Have you heard about CleanMyMac X yet? Is it worth purchasing? Which utility are you currently using to clean up your Mac? Whether you are new to this Mac cleaner tool or looking for an in-depth review, let's find out with my story.

Efficacy

5 out of 5

Price

4.5 out of 5

Usage

5 out of 5

Support

4.5 out of 5

Quick Summary Developed by MacPaw, CleanMyMac X is like a bundle of Mac utilities that serve as a file cleaner, application updater and uninstaller, macOS extensions manager, malware remover, speed optimizer, and file shredder. These are presented in a friendly and intuitive way, making them easier to use. This Mac cleaner offers an excellent cleaning operation and provides interactive visual data about storage space usage. It gives specific statistics on the number and size of all the files it scans. Users can also choose a particular application to see detailed information that helps to understand what is taking up too much storage space. Besides, other utilities are also very handy in optimizing and protecting your Mac computer. It optimizes and speeds up your Mac and offers several functions to maintain it. Moreover, there is an ability to update outdated installed Mac apps, remove wanted apps and extensions, locate and delete large files and folders, as well as erase unwanted files, and make them untraceable. In terms of protection, CleanMyMac X provides a real-time malware monitor to detect and remove malicious programs quickly. These useful functions help maintain your Mac in good condition and help it run like new. For users who are considering both usability and intuitive interface, MacPaw does not disappoint them.

What I Like

Splendid, impressive and intuitive interface

Handy statistics tool on the menu bar

Fast scan speeds

Quickly optimizes and enhances performance

Perfect application uninstaller

Quickly detects large files

Useful sensitive data eraser What I Don't Like

No separate function to find duplicate files

Malware Removal seems quite simple

It does not support third-party browser's extensions & add-ons CleanMyMac X Overall Rating: 4.75 out of 5 $39.95 per year Free Download

My Beginning With CleanMyMac X Cleanup Software

Two months ago, once I turned my MacBook Pro on, and a warning message appeared: Your startup disk is almost full. It suggested that I delete some files to make more space available on my startup disk. At that moment, I ignored this warning and kept using my laptop as I usually did.

I thought it was okay, but I was wrong. It seems like my Mac was starting to run slower than usual. There was even a little delay when I opened a new application. In fact, I was beginning to notice that my laptop had begun to run slower from a year ago. I thought this slowdown was related to the previous warning. I looked for an answer from Google.com and my friends. All the answers I received confirmed that I needed to clean up and optimize my Mac. Not only by simply removing large files to claim free storage space back, but I also needed to delete junk files.

But how could I find them? I was wondering whether there was an application that could help me to do it automatically. Then I came across CleanMyMac X through the suggestion of Alize, a friend of mine. She recommended that I purchase it, and then with a single click, all my problems were gone.

It looks like a miracle, right?

What is CleanMyMac X?

From my perspective, CleanMyMac X is a must-have and effective cleanup software tool for macOS. I have not ever used its previous versions, such as CleanMyMac 2 or CleanMyMac 3, but I heard many users say that they weren’t worth buying. The reason could be that those previous versions did not achieve the results that those users expected. However, it seems that MacPaw has greatly improved this cleanup tool, based on the results I got.

CleanMyMac X is a Mac cleaner with a robust set of tools to maintain your Mac and keep it in top shape. This set of functions includes a junk files cleanup feature, malware remover, privacy protection, system optimization, system maintenance, application uninstaller, application updater, extension management, file management, and file shredder.

Too many needed features, right? Let's analyze it further!

A Detailed CleanMyMac X Review With All Features

The purpose is to keep your Mac running in the best performance. I will do an in-depth review regarding all features and even more profound on each.

I have created each category for each feature, including sub-categories. You can take a look at them in the "Table Of Content" section above.

Smart Scan: Boost Mac's Performance In A Single Click

Smart Scan is like an all in one solution and performs three major tasks: Cleanup, Protection, and Speed. It checks your Mac computer to detect all of the possible issues and corrects them as quickly as possible.

Cleanup : Scan your Mac and find all junk files and then allows you to choose the files you would like to eliminate.

: Scan your Mac and find all junk files and then allows you to choose the files you would like to eliminate. Protection : Search for all potential threats like viruses, malware, or any malicious files, and neutralizes them.

