Why Isnt There A Good Mac Cleaner

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We investigate 10 reasons why Macs are better than PCs as we ignite the age-old debate, dispelling common myths about price, spec, choice, and compatibility. Find out if you should choose macOS. Mac Cleanup Pro is a potentially unwanted application, or PUP for short, often being advertised as a system cleaner and optimizer. However once installed, Mac Cleanup Pro can cause a myriad of problems for your Mac. Mac CleanUp Pro is often bundled with freeware software that you have installed on your Mac.

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Though it's not easy to hack into or break through a Mac's security, it is possible, especially if someone accidentally installs malware without realizing it. If your Mac is running slow or you're seeing unusual advertisements within your web browser you might have accidentally installed malware at some point. Don't worry. It happens to the best of us (not me, of course). There are things you can do without having to burn it all down.

The best Mac Cleaner software helps you to do this without iCloud. You do not have to spend additional money if you can locate free space in your Mac itself. Other reasons why you need to consider Mac cleaner software includes the removal of GBs application data that is not often used. Nov 14, 2017 How to Remove Malware and Adware From Your Mac. Chris Hoffman @chrisbhoffman November 14, 2017. It won’t necessarily block anything new, and it won’t stand in the way of all the adware and spyware out there. You need to follow good online safety practices to avoid malware on a. When your Mac takes too long to boot, a mixture of feelings flood your heart but none of them is good. You feel impatient, angry, inconvenienced and much more. Though the fact that the macOS Mojave slow login is not pleasing, the best part is that there is a solution. Why you need a Mac cleaner software. If you use XCode or other Development Tools, then the application stores tons of user data, application data for rendering and run time purposes. There are other Development junk files, such as support files, Caches, Frameworks and temporary files are stored and left.

At the end of this process, shut down your Mac. Gonzalo Martinez, an Apple repair specialist, says: “When you shut down your Mac it clears the cache in your RAM. It’s a good idea to close down your Mac every now and then to make sure there aren’t applications that you quit but are still taking up some of your RAM.”.

The problem: Mac malware in the Library folder

Serenity Caldwell writing for iMore in 2017:

My father-in-law's MacBook Pro had been running into curious slowdowns for a two-year-old laptop and he kept on seeing weird sites taking over his Safari and Firefox search bars. It was clear to me that his browser had been hijacked.

We got rid of the browser hijack pretty quickly — I suggest using Cella's excellent how-to if you ever run into a browser hijack yourself — but the slowdowns were more curious. Upon further investigation, I found a couple of self-professed 'Mac security programs' that popped up, demanding money to 'clean your Mac from junk'.

Spoiler: These programs were the junk. And worst of all, they'd seemingly added a bunch of nonsense files into this computer's Library folder, with random folder names like 'prestidigitation' and 'beeswax'.

Now, I want to preface: I'd never seen an attack like this on a Mac before in my life, and finding this kind of full-Mac hijack is very rare. It's likely that he accidentally installed one of these 'security' programs (or had it installed), which spiraled out of control from there.

These hijacks didn't appear to be able to do much beyond slow down his machine with endless failed attempts to run a program — the process didn't have admin permissions, so it couldn't execute a thing from the library. But because they were there, they were constantly crashing aspects of his Mac. I knew I had a malfunctioning laptop on my hands, so I turned to my age-old troubleshooting checklist.

How to fix a corrupted Mac

If you're working on a computer that has slowed down beyond reasonable aging or is otherwise acting beyond the pale, here are my favorite tactics you can take to try and restore it to its former glory.

Update the system software

This is almost always the first thing I do when troubleshooting Macs: Chances are, the user hasn't installed a security update or other software updates that may be slowing their computer to a crawl.

Click on the Apple menu icon in the upper left corner of the screen.
Select App Store Healing/dmg macros wow. to open the Mac App Store.
Click on the Updates tab at the top of the Mac App Store window.
Install all relevant updates. (You may need the Apple ID and password for the machine.)

