Is MacKeeper worth buying?

Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
88
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
San Francisco, CA
Your Mac's Specs
13" 2.26ghz MacBook 6,1 Late 2009 250GB HD 8GB ram, Mavericks, 30GB Ipod Video, 16GB Iphone 5 ;-)
Its for $38. Just want to see how you guys feel about this app.
 
Joined
May 19, 2009
Messages
8,428
Reaction score
295
Points
83
Location
Waiting for a mate . . .
Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM - 10.11.3, iPhone6s & iPad Air 2 - iOS 9.2.1, ATV 4Th Gen tvOS, ATV3
NO NO NO

Stay away from it what ever you do. There are so many threads here with people having problems with there Mac and it comes down to MacKeeper. Ill search out some threads and info for you, but I'm sure everyone in this forum will agree with me.
Dont do it. Save your $ and look at something like Oynx and MainMenu 1.7.4 . . . Ill be back.
I will return.

I prefer MM and if you dl that 1.7.4 version, don't upgrade it because it will ask for money. This is a free version but still does a great job. I bought it bc i liked what a good job it did.

Cheers

EDIT : http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/227075-mackeeper.html
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/241134-thinking-about-buying-mackeeper-worth.html
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/205537-need-help-deciding-mac-utilities-mackeeper-vs-clean-my-mac.html
 
OP
R
Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
88
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
San Francisco, CA
Your Mac's Specs
13" 2.26ghz MacBook 6,1 Late 2009 250GB HD 8GB ram, Mavericks, 30GB Ipod Video, 16GB Iphone 5 ;-)
From the reviews I've read on other threads I don't get why people hate it so much? It saved me 8gb by deleting files that I don't need for example, 2 gbs of languages for software that I clearly don't need.

Can someone explain why they hate this product?

Say some cons about it and not just say it sucks or recommend other apps.
 
Joined
May 19, 2009
Messages
8,428
Reaction score
295
Points
83
Location
Waiting for a mate . . .
Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM - 10.11.3, iPhone6s & iPad Air 2 - iOS 9.2.1, ATV 4Th Gen tvOS, ATV3
Can someone explain why they hate this product?

Say some cons about it and not just say it sucks or recommend other apps.

Did you not read the link Harry supplied?? Just google MacKeeper troubles and see what you come up with. Once installed its very hard to uninstall and leaves things running in the background that take up precious RAM.
You asked what we thought of the App so you are going to get people say SCAM and all but if you like to keep it, keep it. We are here to warn people off it because as i have said earlier you will have problems with it.
I Hate it because its a scam, it doesn't work as advertised and its a scam
You have been warned.
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
From the reviews I've read on other threads I don't get why people hate it so much? It saved me 8gb by deleting files that I don't need for example, 2 gbs of languages for software that I clearly don't need.

There's cheaper and even free software that do that exact same thing.

Can someone explain why they hate this product?

Say some cons about it and not just say it sucks or recommend other apps.

From a marketing standpoint, they are slimy. They have dozens of fake websites that are the internet's equivalent of the infomercial that claim to do "reviews" of the software comparing it to other software. They have posted fakes inquiries into the product in these very forums, which were rapidly followed by faked praise for it. They have a full-time "evangelist" who haunts sites like MacUpdate and actively rebuts and combats anything negative about the software.

Speaking of negativity… the software has caused issues for quite a few people here. The AV component alone is a resource hog. It's not even Mac-native… it's Windows code running under WINE.

Want alternatives? Depends on what you want to do. For occasional maintenance and cleaning, Onyx is used and recommended by most everyone here. IceClean is an alternative that is very good in its own right. The only tool of this class that I recommend spending money on is TinkerTool System (not to be confused with plain old TinkerTool). It's an outstanding utility that excels at explaining the various tasks it offers, and wraps up in one package many maintenance and cleaning modules that you'd need 3 or 4 others to get all together otherwise. A couple of its tools are best in class, IMO. It's Uninstallation Assistant alone is the only "uninstaller" I know of that will check for helper files in all user accounts, not just the one you are using it in. I don't really like the UI very much… Onyx is superior in that regard. But then when it comes to beauty, CleanMyMac is utterly gorgeous, but avoid that… many people have had issues with it, and I consider that software to be rather misleading in what it does as well.
 
