However much Apple tries to tell you that Mac’s don’t share the PC’s flaws, every computer needs a thorough spring clean once in a while. There are various applications on the market that aim to do this, such as CleanMyMac, but it seems as though it’s facing a bit of competition, with MacKeeper.
MacKeeper aims to keep your Apple Mac running like a well-oiled machine, removing un-necessary junk to keep your hard drive free and making sure that your machine is running fast and reliably. How does it do this? Continue reading to find out!
Installation and Setup
I should probably start leaving this section of my review out when I cover applications for the Mac… As per usual, installation onto my MacBook Pro laptop is an easy drag and drop job, making it nice and easy to get set up without a complex installation or restart being required.
To enable of all MacKeeper’s features, you’ll have to create an account over at the MacKeeper website and sign in with it when you launch the application for the first time. This will make sure that you’re given all of your online services, as well as ‘Geek-on-Demand’ in case you run into any issues.
User Interface
Many utilities for Mac OS X try hard not to overcomplicate things. They make the user interface easy to navigate and understand for basic users without bombarding them with too much information. In most respects, MacKeeper is no different. You’re presented with your ‘status’ page, which contains basic information about your usage of the application. On the left-hand sidebar, you’re given a full list of all the cleaners, tools and services available to you.
From the main screen, you can also select to view the many tutorials on offer, which guide you through running the application if you’re unfamiliar with it. For users who have knowledge of similar utilities already, this isn’t really necessary, but it’s a great feature to have for novice users unfamiliar with utility software.
Functionality
Note the list of cleaners in the sidebar. You can choose to run these separately, but this would be time consuming and extremely frustrating. Fortunately, the ‘one-click scan’ option just above the list you’re given begins all of these tasks simultaneously. There’s a cleaning tool for just about everything you’d want in such a utility. You can remove unwanted binaries from applications; use the cache cleaner; find duplicate files; remove unwanted language support from apps, clean out all user logs too.
After running the scan with MacKeeper, I decided to run a scan with CleanMyMac, a similar utility application. MacKeeper found 2.0GB of junk to clean, whilst CleanMyMac found 1.91GB. In terms of functionality, these two are clearly neck and nec. MacKeeper found a lot more language clutter, but CleanMyMac found a whole gigabyte more caches to clear. All things considered, both of these applications perform a great job, although CleanMyMac doesn’t find duplicate files on your hard drive.
Once the scan is complete, you simply select the ‘remove’ button underneath the list of files for all your junk to be deleted. After typing your administrator password, you can watch all the clutter disappear in front of your eyes.
As well as cleaning all of the crap off your drive, MacKeeper also offers various tools to keep your Mac in tip-top condition. You can manage your default apps, login items, shred files and even undelete accidentally lost documents.
Conclusion
When using MacKeeper, I found it to be more than a simple cleaning utility. Once you’ve used it, you’ll find it to be an indispensable tool, with a lot of features included that would never see the light of day in other applications on the market. The developers could have easily marketed many of the features, including data recovery and system backup, as separate applications, so to have them in one package is great.
You can purchase MacKeeper for $39.95 (around £26) from the developers website.
Hoping to study Computer Science at University in the near future, you’ll seldom see John without a computer in touching distance! His interests include building computers, reading all sorts of literature and of course writing for Zath to keep you updated on all the latest in the world of tech!