If the computer is running macOS Sierra, you can avoid having to do this troubleshooting step in the future by turning on Automatic Install in System Preferences, which can automatically download newly available updates in the background, and install them overnight.

With the Mac App Store open, click on App Store in the upper left corner of the Menu bar.
Click on Preferences.
Under Automatically check for updates, check the following boxes:
- Download newly available updates in the background
- Install app updates
- Install macOS updates
- Install system data files and security updates

Check the disk for errors

If software updates aren't doing the trick, the next thing to check is the hard drive itself. With Apple's Internet Recovery partition, fixing a cranky drive is an easy process.

Restart your Mac.
During reboot, hold down Command-R until it starts up.
Once rebooted, you should be in the Internet Recovery Partition. Select Disk Utility.
Click Continue.
In Disk Utility, click on the First Aid button,
Click on Run to execute.

Your Mac will then run a cursory check on its hard drive to determine if there's anything wrong — and if so — if it can fix it.

Reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC

If neither app updates nor disk repair are helping, sometimes a good cache flush can get your Mac running just a bit more smoothly.

To reset the NVRAM (or, on older Macs, PRAM), reboot the Mac and hold down the following keyboard command during startup for at least twenty seconds: Command-Option-P-R.

After you reset your NVRAM, you may be required to reconfigure some system settings (like sound and time zones), which are stored in that cache.

An SMC reset is a bit more complicated, and Apple recommends it only after all other troubleshooting avenues have been exhausted.

If you're using a laptop:

Shut down your Mac and plug it in.
Restart the computer by pressing the Power button along with the keyboard command Shift-Control-Option.
Release these keys, then just press the Power button to properly start your computer.

If you're using a desktop:

Shut down your Mac.
Unplug it and wait for at least 20 seconds.
Plug the Mac back in and wait 5-10 seconds.
Restart your Mac with the Power button.

Partition your disk (or erase it)

After exhausting all other avenues, this was the solution we came across to properly fix the broken laptop. The hard drive had been so corrupted by these 'security' programs that there was nothing I could do to fix it. When Safari launched over the login screen after a reboot, I knew my usual fixes wouldn't work: It was time to bring out the big guns.

In most cases, I'd grab an external drive, back up the corrupted disk, then wipe the drive clean with the Internet Recovery partition and start over. But there were a couple of reasons that wouldn't work here:

We were on vacation, and lacking any sort of external media.
With a semi-corrupted disk, we couldn't just clone the user folder and restore the new disk from a backup — we'd have to do a clean install, which meant moving files over one by one. If we'd missed something and moved all the old files to an external drive, my father-in-law would have had to carry it everywhere just in case.

Given that this laptop had a 500GB hard drive — only 40GB of which was being used — I had an alternate idea: I'd partition the drive, again using Internet Recovery, and install macOS Sierra on the new partition. Essentially, it would be a 'clean' new computer for my father-in-law to work on, but all the original data would still exist on the old partition in case he needed to grab a file.

Note: In order to partition your drive, you'll need enough free space on your drive to do so — at least 30GB. If you're light on space, you may want to back up your corrupted disk to a USB drive, instead.

How to create a partition on your Mac

Open Finder from your dock.
Select Applications.
Scroll down and open the Utilities folder.
Double-click to open Disk Utility.
Select your hard drive in the Disk Utility window. It will be the first drive on the list. It might be named 'Fusion,' or 'Macintosh HD.'
Click on the Partition tab.
Click the plus (+) button.
Change the size of the partition you wish to use by dragging the resize controls. The used space is represented in blue.
Name the new partition.
Click apply.

Disk Utility will check the disk and make changes. This will take several minutes.Disk Utility will then make the changes. After that's completed, quit Disk Utility to return to the main Internet Recovery menu.

