Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

CleanMyMac

Status
Not open for further replies.
yojitani

yojitani

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Apr 28, 2005
1,858
10
An octopus's garden
Has anyone used this app? I found an ad on MR, downloaded, and scanned but I'm a little apprehensive about the work that it does. Could removing the binaries on apps damage them at all? Are languages easy to reinstall if I need them later?

User experiences much appreciated!
 
It seems to work on my machine, although I haven't run it through the cleaning exercise because I want to know what it's doing first. Does MacDust sweep out the binary code?

edit: so I downloaded MacDust. It doesn't really do what CleanMyMac does. CleanMyMac claims to remove binary files which, according to the scan take up a whopping 4GB of space and, more importantly in my view, weigh down a few apps. I'm just worried about doing it since I don't really understand what the consequences might be.
 
I too am curious about the potential consequences of removing universal binaries from my apps, thereby freeing up some space and also making the apps run quicker?

Does anyone know if this works, or if there are any apps that I should specifically avoid doing this on? Will it make apps run quicker as it claims?

Any other thoughts? Thanks!
 
I wanted to post more than this today, but I'm a little short of time. The skinny: I can't say I notice any difference in the speed of any applications, even heavy ones like photoshop. It did mess up my Speed Download for some reason, but I have not noticed any other problems. I'm not really sure this app is worth it. It does what it says it does, but the results are far from impressive.
 
cannot remove cleanmymac completely

I tried CleanMyMac (Demo) and really don't like it. I removed it and when checking in the console I now still see dozens of log entries "CleanMyMacHelperApp started..." and "CleanMyMacHelperApp exited..." even after I removed the app.

How do I get rid of that CleanMyMacHelperApp process?
Needless to say, I am extremely dissatisfied by this application.
 
Bloatmymac you mean? That product never stopped running and it wasn't exactly generous with my RAM. Certainly not the the ccleaner of Mac. Luckily, Snow Leopard gave me an excuse to clean install.
 
nuwonda said:
How do I get rid of that CleanMyMacHelperApp process?
Click to expand...

This can be tricky. I would hope that any developer who is inserting processes like this would have some robust instructions on uninstalling. Apparently not. Before you proceed, you should run Activity Monitor and quit the CleanMyMac process.

How did you uninstall? If you simply dragged the icon to the trash, you might try this: Download/reinstall CleanMyMac and then use something like AppCleaner to uninstall it.

If you did use an uninstaller, then the software that launches the process was left behind (obviously).

Here's how you can find it, maybe:

Go to the Finder and type in the exact name of the process in the Find box in the upper right hand corner of a window. (Using Command-Space won't be as helpful as you'll see in a sec.)

(Spotlight will default to look in a file's contents for the string. Things might progress more quickly if you select the "File Name" button.)

Spotlight probably won't find it. BUT ... click the little plus sign so that you add another search criteria. Click the Other ... button and a panel appears with a list of more options. Select "System Files."

Spotlight will default to "System Files ... aren't included." Change that to "are included."

If you don't see the CleanMyMac process, then there's a deviation between the file names. If you do find it, I don't think you'll have any trouble deleting it, but someone else may want to weigh in on that score.

mt
 
I just dragged it to the trash bin.

As you remarked Spotlight did not find any "CleanMyMacHelperApp" and no search so far did turn up any file/app of that name.

I will try the "include system files" approach you mentioned. Thanks.

If all else fails I will have to reinstall that cursed demo and deinstall with AppCleaner as you suggested. Although I really hate to reinstall that app again...

Will post the results later today.

Thanks!
 
I just did a search and came up with the file that is probably causing the problems at ~/library/application support/cleanmymac

I hardly use this app. You never really know how it's going to mess up other applications with the binary trimming it does and there's really not enough support with the app to tell you what it does. I prefer onyx.
 
yojitani said:
I just did a search and came up with the file that is probably causing the problems at ~/library/application support/cleanmymac
.
Click to expand...

Bingo.
/Library/Application Support/CleanMyMac
is the culprit.

And there also is a directory:
Library/Caches/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac

And I also found stuff left in:

Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.plist
Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.helperTool.plist

Which I just nuked... Good riddance.

Sidenote: I only installed this app cause I saw the banner on macrumors.com

Thanks for the help!

Happy camper again.
 
So I take it CleanMyMac is useless...?
I also read about it and someone recommended it to me.
Does Mac Snow Leopard 10.6.2 come with a program to clean my MBP? or what's the best way to perform a disk clean up?
 
