A few weeks ago, CCleaner was released for Mac. CCleaner is well know to Windows users for a quick and efficient way to clean up your PC, and now wants to do the same for your Mac. CCleaner works by scanning your Mac and its various applications for things that it can clean out.

I had some initial trouble getting CCleaner to run when it first came out. It got seemingly stuck booting up in my Mac’s primary account, but not another account I had made. I later updated and cleaned out CCleaner and was able to actually run it. The interface is exactly the same as it is in Windows, minus the parts where Mac functions were switched in the place of Windows functions. The app is very straight forward to use; all the buttons and functions are clearly labeled. While perhaps CCleaner could have practiced a little more in the Mac aesthetic, the fact that they are keeping the apps consistent across Windows and Mac is commendable.

In the left sidebar, you will find Cleaner, Tools, and Options. The Cleaner functions gives you the option to clean out Mac specific functions, such as Safari’s cookies, history, preferences etc. You will also find it can clean up your Mac’s Trash Bin, Logs, the Software Update Cache, and more. It also gives you the option to clean out junk from your other apps, such as Dropbox, Evernote, Flash Player, Skype, LibreOffice, and more. It also gives more specific option for the web browsers Firefox and Opera. In the Tools Section, CCleaner allows you easily uninstall apps, repair disk permissions, and erase free space. You can choose to erase disk space using a single pass, 7 passes, or the most secure 35 passes. Repairing of disk permissions seems efficient, though I still prefer to use Disk Utility or a more robust tool like Onyx. Uninstalling apps worked, but it completely deleted my Skype app rather than throwing the files into the Trash Bin. Therefore I couldn’t compared it to another app like AppCleaner, which moves all the associated files of an app into the trash so that you can see what was removed.

The Options setting doesn’t really provide many options. It does allow you, however, to select what cookies you want to keep. Unlike almost every other cookie-cleaning app, CCleaner allows you the option

to select what Internet cookies you wish to keep when CCleaner cleans out your system. This means you don’t have to log into YouTube, Facebook, or any other account you have. It also allows you to see how many cookies are really on your system. If there was one must have feature, it would have to be this one.

CCleaner overall still has some problems. I mentioned that I don’t like how it just deletes the app instead of send it to the trash bin. And while the scope of CCleaner’s app cleaning abilities may be, I would appreciate if CCleaner would tell me what exactly it’s cleaning when I hit the “Clean” button. It does a very good job at telling me what it’s doing for web browsers, but I wish they could extend that explanation to the other apps and functions that it cleans.

CCleaner seems to be a very good cleaner, especially when it comes to cleaning out web browsers. I really like it when it comes to keeping browser cookies that you choose, rather than mass deleting. I hope to see better explanations and a different uninstall format in future updates. For the average user, CCleaner seems to the trick, and is my choice for when I need to clean up my web info.

CCleaner is made by Piriform available for Mac’s running OS 10.5 or higher. You can download it for free from their website or from the Mac App Store. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this or any other topic, leave a comment below or email me at easyosx@live.com You can also check me out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube by hitting the buttons on the top of your screen. You can also check out my Google Plus Page at https://plus.google.com/107817518299218190319. Thanks!