Click on Reinstall macOS.
Click Continue.
Click Agree to agree to Apple's licensing agreements.
Choose the New Mac hard drive as the disk you'd like to install macOS onto.
Press Install.
The Mac will download a fresh copy of your operating system from the App Store and will install it. The speed of this process entirely depends on your Mac's connection speed to the Internet. You can wait an hour or longer on a slower connection.
Your Mac will restart automatically into the new partition once the software has downloaded, then the installation of the operating system will continue.

After you finish setting up the new hard drive, it's time to move your files over. Because of the way partitioning works, your old hard drive partition will show up next to your currently-active partition, just like an external drive; you can then grab any files you need from it.

Launch a Finder window.
Under Devices in the sidebar, locate your original Macintosh HD.
Copy any files you'd like to keep from your old hard drive to the new machine.

Note: If you want to copy over applications, I'd strongly suggest redownloading them from the source — the Mac App Store or the company's website — rather than trying to copy them over from the old partition.

From here, you can follow instructions for setting a Mac up from scratch when it comes to installing and customizing anything else.

I generally recommend keeping the old drive partition around for at least a few months in case you or your family member forgets to move something over; after that period, however, you can easily delete the old partition and move to the new partition full time.

Consider additional anti-malware protection

While malware on the Mac is rare, it does crop up, as we've demonstrated. Having the right tools to get rid of malware can be an important part of keeping your Mac safe and secure. There are a number of tools that you can choose from, including popular programs like BitDefender and Kaspersky, that will help you keep malware from infecting your Mac.

Questions?

Do you have any must-follow troubleshooting steps? Let us know in the comments.

Updated July 2019: Added a sub-section regarding anti-malware protection.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

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It happened again last week.

A friend was telling me she had convinced her mother to get a Mac laptop.

'But what is this MacSweeper?' she said, with a hint of puzzlement in her voice.

She meant, of course, MacKeeper.

Again: 'What is it?'

A recurring problem

In the early days of web browsing, windows containing ads would often pop up randomly and without notice, blocking content on the screen. Annoyed users would have to close these pop-up windows over and over again in an on-going game of whack-a-mole. Then, the very first iteration of Safari included a unique feature: Block Pop-Up Windows. With a simple check box, you could rid yourself this nuisance.

In short order, other browsers adopted this feature and all was well with the world..until it resurfaced, largely via new windows or tabs, and we were all back to Square One.

But what's been happening of late with these uninvited guests at our browsing parties is a little different. Instead of relatively harmless ads, we're seeing a hard sell by advertisers that uses fear, uncertainty, and doubt to scare users, strongly suggesting that their unprotected Mac is at risk of a virus, or might--horror of horrors--already have one.

And then comes the pitch: Wouldn't you like to download some software or call us right away at the number listed on your screen and buy a service plan to help protect you from evildoers in cyberspace? Or maybe even let us have control of your computer so we can scan and see if your device has already been infected?

While no one can guarantee that your Mac will always be completely safe from viruses and other malware, chances are pretty good that if you are careful and don't fall for scammers' tricks then your Mac won't be impacted.

There are lots of entities that are pushing unsuspecting users to download or buy software and services that have been reported to be of questionable value. These aggressive marketing techniques happen in many ways, including phone calls (more on that later).

MacKeeper is one of these products, and because it seems so prevalent thanks to its extensive on-line advertising campaign, we'll focus on it here. It is a suite of software programs that can securely erase files, perform backups, and other utilities. But some users claim that it slows down their Mac, and many people who accidentally downloaded and installed it now want to remove it.

Here's how.

Step 1. MacKeeper's Way

According to MacKeeper's website, the steps are simple: quit the app and drag it to the trash. If you're running an older version of MacKeeper, you may need to remove its menu bar icon first

From the Apple menu, choose Go > Applications.
In the window that appears, double-click the MacKeeper icon.
From the MacKeeper menu choose Preferences.
In the window that appears, click General.
Uncheck the box for Show MacKeeper icon in menu bar.
From the MacKeeper menu choose Quit.
Drag the MacKeeper app icon from the Applications window to the Trash.
Enter an administrator password twice when prompted.

