Your Mac is running a little slow these days. It takes forever to boot up. You have to delete something just to download that file attachment from Carla in accounting. Any time you stream a video it seems to lock up for a few seconds. Let’s fix all that.
Nov 10, 2018 The FoneDog – Mac Cleaner is one of the best software and a must have for you to clean up your Mac. This is because the FoneDog – Mac Cleaner will help you in different ways such as the following. It can help you clean up your junks. It can help you manage all your duplicate files. It can remove all similar images that you have on your Mac.
Update Your System Software
Before we do anything, let’s make sure your Mac is up to date. Click the Apple icon > App Store, then click the Updates tab. Install any software updates you see here, including macOS updates. This might include security updates or small performance improvements for whatever version of macOS you’re running.
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Of course, Apple’s operating systems have been free for the last several iterations, so if you want to also update to Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, or Sierra, you can usually do so without any knock on your Mac’s performance. This is completely optional and up to you, but make sure you are at least running the most recent version of whichever operating system you’ve landed on.
Get Rid of Old Apps
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Generally speaking, cleaning up your Mac is often about deleting all the cruft you’ve accumulated over the years that causes your storage space to fill up. If you’re low on space or folders just feel too cluttered, it’s time to delete old junk. Personally, I like to start by removing apps and then move onto deleting files. It’s very easy to glance at a list and know whether you still use an app or not.
Open up your Applications folder, then sort the apps by size, with the largest at the top. If you have a huge application installed that you never use, like iMovie or Garageband, get rid of them. Remember, you can always download anything you got from the Mac App Store again. If you purchased software from a developer, make sure you still have the license key somewhere before you delete it, just in case you need it again at some point in the future.
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We’re all trained to uninstall Mac apps by dragging an icon into the trash from the Applications folder, but doing so tends to leave random files associated with that app across your system. These orphan files are rarely substantial in size, but it’s clutter nonetheless. Instead, it’s best to use a utility that’ll also track down that orphaned files. I like App Cleaner for this because it’s free and easy to use. Click and drag an application you want to delete into the App Cleaner window, then App Cleaner hunts down and removes any files associated with that application.
Clear Out Your Storage Space
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Mac os high sierra manual boot camp. Jan 13, 2018 @James, here is what's happening following the macOS High Sierra update.The installer blessed macOS volume to be the default booting partition. Therefore, when you select the applesetos.efi the Mac boots into the default choice which is macOS. To change this behavior, go into System Preferences » Startup Disk and select Windows/BOOTCAMP. Jun 27, 2019 If you choose ”Restart in OS X” from the Boot Camp menu in Windows, you might see the message ”Could not locate the OS X boot volume.” Use the steps above to switch to the Mac operating system. Information about products not manufactured by Apple, or independent websites not controlled or tested by Apple, is provided without. Mar 04, 2018 Hi folks, I use to switch from PC to Mac OS by clicking on OS in the Bootcam icon in the notifications area. But now when I want to switch to OS, a message will pop up 'OS volume can not be found '. I started experiencing this issue after updating the Bootcam via the Apple update and also the Mac OS to High Sierra 10.13. Is anyone experiencing same? MacOS High Sierra. Table of Contents. Start up your Mac in Windows or macOS with Boot Camp. You can set the default operating system to either macOS or Windows. The default operating system is the one you want to use when you turn on or restart your Mac. Set the default operating system.
Chances are, once you clear out a bunch of dumb old apps you no longer use, you’ll have a lot more storage space. That’s not the end of the process though.If you’re working with small storage, you need to be more vigilant. Next up, it’s time to dig around for weird old files you no longer need.
If you’re running macOS Sierra, you can easily find and remove large files using the built-in storage manager. If you’re not on Sierra, I like the $10 hard drive analyzer, DaisyDisk. DaisyDisk analyzes your system, finds massive files, then lets you delete those files right from the app. Launch DaisyDisk and it shows you a graph with all your files based on type. This way, you can track down anything that’s suspiciously large, like some random video you needed one time, then delete it. DaisyDisk is idiot-proof and automatically hides system files. Since you can preview files in the app, it’s pretty hard to remove an important file on accident. Even still, before you do this, make sure you have backups of any important files.
