How To Get All Of The Features Of MacKeeper, For Free

[musty345]

I know most people dislike MacKeeper (myself included), but you might like he look of a few of its features. Here are free alternatives to most of them.

• Antivirus: ClamXav (As simsaladimbamba and GGJstudios pointed out, running Sophos can increase your Mac's vulnerability, see their comments for an explanation)
• Encryption: TrueCrypt
• General cleaning up: Onyx
• Uninstalling apps: AppCleaner
• Restoring deleted files: TestDisk
• File shredder: Permanent Eraser
• Backing up: Time Machine or SuperDuper (for bootable backups)

[Quotenfrau]

$39.95 for MacKeeper bundled with useless other apps

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by musty345

• Antivirus: Sophos

Sophos should be avoided, as it could actually increase your Mac's vulnerability, as described here, here and here.
As for malware protection: ClamXav + knowledge

Originally Posted by musty345

• Uninstalling apps: AppCleaner

Why use an ineffective application when Finder does it more precise? Just for the convenience?

Best way to FULLY DELETE a program without the need of any additional, inefficient applications

Visual presentation of the steps outlined in above link:

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by musty345

I know most people dislike MacKeeper (myself included), but you might like he look of a few of its features. Here are free alternatives to most of them.

The fact is, you don't need most of those apps.

Antivirus: I recommend that you avoid using Sophos, as it could actually increase your Mac's vulnerability, as described here and here. You don't need any 3rd party antivirus app to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as you practice safe computing, as described in the following link.

Mac Virus/Malware FAQ

If you still want to run antivirus for some reason, ClamXav (which is free) is one of the best choices, since it isn't a resource hog, detects both Mac and Windows malware and doesn't run with elevated privileges.

Encryption: You can encrypt your drive with FileVault, which is included with OS X.

General cleaning up: You don't need "general clean up" on Mac OS X. You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Some can even degrade, rather than improve system performance.

Some remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space.

Some of these apps delete caches, which can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Caches exist to improve performance, so deleting them isn't advisable in most cases.

Many of the tasks performed by these apps should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths

Uninstalling apps: In most cases, app removal software doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this and this. If you just want to delete the app, drag the .app file to the trash. No other software needed. If you want to completely remove all associated files/folders, no removal apps will do the job.

The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:

Best way to FULLY DELETE a program

Backing up: To make bootable backups that include the OS X recovery partition (which SuperDuper! doesn't), you can use Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5.1 ($40) or 3.4.6 (free).