OP
R
Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
88
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
San Francisco, CA
Your Mac's Specs
13" 2.26ghz MacBook 6,1 Late 2009 250GB HD 8GB ram, Mavericks, 30GB Ipod Video, 16GB Iphone 5 ;-)
Thanks for the comments, there helpful. I will get rid of MacKeeper, it runs stuff that your not aware of. I wished I came on here first for advice. Thanks again.
 
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
1,428
Reaction score
39
Points
48
Your Mac's Specs
Black MacBook 2.2GHz C2D, 4GB Ram - iMac G4 700MHz, 512MB Ram
Thanks for the comments, there helpful. I will get rid of MacKeeper, it runs stuff that your not aware of. I wished I came on here first for advice. Thanks again.

It sounds like you already installed it, and from what I've read it's like grim death to get rid of. Simply dragging it into the trash doesn't delete it entirely, it takes a good uninstaller and a few Disk Utility clean ups before it can be wiped from your system, or so I've been told. :|
 
OP
R
Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
88
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
San Francisco, CA
Your Mac's Specs
13" 2.26ghz MacBook 6,1 Late 2009 250GB HD 8GB ram, Mavericks, 30GB Ipod Video, 16GB Iphone 5 ;-)
It sounds like you already installed it, and from what I've read it's like grim death to get rid of. Simply dragging it into the trash doesn't delete it entirely, it takes a good uninstaller and a few Disk Utility clean ups before it can be wiped from your system, or so I've been told. :|

I trashed all MacKeeper files including the folder in the library. I haven't had any problems so far.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2009
Messages
156
Reaction score
12
Points
18
Location
Anchorage, AK
Your Mac's Specs
15" MacBook Pro (Late-2011), 2.4 GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, 750GB HDD
From the reviews I've read on other threads I don't get why people hate it so much? It saved me 8gb by deleting files that I don't need for example, 2 gbs of languages for software that I clearly don't need.

Can someone explain why they hate this product?

Say some cons about it and not just say it sucks or recommend other apps.

MacKeeper has a reputation for screwing up computers, and their business practices when it comes to issuing refunds and addressing customer complaints makes Microsoft and Dell look like saints.

There's several free alternatives that will work better than MacKeeper. In addition to Onyx and Main Menu mentioned above, there's Monolingual and CCCleaner. I use Monolingual on my Mac to remove unecessary languages, and in my case it freed up about 5GB of disk space just for languages. CC Cleaner can handle temp files, browser caches, etc, and it also has a Windows equivalent, which I use on Windows machines as well.
 
Joined
Jan 22, 2008
Messages
35
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
Marlton NJ
Your Mac's Specs
Early 2012 13" MBA Core i5 1.8 GHz, 4GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, OS X 10.7.4
The simple answer to that question is NO! MacKeeper is a resource hog. It scans and tells you to delete certain files. If you don't pay attention, you will wind up removing files that should never be deleted. It also recommends various updates as being available for your software. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you that some of those "upgrades" require an upgrade to OS X 10.7! That program is a disaster . For the fun of it, I tried it on an old computer by downloading a free trial copy. The only way I could get rid of everything it added to the computer a\was to erase the entire HDD and reinstall everything over. I have heard horror stories from many about this program and I can vouch for their truthfulness. Stay away from MacKeeper.
 
Joined
May 10, 2012
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Points
1
MacKeeper and printing issues

I'd been having problems printing to a Samsung ml-1660 from Lion. It was only printing 1 job at a time before needing to be restarted.

