So, just ran the 'demo' version of Winzip Mac Cleaner, and it 'discovered' a 32GB application it could remove that I had never installed. Anyone have experience with the application?
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Winzip Cleaner?
- Thread starter Tomb01
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Personally, the name alone screams "avoid" and if it isn't even telling you what that app is or its location, then that's a huge red flag. Cleaning tools' worth are frequently overstated by the manufacturers themselves so they can sell their product, when in reality they do very little (at best), and at worst they'll actually decrease performance or completely bugger your machine.
Frequently emptying your Trash, shutting down your Mac, and ensuring your software is up to date often makes more of a positive difference for a Mac a lot more often than you'd think. That's pretty much the only maintenance most users should be doing on their system. Users (especially ex-Windows users) perceiving that they're doing more to speed up their machine without really knowing what the app is actually doing is a very dangerous thing – trust me, I spent 6 years in tech support!
That said, there are some 'cleaning' applications I would recommend if you need them – though they're far from mandatory for every day use. AppCleaner is a great application which removes all related files when uninstalling/deleting an app. MalwareBytes for Mac is an absolute must if you're having issues with popups or malware. OmniDiskSweeper is a lean program with a simple UI which breaks down what's using what disk space on your Mac.
But again, you shouldn't be concerning yourself with cleaning tools unless there are bespoke circumstances. And if you do need an app that does anything which resembles under the hood cleaning, then there are going to be much better free alternatives anyway.
Frequently emptying your Trash, shutting down your Mac, and ensuring your software is up to date often makes more of a positive difference for a Mac a lot more often than you'd think. That's pretty much the only maintenance most users should be doing on their system. Users (especially ex-Windows users) perceiving that they're doing more to speed up their machine without really knowing what the app is actually doing is a very dangerous thing – trust me, I spent 6 years in tech support!
That said, there are some 'cleaning' applications I would recommend if you need them – though they're far from mandatory for every day use. AppCleaner is a great application which removes all related files when uninstalling/deleting an app. MalwareBytes for Mac is an absolute must if you're having issues with popups or malware. OmniDiskSweeper is a lean program with a simple UI which breaks down what's using what disk space on your Mac.
But again, you shouldn't be concerning yourself with cleaning tools unless there are bespoke circumstances. And if you do need an app that does anything which resembles under the hood cleaning, then there are going to be much better free alternatives anyway.
Normally wouldn't have even considered it, but went ahead and ran the 'cleanup check' part of the free download just to see what it found. Most of it was 'don't care' stuff, but in the 'application cleanup' it found a 32GB app (gfxcardstatus by Cody Krieger) that I had never installed. Surprised me, and made me think there might be something to look for, but could not identify any files on my system that had the tag for gfxcardstatus. I use MalwareBytes sporadically, and agree that a Mac in general does not need 'cleaning' like a PC would, but my system tends to be moderately full (have lots of vmware images I move on and off depending on what I am doing) so a 32GB thing caught my eye. A 'commercial' app like Winzip Cleaner should (in my view) be one that doesn't normally find bogus things, so was trying to interpret what it found.
How it got there, I'm not sure, but I'm assuming the cleaner program is not reporting the correct size (unless it's some weird log file that has gone completely whack-o) The download of the latest version is under 1 megabyte.
On a side note, from the developer's website:
On a side note, from the developer's website:
The explanation from https://gfx.io sounds quite confusing to me.
With gfxCardStatus one can just switch between internal and dedicated graphics card. I'm using it every now and then to use the desired graphics processor.
Sometimes specific apps are refusing to work with one graphics card, but play well with the other. Another usage example is to lower the fan noise, while invoking apps that are demanding much of the dedicated graphics card, but are also running flawlessly with the internal one. On my 2012 MBP that works much better than on a more recent model. Choosing the internal graphics card is obviously lowering the power consumption, too. Therefore one can safe battery power while working unplugged. But the app won't show which apps are consuming more or less power or how much energy one saved by manually switching to the weaker GPU like probably some battery monitoring apps can do. As a side note, the developer recommends the built-in auto-switching setting.
However, gfxCardStatus takes 2.449.710 Bytes (3 MB) plus some few KB for preferences, libraries and functions outside the app package on my drive and not 32 GB. 32 GB must be something else. If your Mac has installed 32 GB of RAM, that could be sleepimages holding the RAM content in case of a crash. I've seen other cleaner apps suggesting to remove entire preferences folders, not just some caches that will get rebuilt. So just be careful and better do a backup right before giving Winzip Cleaner a serious try ;-)
With gfxCardStatus one can just switch between internal and dedicated graphics card. I'm using it every now and then to use the desired graphics processor.
Sometimes specific apps are refusing to work with one graphics card, but play well with the other. Another usage example is to lower the fan noise, while invoking apps that are demanding much of the dedicated graphics card, but are also running flawlessly with the internal one. On my 2012 MBP that works much better than on a more recent model. Choosing the internal graphics card is obviously lowering the power consumption, too. Therefore one can safe battery power while working unplugged. But the app won't show which apps are consuming more or less power or how much energy one saved by manually switching to the weaker GPU like probably some battery monitoring apps can do. As a side note, the developer recommends the built-in auto-switching setting.
However, gfxCardStatus takes 2.449.710 Bytes (3 MB) plus some few KB for preferences, libraries and functions outside the app package on my drive and not 32 GB. 32 GB must be something else. If your Mac has installed 32 GB of RAM, that could be sleepimages holding the RAM content in case of a crash. I've seen other cleaner apps suggesting to remove entire preferences folders, not just some caches that will get rebuilt. So just be careful and better do a backup right before giving Winzip Cleaner a serious try ;-)