Your Mac may open a web browser window for a MacKeeper survey that asks you to select a reason for uninstalling the software. It's purely optional.

Step 2. But you're not done yet..

Like just about every Mac app, MacKeeper spreads a bunch of support files in several different locations on your computer. Unfortunately, MacKeeper's uninstall process might not remove all of them, particularly if you have an older installation of the app.

You can download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware for Mac and have it do the heavy lifting for you, or you can do it by hand as outlined in Step 3 below. If you choose to install Malwarebytes, launch it and do this:

Click the Scan button.
In the sheet that appears, check the box for any software that you would like to delete and click Confirm. (As an aside, PUP stands for Potentially Unwanted Program.)
Once the process is finished, restart your Mac.

If at some point you want to remove Malwarebytes, there are directions at malwarebytes.com. You will probably also need to follow steps similar to those in Step 3 below to remove all the support files that Malwarebytes installs.

Step 3. The Manual Way

Even Malwarebytes may not get all of MacKeeper's supporting files. You should take a look in the Library folder in your home directory to make sure they're all gone. Here's where and how to find them.

In the Finder's Go menu, choose Go to Folder...
In the dialog box that appears, type ~/Library and click Go. This will open the Library folder which is normally hidden by default in your home directory.
If you find a folder named MacKeeper Backups, drag it to the Trash.
Scroll through your Library folder and open the Application Support folder. If you find any files or folders with MacKeeper in its name, drag them to the Trash.
Scroll through your Library folder and open the Caches folder. If you find files named com.mackeeper.MacKeeper, com.mackeeper.MacKeeper.Helper, or any other files or folders with MacKeeper in their name, drag them to the Trash.
Scroll through your Library folder and open the LaunchAgents folder. If you find a file named com.mackeeper.MacKeeper.Helper.plist, or any other files or folders with MacKeeper in their name, drag them to the Trash.
Your Library folder may contain a folder named LaunchDaemons. If you find inside it a file named com.mackeeper.MacKeeper.plugin.AntiTheft.daemon.plist or any other files or folders with MacKeeper in their name, drag them to the Trash.
Scroll through your Library folder and open the Preferences folder. If you find inside it a file named com.mackeeper.MacKeeper.AdwareAnalyzer.plist or any other files or folders with MacKeeper in their name, drag them to the Trash.
From the Finder menu, choose Empty Trash.. and Empty the Trash if prompted.

Step 4. If the hits just keep on comin'..

Sometimes installing MacKeeper will result in Safari extensions and cookies also being installed..and the prodding to install MacKeeper—as well as other ads—may keep appearing. The latest version of macOS contains a built-in tool that will remove known unwanted adware and malware when you restart your Mac. So try that first. If that doesn't work, here's what to do.

From the Apple menu, choose Force Quit...
In the window that appears, select Safari and click Force Quit.
Relaunch Safari while holding down the Shift key on the keyboard. This will prevent any windows that were open when you force quit Safari from reopening.
From the Safari menu, choose Preferences.
Click Extensions.
In the list that appears, select any extensions that you don't recognize and click Uninstall for each of them.
Click Privacy.
Click Manage Website Data.
In the sheet that appears, enter MacKeeper in the Search box to show any data related to MacKeeper and click Remove All.
Close the Preferences window and from the Safari menu, choose Quit Safari and restart your Mac.

Postscript

You can take all these steps when it comes to MacKeeper, but even so, aggressive marketing tactics may take a different form. The very morning right before I sat down to write this article, the phone rang at my house.

A guy named 'Jim' said his company had been tracking a problem with my computer for several weeks. He breathlessly asked me—a couple of times—to hurry up and turn on my Windows computer and sit down in front of it so he could show me what the problem was before it got any worse.

My turn to be aggressive.

'Well, James, I know you're lying to me because there isn't a Windows computer in this house. Now please take me off your call list and don't ever call this number again or I will contact the authorities and have you thrown in jail. How does that sound to you?'

Click

Made my day.

Any questions?