I updated and re-installed drivers, re-started the computer, nothing worked. Then I un-installed MacKeeper trial version, and the problems have gone.

I don't know that it was related to MacKeeper, but I couldn't find any references to the problem in any searches I did.

In case anyone else has this issue, here it is for the record.
 
Joined
Oct 7, 2010
Messages
381
Reaction score
2
Points
18
Location
Virginia, USA
Your Mac's Specs
15" MB Pro, 2.66 i7 ; 11” MBA 1.8GZ i7; 13"MBA 2GZ i7 8 GB mem 512GB SSD, 2 iPad3s, 1 iPad Mini
Very worthwhile

I use it all the time on my MBPro and my MB Air.
 

RavingMac

Well-known member
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jan 7, 2008
Messages
8,303
Reaction score
242
Points
63
Location
In Denial
Your Mac's Specs
16Gb Mac Mini 2018, 15" MacBook Pro 2012 1 TB SSD
Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Your Mac's Specs
2.4 GHz MacBook Pro 2GB ram; Windows XP on VMware 2.0
Previous paying user of Mackeeper

I tried Mackeeper a year ago based on good reviews on CNET and bought a one-year subscription. I used it occasionally to clean up my system due to my old habit with Windows. While Mackeeper's display of the amount of space recovered initially impressed me, it soon become **-hum because the amount of space saved was insignificant. About 9 months ago, Zeo-bit threw in Antivirus and System Tracker for free. When their Antivirus conflicted with another Standalone Antivirus Suite that came with a back-up drive, their Zeobit's online tech support provided decent response and resolution. The System Tracker on Mackeeper freaked me out because the camera on my Macbook Pro would take random snapshots out of the blue. When I once checked, Mackeeper's System Tracker place my laptop about 75 miles from where I was, so I turned off the function just to get rid of the annoying random camera shutter sound my Mac gives off. I wonder if those snapshots were taken because the software decided my laptop was stolen because it placed me too far away from where I had it registered,

After my paid-for Standalone Antivirus Suite subscription expired, I went back to ClamXAV and the antivirus on Mackeeper. In comparison, the OpenSource ClamAV in ClamXAV seems to be updated every time I used it, whereas I started getting concerned with how often I don't get virus signature updates when I ran the anti-virus program on Mackeeper. In comparison, the free Microsoft Security Essentials Antivirus programs get daily updates from Microsoft; and it's free.

About the time when my one-years subscription expired, I started getting annoying pop-ups from Zeobit offering me an upgrade discount to MacKeeper 2012. After reading several user reviews, I uninstalled the program by dragging the executable from Applications folder to Trash. That action brought up Mackeepers Uninstaller (didn't know I had such a program) that I used and had to supply some reason while I uninstalled. A few days later, for want of a system cleaning tool, I reinstalled the app again. After reading this thread and Thomas's Tech Corner today (Thomas' Tech Corner » Beware MacKeeper), I downloaded AppCleaner from CNET.COM and used it to uninstall MacKeeper.

AppCleaner showed me a surprising 7-9 files found for deletion. I dutifully clicked OK and let AppCLeaner delete those files. Here's a surprise, the memory resident portion of MacKeeper brought up a pop-up that offered to uninstall MacKeeper. The pop-up program had no CLOSE button. OS X's Force Close does not show MacKeeper as an executing program. Finder does not see MacKeeper in my Applications folder. I closed all programs and shut my system down, then rebooted it. Now Mackeeper is gone.

Many of you are right, Mackeeper worth is questionable in my experience, and it's hard to get rid of. The article in Thomas's Tech Corner has a feature-for-feature alternative for Mackeeper that I would certainly check out some more.
 
Joined
Oct 7, 2010
Messages
381
Reaction score
2
Points
18
Location
Virginia, USA
Your Mac's Specs
15" MB Pro, 2.66 i7 ; 11” MBA 1.8GZ i7; 13"MBA 2GZ i7 8 GB mem 512GB SSD, 2 iPad3s, 1 iPad Mini
Both Mac Life and Mac World magazines highly recommend Mac Keeper. I use it regularly on two MB Airs and an MBPro. I found their virus checker less than useful and do not use that as it is a continual memory hog but the rest of the program operates well as the magazine tests atest.

