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The Top 7 Free Utilities To Maintain A Mac.
Encore Review: Mac OS X Tiger seems to be the most stable and dependable Mac OS to date.
So why are there so many Mac maintenence utilities? Check the price tag. The Top 7 Utilities are free.
Does that mean your Mac running on OS X Tiger doesn’t need maintenance?
The truth is that Mac OS X is highly sophisticated, very complex, and needs a little tuning here and there.
There are caches to be dumped, hidden features to be opened, logs to be deleted, and much more.
Should your Mac begin acting a little wonky, start looking for reasons and start with a few of these free utilities.
#7 - MacJanitor
Not all Mac maintenance utilities are created equal. Enter MacJanitor.
Dig intro cron and other goodies with a set of utility scripts for Panther and Tiger. There’s no Intel version yet and MacJanitor was last updated over a year ago.
#6 - Maintenance
Titanium Software has two of the top free maintenance utilities for Mac OS X.
Maintenance sports the standard fare of repair permissions, run scripts, reset Spotlight and more.
# 5 - Cocktail
This superb little utility has been around awhile so expect to devote time to reading the reviews on Cocktail at MacUpdate.
As with most Mac OS X maintenance utilities, Cocktail is general purpose in the Swiss Army Knife mode.
The lack of brushed aluminum makes it a favorite almost as much as the lengthy list of tools and tweaks.
#4 - ultimateTask
The geekier among us may love the elegance and depth of ultimateTask and a companion product, rootMachine.
Anything that helps me get rid of Dashboard is fine with me.
#3 - MainMenu
High on anyone’s shopping list from Santa is Santa’s MainMenu.
As you might expect, this suite of maintenance utilities sits in OS X’s menu bar.
That means getting a cleaner, healthier, shinier Mac is just a click or two away.
#2 - Onyx
Doing a little more for less (or, the same price, since everything’s free) is Onyx.
No brushed aluminum left over from Panther days, Onyx opens up hidden features, deletes caches and hidden files, and lets you look at logs.
#1 - AppleJack
Frankly, any of the Top 3 could be #1, but AppleJack has a few extras.
Can’t even get Mac OS X to show up on the screen? AppleJack to the rescue in single user mode.
There’s the standard fare of repairing permissions, validating files, and killing corrupt caches.
The Top 5 are ready for Intel Macs, but all seven maintenance utilities are essential tools to keep your Mac running clean, lean, and mean.
Can you pay money and get the same thing? Yes. Among those maintenance utilities with a price tag, I prefer Xupport and Macaroni.
The latter costs less but comes with more stars. The former costs more and does more but has less stars. Your mileage may vary.
What’s your favorite Mac maintenance utilility? Did I miss one that should be on the list? Are these utilities even worth using on your Mac?
Share your thoughts, experience, and favorites with other Mac360 readers in the Comments section below.
Update - I’ve used Cocktail for so long that I mistakenly placed it in my Free List. A license is $15. I plead insanity, which, of course, comes from my child.
Allow me to remove Cocktail from the Top 7 Free Utilities (since it’s not really free, Alexis—duh), and replace it with the capable Mac HelpMate.
Though relatively new, Mac HelpMate is popular and straightforward with many diagnostic tools, and a unique screen sharing and remote access feature. Highly recommended.
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To: Raymond J. Smith Jr.
It sounds like you had one bad experience with Applejack, and that bad experience may have been the result of some other problem. I have installed Applejack for years on all the computers I have managed, and I currently manage about 400 Macs, ranging from still a few Panthers to about 200 on Leopard. With the recent update of Applejack to 1.5, I can now run it on all of my computers, and it has not exhibited anything similar to what you describe on any of the literally hundreds of Macs I’ve used it on.
I use the built in functionality: “applejack auto restart” without hesitation on any computer giving me trouble, and it very often corrects whatever the problem was. If not, I run the extended version “applejack AUTO restart” and that cures more of the problems. I offer my experience with hundreds of computers using Applejack over several years to counter your (apparently) one bad experience, which cannot even be conclusively attributed to Applejack. For the record, Applejack never has *any* popup Windows that I have seen, so I really wonder what happened to your computer.
Regards, T
(Network Manager at a high school)
I have used Macaroni since it was sold for Mac. Once installed I have had no reason to access it again. Then of course, it might not be working. So far so good. Worth the price to me if it is working as I have had no problems anywhere, ‘cept powerball. Does that count?
What? No Tinkertool??
Re Cache Out. Way back when I upgraded to Tiger, I followed Ken Stone’s suggestions and first learned about Cache Out.
What about the new beta version? Good for 10.5.4? Anything better in the freeware realm?
love OnyX—-have since v.9xxxx
less is better?
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