Just like any day-to-day item, your Mac needs a good cleaning once in a while. Getting rid of all the unnecessary files will help your Mac return to its factory excellence and speed up to match your needs. However, you might find yourself clueless as to where to start your Mac clean up: what can be deleted and what should be left on drive? Don’t worry. You might be a little bit lost right now but, as usual, we have some bulletproof tips and tools to help you clean your Mac and speed it up.
4 steps to Mac cleanup
The good news is that in four (or even less) steps you can get a cleaner Mac and boost your Mac’s performance.
If your Mac is out of storage space or starts running slow, you’re up for a cleaning game. And you don’t have to do it alone. We’ve prepared the smartest memory-boosting hacks and practices to speed of your Mac safely. Time for an easy Mac cleanup!
Clean up your Mac’s Desktop
This might seem like an obvious step to take, but you’d be surprised how many Mac users believe the Desktop is the perfect place to store files and docs, handy and always on tap. However, that’s a rookie mistake. Fortunately, you can fix it. That’s why you should clean your Mac starting from the Desktop before you go any deeper. Be honest, can you even see your desktop background clearly now or is it obscured because of the icon-riddled mess?
When it comes to Mac cleaners, you would be hard-pressed to find a more popular solution than CleanMyMac X by MacPaw. This feature-packed app boasts a polished user interface and a whole host of useful cleaning features, making it possible to get rid of junk in all corners of your macOS with a single click. Telling the app when you'd like to perform a thorough cleaning up of your Mac's system is a method many prefer to shutting down and restarting often. It has the upshot of removing files and folders you no longer use, and cleaning up tasks that are slowing your Mac down behind the scenes. A simple shutdown may not do this. Why clean your Mac’s hard drive? The most obvious reason is that you're running out of space on your boot disk. And, while there are many things you can do to free up disk space, including using Apple’s own storage management tools, it’s a good idea to start by getting rid of the junk that’s accumulated and that you don’t need.
The fact is, that the Finder treats any folder or file on your desktop as a window. A couple of items on the desktop cause no problem, but if the clutter persists, your Finder will soon slow down and get on your nerves. So better sort it all out to separate folders and let us quickly take you to number two.
Free up your Mac’s hard drive
When it comes to storage, there are items you know about (like your photos and videos) and many hidden entities (like cache files, logs, and app junk). These deep-seated junk files may start off small, but over time they will begin to weigh your Mac down.
Tip: According to one test conducted by MacWorld, nearly full hard drives perform 17.5% slower than the cleaner ones. That’s why it’s so important to refresh your hard drive every now and then. Your system will convert the newly-released free space into virtual memory to ensure your apps are running smoothly. Otherwise, if you’re low on space, your Mac will slow down.
One folder you should regularly clean up for a faster Mac is the Downloads folder. This is where junk piles up little by little, resulting in a total mess. For a complete Mac clean up, make sure to also ditch any unnecessary widgets or apps. Wait, but you think you might need them one day? Truth is, if you haven’t used them so far, you won’t use them in the future. So gather all your courage and hit Delete.
If your Mac is still running slow, then it could be due to old hardware. A new SSD or more RAM is the easiest way to boost your hardware performance without having to spend too much.
How do I know what to delete?
What’s really annoying is that some massive folders on your Mac remain invisible. Each app or website visit leaves behind its own archive of data, which keeps growing over time. To hack this, you can use CleanMyMac X app by MacPaw. It uncovers large redundant files you can delete. And this application is notarized by Apple.
broken downloads
remains of old apps
outdated cache
It found 5.81 GB on our computer, but it may detect even more on your Mac.
Take control of startup and login items
When your Mac boots up, the macOS will launch various startup items. Some you do need, but nearly half of them can be safely switched off. Otherwise, they’ll sit in the background using up your system resources and slowing your Mac down.
To remove startup and login items manually, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and click on your username. Next up, click on “Login Items” and select all the apps you don’t need running at startup. Then click the “-” button below and you’re done. By disabling the startup programs, you’ll have a speedier Mac next time you boot up.
Repair disk permissions
Disk permissions act like doorkeepers preventing third-party apps from meddling with your system. But disk permissions can get broken, which limits your Mac ability to find the right files.
If you’re on El Capitan or older OS X versions, you can repair disk permissions using the following command in the Terminal window:
sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --verify --standard-pkgs /
It will now check the validity of your disk permissions. If you get anything saying “permissions differ”, then you can fix it with this command:
sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs -- volume /
If you are a mere mortal, uneasy with using Terminal, a Mac cleaning utility like CleanMyMac X, can do a better, risk-free job. A single click in Maintenance > Repair Disk Permissions solves it without fuss. With your disk permissions fixed and verified you can enjoy a smoother overall Mac experience.
The free version of this tool is available for download here.
Once you’ve finished to clean up your Mac, make sure to reboot your machine for a fresh start.
Delete System Junk and browser cache
System Junk can account for significant amount of disk space. It’s a broad term that describes temporary files created by your OS itself and all your apps. Since we mostly use our Macs to go online, the internet-related junk takes up the most space.
How to clean up your browser cache:
For Safari, click Develop in the top menu
Then, click Empty caches
For Chrome, click the “hamburger” icon in the top right corner
Then click More tools > Clear browsing data
Find hidden files on your drive
You probably know that a lot of files are purposely made invisible on your Mac. Not necessarily with bad intentions. Such files could be crucial system components and thus protected from accidental deletion. Quite often, however, you’ll encounter remains of old apps, invisible adware, and extensions.
There is a shortcut key combination to reveal the unseen files.
Go to your Documents, or any other directory
Click Shift +Command + Period key
Do you see any grayed out files? Check what these files are and delete them if they look suspicious.