: Search for all potential threats like viruses, malware, or any malicious files, and neutralizes them. Speed: Give several recommended optimization tasks based on your Mac's condition to increase system performance.

Over the long term, I think this is the feature you would like to use the most often because it allows you to optimize Mac's resource usage with minimal effort.

Cleanup: A Powerful and Effective Cleanup Feature

While Smart Scan performs an all in one solution with all necessary tasks, in the Cleanup section, you can pick one specific feature. For example, to wipe temporary system files out, you just need to click on System Junk, begin to scan and eliminate them. CleanMyMac X does not do any additional steps.

This major feature has five sub-features, including System Junk, Photo Junk, Mail Attachments, iTunes Junk, and Trash Bins. You can easily guess the function of each sub-feature through its name.

System Junk

This analyzes the entire Mac system and finds temporary files, including cached files, language files, log files, and much more. As you see in the image below, it shows that I can reclaim 10.59 GB of storage space. That is quite a lot!

Click on Review Details to view deeper, and you can see that User Cached Files has taken a big piece of my hard disk space. Most are from Google and Firefox.

All items are selectable, and you can click on it to view deeper. With this structure, you can easily figure out what has taken up most of your storage space.

I found two sections that have taken up about 4 GB of hard disk space: Download and Unused Disk Images. This reclaimable space did not count in the total of 10.59 GB because it may store important files to users.

How about your result? How much storage space have you reclaimed?

Photo Junk

This lets you optimize and remove supporting data from your photo library. It does not affect your actual photo at all. Photo Junk also lets you clean up your local iCloud cache.

After scanning, I can get roughly 1 GB of space back from all sorts of Photo Cache.

Mail Attachments

This assists in discovering and removing all the local copies of your email downloads and attachments. There is no harm as they remain accessible through your email box. So what is the reason to keep attachments that you might have forgotten about?

However, Mail Attachments did not help me to revoke any storage space because I do not usually use the email application on my Mac. I often use Gmail.com and G Suite for the corresponding jobs.

iTunes Junk

This feature lets you detect and delete software updates, outdated iOS device backups, copies of iOS apps stored on your Mac, and incomplete downloads.

I also do not often use the iTunes application on this laptop, so there is no temporary file available. It only contains a backup of my iPhone 6 Plus, which is roughly 22.57 GB. It depends on the usage of each person, and there will be different types of junk files here.

Trash Bins

How often do you empty your Mac's Trash? I do it once a week, so there is nothing much to clean up. Nevertheless, if you do not do it often, you might have forgotten about any large deleted files in there. All files that you have moved to Trash are still there and take up space on the hard drive.

Over time, all sorts of junk files will gradually fill up your Mac hard disk until it runs out of space. From there, your Mac computer will become stagnant and slow down over time regardless of hardware configuration. Most of those files are hidden inside the system folders, which you can’t see. That is the reason why you should use cleanup software, and CleanMyMac X did a great job in this case. It is like a maid keeping your Mac computer tidy so that it can run like new.

Protection: Malware Removal Tool And Privacy Protector For Mac

Many people feel safer when using a Mac computer than a Windows PC. That is understandable because there is an age-old belief in the tech world that Macs do not get malware.

Well, you should know that this is not correct! Every operating system has vulnerabilities, and attackers can exploit them. So I would recommend that you don’t take this issue lightly.

Back to CleanMyMac X. It offers two tools: Malware Removal and Privacy. Both tools assist you in fighting against malicious applications and loss of online privacy, respectively.

Malware Removal

It performs an in-depth checkup and looks for malicious files and neutralizes them quickly. In addition, it provides a real-time malware monitor feature to protect your Mac from future threats.

In my perspective, it looks too simple, and be honest; I do not put much expectation on this sub-tool. I would rather find another anti-malware application than relying on it. This Malware Removal is not a powerful tool in the fight against malware.

How To Scan Your Mac For Viruses, Malware And Stay Secure Did you ever think viruses, malware, or adware would affect your Mac someday? It is a question I sent out to a group of normal Mac users a few weeks ago. But the result that I got back was unexpected. The most common answer I received was: “I have not even thought about that.”, “No computer virus on Mac ...