It's not useless. It does what it says it will do, but you have to be careful. Some apps don't like being 'cleaned.' Speed Download, for example, completely stopped after I 'cleaned' it. It can remove the burdensome language files though.

For general maintenance, I use Onyx and Tech Tool 5. In fact, I just did a full maintenance this evening and my mac seems to be performing a little better.

Let us know what kind of cleaning it is you want to do and I'm sure we can give you better advice.
 
nuwonda said:
Bingo.
/Library/Application Support/CleanMyMac
is the culprit.

And there also is a directory:
Library/Caches/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac

And I also found stuff left in:

Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.plist
Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.helperTool.plist

Which I just nuked... Good riddance.

Sidenote: I only installed this app cause I saw the banner on macrumors.com

Thanks for the help!

Happy camper again.
Click to expand...

Actually, this does not disable launch of CleanMyMacHelperTool.
It only makes it impossible. But OS will keep trying to start it every time you modify .Trash folder, e.g. emptying the trash.

In fact, every time you do that, console will show this:

com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[260
(com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.helperTool[673]) posix_spawn("/Users/Me/Library/Application Support/CleanMyMac/CleanMyMacHelperTool", ...): No such file or directory

because you deleted it.


I solved this problem with the open source software Lingon which monitors all services on your mac.

Just start it, click on the lock (bottom-left) to make changes, select com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.helperTool, then File -> Delete (or Cmd-Backspace).

Now reboot to load new settings.

And u'll finally get rid of it!
 
teejay7, thanks so much! I have Snow Leopard and I downloaded Lingon 1.2 (didn't see the 2.1.1 update) and followed your easy instructions and now Spotlight sees no CleanUpMyMac on my computer. That's great and from now on I'm going to be more careful what I download....get reviews, etc, first! Thanks again!

(Is Lingon an app like AppZapper?)
 
CleanMyMac Self-Destruct

Hello everyone!
After reading this post I see that probably all of you forgot that CleanMyMac is actually a cleaner app and it can uninstall any applications correctly.

This includes CleanMyMac itself. You can just open it and drag its own app file into the Applications module to scan and Remove itself completely, including the helper tool and all the related files.

I'm not gonna be saying if CleanMyMac is good or bad, because I work in MacPaw TechSupport, but you can just go to Apple Downloads and check what is the most popular Utility there ;)
 
mrmember said:
teejay7, thanks so much! I have Snow Leopard and I downloaded Lingon 1.2 (didn't see the 2.1.1 update) and followed your easy instructions and now Spotlight sees no CleanUpMyMac on my computer. That's great and from now on I'm going to be more careful what I download....get reviews, etc, first! Thanks again!

(Is Lingon an app like AppZapper?)
Click to expand...

You're welcome!

I don't have knowledge of AppZapper, but Lingon is actually a plist creator for launchd (Launch deamon of MacOS X, which is father of most processes).


Greka said:
Hello everyone!
After reading this post I see that probably all of you forgot that CleanMyMac is actually a cleaner app and it can uninstall any applications correctly.

This includes CleanMyMac itself. You can just open it and drag its own app file into the Applications module to scan and Remove itself completely, including the helper tool and all the related files.

I'm not gonna be saying if CleanMyMac is good or bad, because I work in MacPaw TechSupport, but you can just go to Apple Downloads and check what is the most popular Utility there ;)
Click to expand...

I think this should can be removed by simply dragging it in the Trash, like all other applications on Mac.

Anyway, that's not intuitive!
 
nzmac said:
how can i download mackeeper for free?
Click to expand...
You really don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space. It 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.

One app that I would not recommend, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere, is CleanMyMac. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software.

Since this thread has been resurrected, I'll respond to an older post that is misleading:

Greka said:
After reading this post I see that probably all of you forgot that CleanMyMac is actually a cleaner app and it can uninstall any applications correctly.
Click to expand...
No, it does NOT uninstall applications correctly. In most cases, app removal software such as CleanMyMac, AppZapper, AppCleaner, etc. doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this.

The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:
 
Clean my mac works very well for me. I did not meet the problem with it. If you really do not like clean my mac, you can find other clean software. Some of them even are free, like this one on the macupdate. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41035/maccleaning-free

Or you can also not use any third party software and manually clean the useless cache files, log files and others. It requires some computer knowledge though.
 
Skyrim said:
Clean my mac works very well for me.
Click to expand...
While you may not have yet encountered problems with it, enough people have that it remains to be prudent to avoid this app. With so many reporting problems, it's not wise to take the risk, especially with much safer, more reputable apps available free, like Onyx.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back