CCleaner

[reeserv]

Has anyone used CCleaner for the Mac? http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cclea...99268461?mt=12
If so, any impressions would be greatly appreciated.

[benwiggy]

I generally advise people to stay away from any kind of "cleaning" app.

Macs don't need optimizing, maintaining or any other tinkering. You don't need to empty caches regularly. You definitely don't need to Repair Permissions.
OS X already has routines for rotating logs files and tidying up. That's it.

As for apps that remove "unnecessary files" or old app's data: This risk of deleting something that turns out to be necessary is much greater than the risk from having a Gigabyte of unnecessary stuff on your hard drive.
If you've deleted some apps, then look through /Library/Application Support (and ~/Library/Application Support -- i.e. the invisible user Library) and delete any folders with the name of the app.
You can forget about the 4K .plist preference file that's in the Preference folder.

You can manage Cookies from within Safari.

[acme.mail.order]

I agree. The OS takes care of itself just fine. And with today's drive sizes the space saving is insignificant - if you are down to your last 5Gb on a 500Gb drive it's time to re-think your media choices or buy an external.

Maintenance programs on Macs are solutions in search of a problem.

[tedeon]

Quote: Originally Posted by acme.mail.order I agree. The OS takes care of itself just fine.

I agree as well. I never recommend and rarely use such tools to "help" the many friends and family whom I assist with Mac questions and maintenance. That said, I'm do have a fondness for, and keep up with such utilities. If you look hard enough you'll find a bunch. Among the many that have come and gone over the years, there's one that tops my list and is the only one I ever consider using on my mac for special occasions ... such as when I migrated from Snow Leopard to Lion and wanted to get rid of needless junk on my time schedule rather than the Mac's.

The tool I use is TinkerTool System Release 2, available (along with it's more benign "TinkerTool" companion tool which I highly recommend for general use) at:

http://www.bresink.com/products.html

Among it's cache, trash, log, and junk cleaning arsenal it offers options to simply run the built-in Mac OS cleaning routines that will eventually get triggered when the next appropriately scheduled day, week, or month rolls around.