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Go through your very large files and delete anything you no longer need. Depending on how you tend to store files or if you have different backups, this might be a few downloads you forgot about, or it might be entire directories of files you no longer need. For example, as you can see in the GIF above, I can follow a trail of storage hogs all the way down to my email application’s hidden attachments folder.
If you don’t want to shell out the $10 for DaisyDisk and you’re not using macOS Sierra, Disk Inventory X is free and does the job as well, it just doesn’t look nearly as pretty as other options.
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Clean Your Cluttered Hard Drive with macOS Sierra's New Storage Manager
One of the new, handy features in macOS Sierra takes care of something you probably don’t think…
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Optimize Your System
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Next up, it’s time to clear up all the random cache files, histories, and other junk that’s wasting space and slowing down your system. Historically, we’ve long been fans ofOnyX for this task.
When you first open up OnyX, it’s a bit confusing because you’ll see multiple tabs with a lot of different check boxes. Most of us don’t need to worry about the majority of this though. For a quick cleansing and optimization of your Mac, click the Automation tab. The default settings here are pretty safe for everyone, though some people may want to uncheck the box next to Web browser cache and history if you don’t want to lose specific data from your browser. When you’re happy with your selections, click the Execute button. If you prefer a more manual approach, click the Cleaning tab instead of Automation, then select the specific data to purge.
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If you don’t like OnyX for whatever reason, CCleaner does a similar thing and is easier to use. They’re both functionally the same, but OnyX has far more options for advanced users and can do everything for free out of the box without any additional purchases.
Clean Up Everything Else
Finally, let’s clear out a few other places the above options might have missed.
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If you’re unwilling or unable to do all this stuff on your own, there’s CleanMyMac, which for $40 does pretty much everything I listed above all in one app. CleanMyMac can fully remove apps, do general performance maintenance, and it’ll track down a variety of large files for easy removal. CleanMyMac tends to have a mixed reception amongst users, but How-To Geek and Macworld both give it the okay. Personally, I prefer the a la carte methods listed above though.
Spring comes with its own rituals. Here at Macworld, we like to throw open the windows, beat the dust out of the rugs, and straighten up our Mac desktops. Don’t stop at cleaning your home this season. Clean up your Mac.
If you're using macOS Sierra, it has a feature that will help tremendously with your Spring cleaning: Optimize Storage. You can use Optimize Storage to activate the Store in iCloud option, remove iTunes videos you've watched (they can be re-downloaded), set it to empty the Trash automatically, reduce clutter caused by large files and downloads, and a lot more. Optimize Storage is especially handy if you're using a Mac laptop with flash storage. You usually don't get the same amount of space as you would with a hard drive, so managing your space becomes more important.
Learn more about Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra
Beside Optimize Storage, there are other way to keep your Mac digitally clean. These tips from our editors will help you keep your Mac fresh and organized, whether you're using macOS Sierra or an older version of OS X.
Tidy up your desktop
Light Pillar’s wonderful app Desktop Tidy ($8; available on the App Store; requires OS X 10.8 or later) is a handy utility that cleans up your Mac’s desktop, keeping it free of clutter. It stores all desktop files and folders in a hidden Shadow Desktop, which you can access from the menu bar or in the Finder. That way, every file I download, each screenshot I capture, and every image I drag and drop to my desktop is stored and filed in an easy-to-reach location.
The utility quietly works its magic at scheduled intervals—as often as every minute or as infrequently as every seven days. It even organizes desktop items by file type, which makes finding and renaming files easy.—Leah Yamshon
Read our full review of Desktop Tidy () Delete unnecessary disk images
For most people, the Downloads folder is a dumping ground where files pile up in forgotten heaps. Go to the Downloads folder in the Finder and type
disk image into the search box. Select Disk Image under the Kinds header. Now, delete all of those downloaded DMG files that are just taking up space!—Jason Snell
In macOS Sierra, there's another way to delete disk images. Go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac, then select Storage and click on the Manage button. In the Reduce Clutter section, click on the Review Files button. In the main window, click on Downloads and the click on the Kind header to sort by that particular type. To delete a disk image. click on it, and then click on the X button that appears.