Privacy

As CleanMyMac X claimed, it helps to locate and remove your browsing history in all installed browsers, and eliminate all traces of your online and offline activities. It is also capable of cleaning up all chat history from Skype and Messages. The purpose of this wipeout is to avoid sensitive information leaking for identity theft.

However, I figured out that CleanMyMac X also added Saved Passwords of browsers in this section. This feature is too risky because I often save a lot of unimportant passwords in browsers. So I would suggest you use this sub-tool carefully because you may accidentally delete it. It cannot be undone!

Speed: Optimize And Speed Up Your Mac

Your Mac will definitely become slower than it used to be after several years of use. It could be because of outdated hardware or too many software factors affecting it. Whatever the reason, you should consider optimizing and helping it run faster. In this section, CleanMyMac X offers two main features: Optimization and Maintenance.

Optimization

This allows you to control what is running on your Mac. You can easily look at all applications and services that will launch with the bootup process. Not all installed apps run automatically when your Mac is booting, but part of them will automatically add themselves to this list.

The longer this list, the slower your Mac computer will be. Therefore, you should consider which ones should and should not be run along with the boot process. I would recommend leaving only a few items, for example, antivirus, to run simultaneously with macOS. All other Mac apps can be easily run later.

CleanMyMac X is also capable of identifying hung applications and heavy consumers and then let you terminate them to free Mac's resources.

In many cases, crashed apps may continue using system resources and slowing your Mac. It is the reason why you need an application to detect this issue quickly whenever needing it.

Maintenance

This contains a set of scripts that quickly optimize your system's performance. Three major functions that CleanMyMac X claimed are:

Improve drives performance: Takes care of the user hard drive by making sure the file system and physical state are fine.

Eliminate application errors: Resolves improper application behavior by repairing permissions and running maintenance scripts.

Improve search performance: Reindexes the Spotlight database to improve both search speed and quality.

Inside this set of scripts, there are nine tasks that you can run:

Free Up RAM

Free Up Purgeable Space

Run Maintenance Scripts

Flush DNS Cache

Speed Up Mail

Rebuild Launch Services

Reindex Spotlight

Repair Disk Permissions

Verify Startup Disk

You can choose one or many of them to run. A few tasks may ask for your Mac's login password to run scripts.

Free Up RAM is a feature I love most. You may know that many apps still occupy RAM even when you have shut them down. Free Up RAM helps me to regain those that have taken RAM space. It is important to me because my laptop does not have much RAM.

But if you have 64 GB or 128 GB of RAM, then ignore this tool. Why would you waste time doing a thing that does not make any sense, right?

Application: Mac Uninstaller, Updater, And Extension Manager

It is easy to install an application into your Mac because this process only requires one or two steps, and all is set! Removing is even more straightforward, but do you know how to uninstall programs on Mac properly?

To entirely uninstall apps from Mac manually, you need to search for all of the associated files that come along with the apps and then delete them. It means you need to do two steps: delete the app to Trash and find and remove all related system files on your Mac.

But do not worry! CleanMyMac X does everything!

Uninstaller

It offers an uninstaller with multiple different groups based on the current state, the app's distribution location, and the vendor. You can choose apps from the Unused group or developed by a specific vendor to uninstall. The user interface is intuitive and straightforward to use.

I have taken a look at all groups and decided to uninstall a few apps and reclaimed roughly 1.55 GB of space.

And I have also removed all Leftover files, which were from apps I sent to Trash in the past.

Besides, it also has a feature that might be useful to a group of users that they can remove a part of a particular application.

More specifically, you can select an application and then delete logs or user data files to reset it to the initial state.

For example, I selected Telegram and then deleted its logs and user data files. After that, it looked like a just-installed app and asked me to set up my account.

By this point, you might think that there is a chance to reset the trial process on many paid apps. I do not know! It might or might not work. I would also not recommend you to do so because it is illegal.

Updater

This offers a way to make sure all of your apps stay up to date. It will give you a list of outdated apps and allow you to select which one you want to update.

It also checks for software compatibility and suggests you install a proper version; even it is not the latest.

