Hi there. I’ve recently switched from a PC to a Mac as my main computer. On PC, I was accustomed to using CCleaner to tidy up any privacy-threatening files (cookies, temp files and the like, I suppose?) that I’d inadvertently left lying around. Having seen mixed messages about CCleaner recently, I’m looking to move away from it as I move to a new machine.
So, I’d be hugely grateful for some advice on what (if anything) might be sensible to use on Mac to do this kind of routine privacy-cleaning. I know I can probably delete everything manually if I know where to look but trust neither my technical knowledge nor my concentration to do this successfully on a regular basis, so would love to find a suitable utility, but naturally want it to be both effective and privacy-respecting itself.
You can just go through the folders in libary if you unhide it.
When it comes to desktop OSses it isnt a bad idea to reroll a clean image from time to clean up cluther either. Just make sure you have license keys and files backupped.
You can use something like AppCleaner to fully delete apps and their leftover files. However, this is not a CCleaner alternative, it is just for deleting apps. I wouldn’t bother with getting rid of temp files and all that because there is no good app recommendation for this and the benefits are questionable.
Thank you again. If I’m not asking too much, what particular folders would you be looking to delete/clear? (I’m completely new to MacOS, so have no idea where anything is.)
did you look at my precedent post ? Onyx does exactly this and is privacy friendly, although not open source. would.be great if someone could test its internet traffic with wireshark
Thanks for helping out here. When you say the benefits are questionable, do you mean the benefits of deleting this files at all? Or just of doing so with an automating utility?
I find that deleting caches, temp files and all that is useless. The files are harmless and don’t really take up much space so you shouldn’t stress much about them.
The same thing could be said for deleting the leftover application files but if I ever want to re-install an app, I would want to start fresh and not have my old preferences and data saved.
Congrats on this move and let your Mac serve you well BTW: if you need some automation script, just shoot me PM; I have plenty of them for various actions.
Well, first of all, stay away from software that advertises as Mac cleaner. In 99% these are just scams/data harvesting crap.
First thing Id recommend is to visit System Settings > Privacy (name may differ depending what macOS version youn have) and look there.
Its lso important to install ALL updates that system tells you to. Dont worry that sth will break after update; in the extremely rare event of this happening, there is always second (smaller) update that (most often) comes within hours, which fixes it.
I usually format and clean install my Windows every month. And perform a FDE with veracrypt every single time. Whichever OS you use, it is best to perform a clean install regularly for maximum security
Yeah it’s sort of a vibes based thing like people associate cleaning in the real world with deleting files. Like it might make you feel better but it’s not really affecting anything.
AFAIK simply booting into safe mode on a Mac will delete a lot of the temp files. So you could just do that every couple weeks, wait a few minutes and reboot into standard mode.
just why yearly? Im doing this either once every 6 months or whenever sth suspicious happens (not much of this kind).