I did uninstall it from one machine once in order to reinstall cleanly. No problem at all uninstalling, the program even provides an uninstaller.

If the goal is simply an antivirus, ClamXav is effective and costworthy as well.
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
Both Mac Life and Mac World magazines highly recommend Mac Keeper.

That's hardly a seal of approval. Fact of the matter is… these writers who "review" software like these only get to spend an hour or so fiddling with it in preparation for their article. Half a day perhaps if they have no other work lined up. And many tech writers are just not all that tech savvy.

I use it regularly on two MB Airs and an MBPro. I found their virus checker less than useful and do not use that as it is a continual memory hog...

Last time I looked into this thing, their AV component wasn't even Mac-native. It was Windows AV software running under WINE. That is insane. It may well not have even been capable of screening for Mac malware… just Windows malware. Even if it could detect Mac malware… what the heck is the point of actively screening for Windows malware that can't even load? It's utterly moronic.

I did uninstall it from one machine once in order to reinstall cleanly. No problem at all uninstalling, the program even provides an uninstaller.

Yes.. the uninstaller does a great job of uninstalling MacKeeper. Except for all the MacKeeper files it doesn't remove.
how to uninstall MacKeeper – updated « Phil Stokes
 
Joined
Oct 7, 2010
Messages
381
Reaction score
2
Points
18
Location
Virginia, USA
Your Mac's Specs
15" MB Pro, 2.66 i7 ; 11” MBA 1.8GZ i7; 13"MBA 2GZ i7 8 GB mem 512GB SSD, 2 iPad3s, 1 iPad Mini
One man's trash is another's treasure. Works great for me, for the Mac Magazines, and for most others. Sorry about it not working out for you but, as you know, there are many many choices.
 

RavingMac

Well-known member
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jan 7, 2008
Messages
8,303
Reaction score
242
Points
63
Location
In Denial
Your Mac's Specs
16Gb Mac Mini 2018, 15" MacBook Pro 2012 1 TB SSD
One man's trash is another's treasure. Works great for me, for the Mac Magazines, and for most others. Sorry about it not working out for you but, as you know, there are many many choices.

Don't really understand your need to continually defend this product.

If it isn't causing you any problems, great, keep using it and be happy. But, for the VERY limited value it offers when and if it does work it and the numerous problems it causes when it doesn't, it isn't something we should be recommending.
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
I decided to re-try MacKeeper for kicks. It's been some time since I last tried it, and last I read, the AV component was now "Mac-native" in particular. So maybe they've really tried to improve the software in general.

So anywho… I worked on this from a second installation I have of OS X on my iMac. It's a virgin copy of OS X, fully updated to 10.7.4, with no 3rd party software loading up and only a few utilities on the partition available if I need them. Basically… this is as pristine and untainted an environment as possible to give MK a chance to work well. I do have a single folder at the root level of that partition for temporary use while in my usual primary partition, but that would have no impact on the OS installed there.

Near the end of installation, I got repeated errors that the helper app couldn't be installed, due to maybe a permissions problem. I continued to get the same error every time I re-ran MK. Repairing permissions, running various utilities, all failed to solve this error. I have no idea why I am getting it. I shouldn't be. At all. Like I said, everything on this partition is as kosher as it gets.

So I look over the AV software. It doesn't appear to be running under WINE anymore, so that's something. I haven't delved much further yet, and likely won't. I can't really test its effectiveness anyway without downloading actual malware.