Extensions

CleanMyMac X can also manage your system extensions, widgets, plugins, as well as dictionaries. However, it seems CleanMyMac X does not support extensions and add-ons from third-party browsers like Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. I hope MacPaw will add this feature in the next update.

File: A Handy Utility To Organize And Manage Mac Files

This feature provides a couple of ways to manage Mac files with an intuitive interface. You can build your storage map with Space Lens, find and remove large files and folders with Large & Old Files, or wipe sensitive data without leaving a trace with Shredder.

Space Lens

It provides you with a visual size comparison of all files and folders on your Mac. It helps you in sorting the files based on their size, thus making your work easier in identifying the unknown and unused large files residing on your hard drive.

You can also use Space Lens to build the storage map for external hard drives or USB flash drives. There is no difference between internal and external drives.

Large & Old Files

It searches for large files that haven’t been used for a while and gives you a chance to delete them. You might have forgotten them, but CleanMyMac X did not.

Different types of filters allow you to understand further regarding the files you want to delete.

Shredder

This is a useful function nowadays because it assists in protecting your sensitive data. Sensitive data can be an essential document, a private contract, a copy of your ID, or even a photo between you and your girlfriend in bed. It could be anything that can hurt you when leaking out. This kind of data needs to be handled carefully, even when you want to delete it. A simple delete process is no longer safe. It is time to let Shredder delete these sensitive data for you.

Is CleanMyMac X Safe?

Researching for many years, MacPaw gives a program that efficiently scans Mac's system to choose what is not important and remove it intelligently. Besides, CleanMyMac X flags potential valuable data for further evaluation before executing optimization to avoid loss of valuable and sensitive files.

I have used this Mac cleaner for months and so far, so good. My laptop is tidier, faster, and I have reclaimed a lot of occupied storage space. You will also get an alert when you attempt to remove a file deemed critical to the macOS operating system. So I can tell you that CleanMyMac X is safe to use, and it does not create any harm to your Mac.

However, you should only download this tool from MacPaw's official website. Many fake CleanMyMac X out there are trying to install malicious programs onto your Mac.

Be careful!

CleanMyMac X Pricing

After all, let's talk about pricing. CleanMyMac X is a retail application and offers a completely different trial program compared to other companies. It is available to download any time you like and comes with 500 MB of cleanup quota. You can use all of the functions but only under that limitation. I think it is enough to check out the user interface and try its features, right?

To purchase, MacPaw offers two types of payments: a one-year subscription and one-time payment. You have to spend $39.95 per year for an annual subscription or $89.95 for a lifetime license.

However, its price is not always the same, as I mentioned. MacPaw often runs promotions and offers discount coupons from 20% to 30%. Also, when I was testing the trial program, CleanMyMac X has shown me a personal discount.

So basically, it's likely that you can purchase this Mac cleanup application cheaper, such as approximately $25 and $63 for a yearly and one-time payment, respectively.

Besides, if you are using another Mac cleanup program but plan to switch to CleanMyMac X, then you can get it at 40% off. All you need to do is to fill in a form and provide proof of purchase to claim this discount. MacPaw will get back to you shortly with a coupon code.

MacPaw also provides a plan for users with multiple devices so that they can get multiple licenses for a lower price. This is a great idea in case you would like to split this license with your family members or close friends.

Conclusion: Is CleanMyMac X Worth It?

CleanMyMac X offers a wide range of easy-to-use tools that work in a jiffy to free up valuable space on your hard drive, make your Mac tidier, increase speeds, and improve other apps' performance. Without a doubt, if you are looking to save your Mac from potential harm, inefficiency, clogged storage, and poor file management, then CleanMyMac X is the right choice. There are not so many apps that can provide such a handy solution. It has all of these essential features and more, with efficiency and a good UI/UX as well. You should give it a try and explore it.

To sum up my CleanMyMac X review, this application is a true game-changer for any Mac user looking to maintain their computer's health and enhance its productivity in the long run. More importantly, MacPaw has continuously released new updates to fix bugs, improve the user experience, and add new functions.

For some people, the price is slightly higher than the competition. But MacPaw gives flexible payment plans to serve the varying needs of the global market. It is worth paying a few more dollars for an app that has been tried and tested over time.