Remove old backups (and Time Machine backups)
There are several layers of backups built in your macOS. Local Time Machine snapshots, iOS, and iCloud backups, etc. If we’re talking about a clean Mac, that’s free from old baggage, you should look into removing them too.
Here is how to remove local Time Machine backups (a.k.a snapshots)
Click Launchpad and type in Time Machine
Your backups will be broken by locations, like Desktop. You can use arrows to the right to navigate between past states of that location.
Now, click on the gear icon in the menu above.
Select “Delete All Backups” in the menu.
Delete the iCloud backups stored on your Mac
Open System Preferences > iCloud.
Click Manage... at the bottom the pane.
Look through the list of iCloud backups in the sidebar.
iCloud photos will probably occupy the most space. If you’re ready to say goodbye to them, click Delete.
Build the map of your storage
Any computer is ultimately a tree of folders. What if you could draw the map of all folders you have on your Mac and see how large these folders are?
Apparently, there is an ultra simple way to do it. Some applications like Daisy Disk or CleanMyMac will build such “folder tree” for you and it’s really fascinating to look at.
For example, this is the Space Lens tool from CleanMyMac X:
Download Free Version
The blue bubbles stand represent my folders big and small. You can dive into each folder exploring your drive in a completely new way, much more informative than using the Finder. You can find your long lost folders and locate your biggest space wasters.
To use this tool, download the app (see the button above)
Click the Space Lens tab in the sidebar
Clean your Mac the smart way, all the way
If you’ve been following the steps above (and read some extra tips), you are fully equipped to clean up your Mac. Because you don’t need to be a bearded IT guy to do it. Let alone spend extra cash to improve your Mac’s performance. Simply cleaning your system as steps above suggest or using a dedicated app like CleanMyMac will help you out. By the way. CleanMyMac is free to download, so give it a try. And see your Mac’s capabilities now, when it it’s not weighed down by junk.
Had your MacBook or iMac for a while or just use it a lot? If so, you may have noticed a change in its performance. Even if you're doing most things right, junk files, background processes, and other things can easily stack up within your machine and potentially slow it down. If you've been searching 'clean up Mac' online, stay where you are. Here are our 4 top tips, including something that might surprise you.
Turn off 'FileVault'
'FileVault' is an in-built app for macOS that encrypts all the files stored on your Mac's hard drive. This also means that any new files you create or download onto your Mac are treated in the same way (protected by a password). This is good news if you worry about someone gaining access to your Mac's files or data. The downside is that 'FileVault' can easily sap power from your Mac's central-processing unit (CPU). Older Macs, especially ones not using SSDs, are the most likely to be hit by this problem. Turning off 'FileVault' can speed up your Mac. To do this, go to the Apple icon, 'System Preferences,' and then 'Privacy & Security'. After this, vTurn off 'FileVault'Turn off 'FileVault'isit the 'FileVault' tab. You can switch it on or off here. If you've had it on up to this point, please be aware that turning it off could trigger a lengthy process of decrypting your data. With this in mind, if you want a simpler, faster method of improving your Mac's privacy and performance, it's worth saying here that CCleaner for Mac can certainly help with your privacy and security. Our app is also purpose-made to clean up Macs and has many features.
Investigate your hard drive
Your Mac's hard drive needs about 10-20% of its free space available to help macOS work properly. Before you head off elsewhere typing in things like 'clean up Mac hard drive', there's an easy way to check for a problem. Go to 'About This Mac', 'Storage', and then 'Macintosh HD'. Once you've done this, visit 'Manage' and then 'Review Files'. You'll see three tabs for 'Large Files', 'Downloads', and 'File Browser'. Simply put, these tabs give you a summary of the files stored on your hard drive and how much space is being taken up. Click the tiny drop-down menu tab called 'Size' to sort these files and find the biggest offenders. It's possible to easily delete files that slow down your Mac. This in mind, it can require some investigation on your side and could end up being unnecessarily time-consuming. The good news is that CCleaner for Mac allows you to clean up a Mac from one app. To save you time and effort, you can use it to easily find and delete commonly overlooked temporary files and folders needlessly taking up hard drive space that could be put to better use.
Uninstall some apps
If you've installed multiple apps on your Mac since you've had it, this is something else that can also slow it down over time. Again, you can check how much space apps are using via the hard drive investigation method we went through earlier. Like how you might treat a smartphone, if there are apps on your Mac that aren't essential to macOS and you never use them (be honest), you should probably delete them. So, if you've been hitting up your favorite search engine with things like 'clean up Mac hard drive', then finding the courage to get rid of some apps is another good tip. You can easily drag apps into macOS's 'Trash' folder, but this doesn't fully get rid of them. In fact, even when macOS deletes files it still leaves traces of data behind. So, it's a good thing that CCleaner for Mac has a way of fully cleaning deleted files. Something else worth sharing is that our app makes the whole process of uninstalling stuff a lot easier for you. Rather than you having to jump between different folders to find apps, CCleaner for Mac allows you to view them in one place. Another great feature is that it can remove the configuration files normally left behind after an app's deleted, something that macOS usually doesn't touch.
Now it's time for our big reveal. Perhaps you can see what we've been building up to.
How To Clean Up My Macbook For Free
Download CCleaner for Mac
How Do I Clean Up My Mac Storage For Free
Here we are! Some of us simply don't have the time to amass the technical knowledge and confidence to manually clean up Macs ourselves. Although brilliant, macOS doesn't cover everything either. That's exactly why we created CCleaner for Mac to make your life easier. Apart from what we've already mentioned, our app can disable startup programs that slow down your machine and also repair permissions that can inadvertently sabotage your Mac's performance. Why not give our free version of CCleaner for Mac a try today?