So next I try the file recovery feature. It's supposed to look for files that have been deleted, but may still be recoverable. I copied a video file off my media drive to my Desktop, then trashed the copy from my Desktop and emptied the trash. Then I ran the file recovery module. MacKeeper completely failed to find that file. What it did find were a whole bunch of other videos and some XML files. Of the videos it found, there were a couple dozen that were all exactly 1.9 GB in size… each one. The others were much smaller… something like 35 MB, and all identical. As it turns out, all the 1.9 GB videos were all really the same file… a 720p episode of Walking Dead I had purchased off the iTunes Store some time back and recently replaced with 1080p versions. The old copies were stored temporarily on that partition while I re-downloaded the new ones. The other episodes should have been discoverable if this one was, but they weren't found. These "recovered" videos were unplayable despite recovery, although some metadata was readable.

So next I run a different piece of software… Disk Drill. This piece of software is dedicated to finding deleted files that may be recoverable. It promptly found the movie I had added to the Desktop and subsequently deleted. The one that MacKeeper couldn't find. It's also finding a MASSIVE number of files that may be recoverable (it's still running actually). Not dozens of copies of a single file (that never existed as dozens of copies to begin with) but numerous files of various types and sizes, in folders across the partition. MacKeeper only found 2 videos, listed those repeatedly as separate files, and a couple XML files, which were also listed repeatedly as separate files.

Just to be clear: MacKeeper "found" exactly 4 files, but listed each of those dozens of times with different "generic" names consisting of a series of numbers. The inability to determine the exact name is not unusual, I should add. In other file recovery software, the correct name is typically discoverable only if the file was very recently deleted. Disk Drill found the video that I had deleted off the Desktop, complete with the video's proper name. MK couldn't even find that particular video, which should have been the single most recoverable file.

So in summary:

  • MacKeeper was completely unable to find a video deleted mere minutes before I asked it to look for deleted files. Disk Drill found it immediately.
  • MacKeeper listed a couple different long-deleted videos as recoverable, but listed them a couple dozen times each as if it had found a few dozen different videos. Disk Drill legitimately found dozens of long-deleted videos, and far more other types of files than MacKeeper. A few thousand files in total actually (many of which are log and other temporary files). Disk Drill didn't present me with numerous "copies" of the same file.
  • The videos recovered by MacKeeper aren't even playable. To be fair, I didn't try to recover the files with Disk Drill since I'm running it in trial mode… recovery requires payment and I didn't really need to. I don't realistically expect it could have recovered everything it found… that's just the nature of this type of task. But its hits were more accurate and complete BY FAR!

This is just one of MacKeeper's modules and already it is one huge FAIL! I haven't had a chance to look at any of the other modules more in depth, but it's not looking good at all. Even if some of the other modules do work, MacKeeper is already demonstrably incompetent at least in part, and there's nothing it does that can't be had for less or for free in more competent apps.

EDIT: I'm just going to add some supporting screen caps of my testing. Firstly, here's part of MacKeeper's list. I'm showing the middle of the list, but as can be seen, there are a large number of .mov files that are exactly 1.9 GB in size. All the ones higher in the list are the same size, and apparently the same file judging from a few I recovered. There were actually several dozen copies of this one in total. There were more files below the bottom of the screen cap… all XML files and mostly duplicates of the ones seen. There were a couple other smaller sizes with many duplicates. About 5 unique files in total were really what was found.

MK1.png



This screen cap is of Disk Drill's quick scan. There's only one hit, which is expected. The quick scan only finds very recently deleted files with a matching name. MacKeeper never found this file, which, as I said, should have been the most discoverable and recoverable one. Disk Drill did let me "preview" this file using QuickLook. It is very much intact and recoverable. If MacKeeper had found this file, it should have been sandwiched in the middle of the list in the prior screen shot, which was sorted by file size.

DD-Quick.png



This screen cap shows Disk Drill's deep scan results. It's actually still scanning at this point, so the results aren't complete, but the screen cap speaks for itself. Thousands more files… unique files… and the few I tested with Quick Look showed they were intact and indeed recoverable.

DD-Deep.png
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top