors by fixing app permissions and running maintenance scripts.
It will also improve your Mac’s search performance by reindexing Spotlight’s database. Of course, it can also free up disk space by getting rid of hidden unused files and recovering space you didn’t even know was there. Let’s take a look at what it can do in more detail.
After you select Maintenance and then click on the View All button on the intro page, you will see a list of maintenance tasks that can be run. The tasks that are available are:
- Free Up Ram
- Free Up Purgeable Space
- Run Maintenance Scripts
- Flush DNS Cache
- Speed Up Mail
- Reindex Spotlight
- Repair Disk Permissions
- Time Machine Snapshot Thinning.
Clicking on each Maintenance task will give you an overview of what that task does, and its recommendations. It will also give you an opportunity to run that task.
If you choose to run a task, it will run and then show you when it has successfully completed.
You can run each task one at a time or you can select multiple tasks or even all of them. The status screen will show you which ones are running and when they have been completed.
You can run the tasks anytime that you want and as many times as you want to ensure you keep your system running as efficiently as possible. Note that some of the tasks will ask you for your password in order to install helpers to complete some operations.
My Verdict: The Maintenance tool performs some clean-up and repair activities that would be very difficult and time-consuming for most Mac users. With CleanMyMac X these tasks run quickly with an easy click of a button. When complete, your system almost immediately runs faster and smoother.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a tool that can keep your Mac safe and healthy, CleanMyMac X is a fabulous choice. It is easy to install, easy to use, has an abundance of features, and quickly scans your system to protect and optimize it.
As usual, let me know if you have any questions or comments. I would love to hear from you.
