Mac360

Apple • Mac • iPhone • iPad • News

  • Home
  • News
  • App Reviews
    • iOS App Reviews
    • Cheap Mac Apps
    • Mac App Reviews
    • Mac Tips & Tricks
  • Archive
    • iOS App Reviews
    • Cheap Mac Apps
    • Mac App Reviews
    • Mac Tips and Tricks
    • News and Comment
  • About
    • Contact Mac360
    • About Mac360
    • Mac360′s FAQs
    • Got Apps For Us?
    • Privacy Policy
    • Service Terms Agreement
    • Copyright Notice
  • Follow
    • RSS Atom Feed
    • Comments Feed
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
  • Writers
    • Alexis Kayhill
    • Bambi Brannan
    • Carol Miller
    • Jack Miller
    • Jeffrey Mincey
    • Kate MacKenzie
    • Natalia Nowak
    • Ron McElfresh
    • Tera Patricks
    • Wil Gomez
  • Blogs
    • Bohemian Boomer
    • McSolo
    • NoodleMac
    • PixoBebo
    • TeraTalks
  • Sitemap
  • Wednesday, June 19, 2013

How To Clean Your Mac, Save Disk Space, Remove Files, And Maintain Your Privacy

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 | Jack D. Miller Posted In Tips and Tricks

MacCleanseBacking up your Mac might be the single most important maintenance you can do. My last backup revealed a startling statistic.

The Mac was loaded up with over one million files that needed to be copied to an external disk. One million? I decided to do a little Mac housekeeping and brought in a digital cleaning agent to do the deed.

A Clean Car Runs Better

My father once taught me that a clean car would run better. At the time I didn’t understand, but it was his way of getting me to clean the care (while he took care of maintenance).

Today’s Macs get cleaned differently than an automobile. We won’t hose off or scrub down a Mac.

But a Mac is full of hundreds of thousands of files, and getting rid of those you don’t need can improve performance, save disk space, and enhance your personal privacy.

One of the half dozen utilities on my Mac is MacCleanse, kind of a hat trick of tools to keep the Mac working properly.

The official feature list is dozens and dozens of cleaning actions long, but lumped into three areas. Deleting unneeded files to reclaim disk space. Safely and securely removing files you won’t need or miss. And, cleansing the Mac of files which ensure that your personal information is deleted and not visible to prying eyes.

Open MacCleanse and here’s what you see.

MacCleanse Overview

The overview is a good place to start as it displays areas on your Mac that could use a digital scrubbing.

MacCleanse’s sidebar displays additional cleaning options, including caches, downloads, iMessage (and other messaging apps which leave a trail of conversations), logs, and much more.

There’s an option to uninstall applications on your Mac, remove unnecessary language files (these take up a lot of space), and secure erase files you won’t want to be found by anyone else.

On Macs with plenty of applications, it’s possible that MacCleanse can save hundreds of megabytes of storage. It kills and deletes browser cookies and history, empties log files, and gives you options to remove files from third party applications.

My Mac’s file count had churned upwards to over 1.1-million files. After running MacCleanse, removing some unused apps, cleaning out logs and caches, and reducing the number of language files, I’d saved almost two gigabytes of storage and the backup file count when down to just over 900,000.

Does the Mac run better after cleaning? At least as much as my father’s car ran better after I washed it.

Try A Related Article

  • Do You Really Need To Pay Money to Clean, Secure, And Optimize Your Mac?
  • Keeping Your Mac Clean For Free (where style fails to meet substance)
  • There’s A Better Way To Delete Or Uninstall Mac Apps You Don’t Want To Keep
  • Boost Efficiency On Your Mac With Trickster And Find Recently Used Files Faster
  • A New Way To Save Space On Your Mac. Use Clusters To Put The Squeeze On Files

From Apple Villagers

Kate asks the question Wall Street folks won't ask. 'If The Cloud Is The Future Where’s The Money?' We don't know, either. Ron came up with a list of The Top 3 Non-Apple Photo Apps On The App Store.

Elsewhere, Tera has a few notes on iOS 7: What’s Better? What’s Worse? Will It Matter? Jeffrey found 4 Ways You’ll Like This Free And Better Way To Get iTunes Music Lyrics On Your Mac. And, finally, System Lens App Is The Clever, Simple, Non-Geeky Way To Manage Your Mac’s System Resources. Why? Because non-geeks are not supposed to ask questions.

How You Can Help

Our thousands of app reviews and colorful commentary are supported by your devoted attention to the nearby overlording sponsors and their messages of promise. Visiting an aforementioned sponsor's premise today helps to keep us supplied with toe jam cleaner. When you help out by giving attention to any sponsor during today's visit we're able to afford clean underwear. Hence, we appreciate your brief visits to these necessary overlords.

About Jack D. Miller

I work for a US technology company in Paris, France and switched from Windows PCs to the Mac 12 years ago. My wife said it would improve our marriage, give us more friends, and reduce stress. I guess that two out of three isn't bad. Read more of my articles here.

« Next Article
Boost Efficiency On Your Mac With Trickster And Find Recently Used Files Faster
Previous Article »
Holiday Shopping Guide #27: The Top 12 Apps For iPhone, iPad, And Mac

Recently on Mac360

  • Bored With OS X Mountain Lion? Can’t Wait For OS X Mavericks? Add Flavours To Your Mac Now
  • The Secret Sauce In Apple’s New MacBook Air Is What You Want But Did Not Expect To See
  • Everything That’s Missing From Apple’s New Black Aluminum Beast Mac Pro
  • Surprise! Expecting Black And White And Flat All Over In iOS 7? It’s Pastel, Neon, And Depth
  • Here’s The New Way To Use Your Mac To Schedule Officially Sanctioned Coffee Breaks
  • Cheap Mac Paint Apps, Pt. 2: Paint X Digital Drawing And Design For The Price Of Lunch
  • Cheap Mac Paint Apps, Pt. 1: Paint Pro Digital Drawing And Design For The Price Of Coffee
  • Free: How To Do To Email What Your Mac Already Does To Email But Do It Differently
  • How To Get Your Mac To Give You A Relaxing Back Massage And Help You Sleep Better At Night
  • The New Way To Focus Photos In Your Camera Is To Focus After You Take The Shot
  • Got The Email Blues With Apple’s Mail? Ready For Something Different? 12 Ways To Like Airmail
  • How Much Time Do You Spend On Each Mac App Each Day? Here’s The App That Knows
  • And One More Thing I Need To Mention To Google’s CEO About Consistency
  • What’s The Best iPhone Todo List App That Money Cannot Buy (that’s better than Reminders)?

Follow Mac360

Follow Mac360 on FacebookFollow Mac360 via RSSFollow Mac360 on Twitter

Apple Villagers

  • Bohemian Boomer
  • McSolo
  • NoodleMac
  • PixoBebo
  • TeraTalks

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2004 - 2013 Ron McElfresh, Honolulu, HI. All. Rights. Reserved.

Mac360 Sitemap | Mac360 on Twitter | Mac360 on Facebook.