Cleaner apps

How safe are these cleaners for Mac? Are they worth paying for? I'm trying to clean up my MacBook 6,1 (Vintage 2008 !)

Which apps are you referring to? If its apps like CleanMyMac and so on, its usually best to avoid those..

Just stick with something like OnyX - it has an established reputation and it's free.

I mean any Mac cleaner. Thanks for your speedy replies

Forget about the "Cleaning/Tune-Up" apps. As advised…just use the free app called Onyx. And if you like it…definitely send the developer a small donation (I'm sure they will appreciate it)!

- Nick

My question has always been, Besides what Onyx does, what is there to Clean? There is no Registry, No Windows files Just run Onyx which runs the OSX scripts that get run if you leave it on 24 hours a day and deletes logs and such. The other apps are like Snake Oil!

It's pretty amazing what Onyx does…especially for a free app. Makes me want to pop over to the Onyx site…and toss them a few more bucks "just because"!!

- Nick

It makes me wonder though, when there is such a great App like Oynx (and Main Menu when it was free), why there isn't a Software company that hasn't made a great Cleaning App for OS X and make it a Paid version.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Open Source community, and quite often give a little, for taking a lot, but it has me buggered, why there isn't such a Company out there, with the growing OS X Community.
As mentioned, the 'CleanMyMac' and others that have you pay, are just Bloatware, and don't do a good job at anything.

It has me miffed . . . .

TM, the financial model doesn't work. Why would anyone create an app to clean the Mac the way Onyx does but for a cost, when Onyx already does it for free? I cannot open an ice cream stand and sell ice cream at any price when there is a stand giving it away right next to me! Particularly when we are both delivering the same ice cream!

MacInWin said:

TM, the financial model doesn't work. Why would anyone create an app to clean the Mac the way Onyx does but for a cost, when Onyx already does it for free? I cannot open an ice cream stand and sell ice cream at any price when there is a stand giving it away right next to me! Particularly when we are both delivering the same ice cream!

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I like the analogy and I know exactly what you mean, but in reality, people feel a little more secure than they think they are paying for a service.

Lets look at your analogy, GIMP is a very powerful open source App, and can hold it own against Adobe PS, but why do more people PAY for Adobe ?? Because its a more polished App, it has quite a lot of support, people know if something goes wrong, they have someone to bleat at. Because someone is getting paid to work on the App, you know that there will be regular updates, and added features.

Yes, I know that Oynx is quite a good App, but personally I found it hard to Navigate, didn't know what to check or uncheck, and there isn't a great deal of Support Articles telling you how to really use it to its full potential.
I bought a version of MainMenu a way back, then they updated it, and it too was difficult to play with, and didn't go anywhere near there latest versions.

All I'm saying, is that if someone really sat down and made a easy to use Paid version of a Oynx type app, I'm sure there would be some takers. Im actually gutted that mainMenu went the way it did, as I really liked that App, as it wasn't complicated like Oynx, where if you check the wrong thing, your system can be rendered unusable

Any utility, free or paid, that does what Onyx does has the potential to muck up a system if the wrong options are chosen. A paid version might have better support. For some of these utilities the bigger question is why make them, free or otherwise, given that some of these utilities only duplicate scrips the OS already runs.

Slydude said:

Any utility, free or paid, that does what Onyx does has the potential to muck up a system if the wrong options are chosen. A paid version might have better support. For some of these utilities the bigger question is why make them, free or otherwise, given that some of these utilities only duplicate scrips the OS already runs.

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Then why is it, when anyone here says to 'clean your Mac' they recommend Oynx or back a couple of years MainMenu ?? Because they do a lot more than OS X's Disk Utility. They clean deeper and more thorough.
Screen Capture and Markup of images is free with Preview, but there are plenty of Apps out there that do a better job, or are more user friendly or are a all-in-one App that does everything, including having a file system.
Ember and MacSnapper are 2 such Apps, that are paid, but OS X has a free Option too, its just not up to what some people need.