Empty out space-hogging Mail Downloads
I get quite a few attachments via email—PDFs, ePub ebooks, Word documents, images, you name it. Most of the time I save those files to my desktop or my Downloads folder, but on occasion I make the mistake of double-clicking a file. When you do that, the document saves itself to your Mail Downloads folder, hidden away in your Library file. Double-click enough files, and that folder can balloon in size. That’s why I make sure to check it and empty it every year or so.
The easiest way I find to do this is to use Spotlight—press Command-Space to see a search field appear—and then type
Mail Downloads. In the Folders section, you should see the Mail Downloads Data folder.
If this isn’t working for you, try getting to it the long way. In the Finder, select Go > Go to Folder. Type
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads in the text field. Click Go, and a Finder window will open showing the Mail Downloads folder.
Once you get to the folder, you can select all files and delete, or rescue the few files you want to keep awhile in a more permanent location—say, the regular old Downloads folder.—Serenity Caldwell
Keep a clean cache
We’ve all heard “Empty your cache” as a web browser troubleshooting tip. As it turns out, a Mac stores a lot of information—not just browser-related details—in files called caches, allowing quick access to that data and reducing the need to fetch it from the original source again. Unfortunately, that information can sometimes become corrupted, or otherwise problematic. For example, you might end up looking at old data instead of the most current version of a website, or you may notice that a file’s icon doesn’t look quite right in the Finder.
Although you can manually go in and find some of OS X’s most commonly used cache directories (
~/Library/Caches is a good place to start), plenty of tools will handle this job for you. Cocktail, from Maintain, is among the longest-running and best of these. Not only can it clear your caches, but it can also perform assorted other maintenance tasks, such as deleting your browser’s cookies, looking for corrupted preference files, rebuilding certain databases, and way more. You can download it and use it for free for up to ten launches, but at $19, it’s a pretty good buy.—Dan Moren
Purge unwanted apps
As someone who reviews products for Macworld, I regularly try new apps and then delete them. For the most part, you can drag an app from the Applications folder to the Trash, but often an app creates folders and files outside of the app package and in various locations on the drive, which makes those files and folders difficult to find and toss out. For this reason, I use AppTrap, a free utility that installs as a System Preference pane and runs in the background.
When you Trash an app, AppTrap finds all the associated files and folders and moves them to the Trash—there’s no need for you to find those files on your hard drive yourself. Sometimes, however, when your Mac is updating an app, you want to keep the associated files but discard the old app; AppTrap will ask if you want to leave the files (which you want to do) or move them to the Trash. You can find other, just-as-capable utilities that do the same thing, but I’ve used AppTrap for years, and it has never given me problems or affected my Mac’s performance.
In macOS Sierra, you can also remove apps through the Optimize Storage feature. In the Apple menu, select About This Mac. Select Storage and click on the Manage button. In the left section, select Applications. The main section of the window will show a list of your applications. Select the app you want to remove, and then click on the X button to remove it. One caveat with this method: Only apps downloaded from the App Store will have all its components removed. If you got an app outside of the App Store and use this method to uninstall it, all the components may not be removed. Under the Kind header, you can see if an app was from the App Store or not.—Roman Loyola
Disinfect your grubby keyboard
My ergonomic keyboard accumulates so much dust and crumbs that occasionally I have to turn it upside down and shake it just to get the keys to work. But a thorough cleaning, even just once a year, can knock away the grime and germs. Unplug your keyboard or, if it is wireless, remove its batteries. If you’re cleaning a laptop, shut it down and unplug it. Blow the dust out from between the keys with a can of compressed air.
To finish the job, all you need is a package of disinfecting wipes. Apple recommends Lysol Wipes or Clorox Kitchen Disinfecting wipes by brand name. The basic idea, however, is to wipe your keys gently with something alcohol-based. (Before you use a wipe, squeeze out any excess liquid.) As tempting as it might be when you’re feeling germophobic, do not use wipes with bleach, or spray everything with Lysol; you might damage the keyboard.—Scholle Sawyer McFarland
Editor’s note: This article originally posted on March 21, 2013. It has been updated to reflect macOS Sierra.
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