CCleaner Review: A Flexible MAC tool to clear mess

Best prices today: CCLEANER PRO

There is something to be said for a software company that releases a product and advertises strongly on its goods. There is also something to say to be something of a quiet runner, have a good product and honor it over the years. Piriform Software’s CCleaner represents the latter of these two, and although not wrapped in millions of dollars in advertising that appear to provide any element of your Internet experience comes through with some useful tools in a friendly, appealing package.

CCleaner, which is easy to install and assign full disk permissions to, require macOS 10.12 (Sierra) or later to run, and retails for $ 39.95/£ 39.95 for CCleaner Pro covering a device for one year. There is also a free version: CCleaner.

Like other Mac cleaning tools (see our round up of the best Mac cleaning apps we have tested) such as Cleanmymac and Daisydic, CCleaner centers around several modules consisting of quick clean, clean root, pure browser, find duplicates, analyzes photos, uninstalled apps, controls startups, system monitor.

The modules themselves work well and behave as expected, the uninstalled apps tool worked well without fuss, and the management tool for managing startups actually surprised me by digging some of the files that were left off when we tested (malware-like) Macbooster and offered an easy way to remove them.

The analysis photo tool worked well, not only scanning the local photo library, but allows you to add custom external photos, devices and specific photos on the go. The clean browser tool that offered a good interface is fast and was able to locate and remove 2.01 GB of cache files and cookies, while Finding the Duplicates tool was able to find no less than 106.45 GB of duplicate files, gave an preview of what is potentially on the chopping block, and allowed us to choose and filter for filter for file.

System monitor proved interesting, and in addition to a nice, clean interface, offered system specifications, access to sensors and information such as fan use, disk use, battery cycles and temperature. The fast clean tool is not entirely original, but was able to find app cache files, logs, trash, cookies, web cache and duplicate files, and I was able to clear 6.5 GB cache files alone. The statistics tool did a good job of voting by what has been cleaned of either the entire use of the app or over the past 30 days. Finally, the planning tool worked well, CCleaner offers a good adjustment level to the user.

Foundry

There is room for improvement with ccleaner, but none of it represents a staggering need for a complete overhaul. While the Find Duplicates tool is generally excellent and offered good filters and categorization to help organize the returned files, you still need to click directly on the file’s check box and cannot simply click the name, which becomes annoying when you check or remove a wide range of records.

From a business perspective, I have never heard back from piriform over a period of two weeks when I emailed them with questions. Ccleaner’s biggest weakness is undoubtedly help menu/manual system, and although there is a generic FAQ sent online, there is no quick access to a viable help menu or aboard manual that feels like an Achilles heel. Yes, there is a good set of tutorial videos for Ccleaner’s different versions, but you have to go looking for them. I think the next logical step is that Piriform should incorporate a decent manual as well as quick links to the tutorial videos they have already produced and published.

Should you buy CCleaner?

Yes, there is room for improvement, but there is an excellent collection of tools found in CCleaner and you can see where the software is built over the years. The interface is clean, it runs well, and it does not make the mistake of trying to perform any task under the sun, such as adding antiviral, antimalware and VPN features to its overhead. This again gives it a focus that some of its competitors have forgotten, leading to an impressive collection of tools worth considering.