I don't know that Onyx does MORE than Disk Utility, in that specific area. What Onyx does is to aggregate all the "cleaning" functions one might need in one package, so that instead of having to do 10 things, I do one and end up with Onyx then triggering the 10 things. It's convenience. I'm also not sure that "clean deeper and more thorough" is accurate, either. When Onyx is invoked, it runs the same process as Disk Utility does in Verify (or that fsck does) and results in the same report. What the cleaning function does is clean out the logs, caches, temporary files, etc, that get cluttered over time. But you could do that by finding and deleting the logs, caches, etc, yourself, letting them get recreated by the system as it needs. But that's a pain to do, so Onyx does it more conveniently. But not more thoroughly than I COULD do (but certainly more thoroughly than I probably WOULD do, to be honest).

I recommend Onyx for two reasons: 1. It works, 2. It is free. When a user comes here with a problem that would probably benefit from Onyx, it's nice to have a solution that costs nothing. When we do have to recommend a solution that costs (ParagonNTFS, for example) many times the user asks if there is a free solution.

Again, as a business proposition, it's not a good idea to invest money (and time is money) into creating a product that is already being well provided by someone for free. If someone can add functionality, or speed, or some other benefit, then it may be possible to sell a product with a free competitor, but if the products are equal in utility, most folks will choose the free version.

In your GIMP example, the reason I didn't use GIMP was that the documentation was miserable and I couldn't find any books to tell me how to use it. For PhotoShop there were a ton of books I could get on how to become a power user of PS. Plus, given that I wanted to swap files with other users of PS, using GIMP and praying that the transfer of GIMP files to PS files would work correctly seemed risky. The same logic applies in Pages and Word. I got tired of people complaining that my exports from Pages didn't look right in Word, so I got Word, despite the cost. In those cases paying (or paying more) for a product that did the same thing was still of benefit to me because of the fact that I simply couldn't get the free or lower cost version to work for me.

But that logic doesn't transfer well to Onyx because it's so simple to use. The defaults are just about perfect and the developer has put warning messages where the consequences can be less than desirable. It's practically foolproof. I cannot think of any thing that could be added that I would be willing to pay for. However, if a developer tries it and actually adds sufficient value above and beyond what Onyx already does, then I might be tempted, if that value is of sufficient benefit to me.

TattooedMac said:

It makes me wonder though, when there is such a great App like Oynx (and Main Menu when it was free), why there isn't a Software company that hasn't made a great Cleaning App for OS X and make it a Paid version.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Open Source community, and quite often give a little, for taking a lot, but it has me buggered, why there isn't such a Company out there, with the growing OS X Community.
As mentioned, the 'CleanMyMac' and others that have you pay, are just Bloatware, and don't do a good job at anything.

It has me miffed . . . .

Click to expand...

There actually is a really good one.... TinkerTool System (not to be confused with the regular "TinkerTool"). It does pretty much everything Onyx does, but has a handful of other tricks up its sleeve that can come in handy. The UI is a little rough (he tried to make it like the System Preferences app), but one thing it's GREAT at is explaining what each tool does.

MacInWin said:

But that logic doesn't transfer well to Onyx because it's so simple to use. The defaults are just about perfect and the developer has put warning messages where the consequences can be less than desirable. It's practically foolproof.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say fool proof, or simple to use.
I think I know my way around a Mac, and even deep parts of its file system, but despite the warnings (and to have those warnings tells me its not a easy to understand piece of code) I have found it hard to get around, and even had to stop the process once, because it was using my 1TB HD in my iMac as a swap disk, and I got a warning that the disk was full and it couldn't finish the processes it was doing.
There is no documentation saying DONT uncheck the Defaults unless you know what your doing, because untold damage can be done to your System, if you do.
But my post isn't about how easy Oynx is to use . . . . .
I think we have come to a impasse, and nothing further will contribute to the thread.

Lifeisabeach said:

There actually is a really good one.... TinkerTool System (not to be confused with the regular "TinkerTool"). It does pretty much everything Onyx does, but has a handful of other tricks up its sleeve that can come in handy. The UI is a little rough (he tried to make it like the System Preferences app), but one thing it's GREAT at is explaining what each tool does.

Click to expand...

Thanks LAB, I am downloading this now, and will test it out over the next 'x' months and see how good it is.

I've used it before though it was a few revisions back. Got it as part of one of those software bundles. Seemed to work pretty well at the time. I stopped using it because I rarely muck about the settings it lets me adjust anymore. Might have to give4 it another try though just to stay on top of things.