Disk cleanup for Macs?

Yah, for disk defrag and similar maintenance, it’s called Mac OS X. It’s automatic. You need not worry about it. One of the benefits of a modern OS.

Ain’t it nice to get out of the Windows sewer?

For unused programs, well, you’re on your own there.

I recommend AppZapper for your future uninstalls. It really removes every orphan file. Doesn’t solve your current problem though.

Try appzapper for the programs. It deletes all traces of a program (/Library files) after you move a program to the trash.

drat. phred beat me to the punch!

:P :P :P

AppZapper is nice, but also really unnecessary. The preference files it removes are tiny and will never cause any problems if the Application bundle itself is deleted. I suppose it doesn’t hurt, though.

If you’re looking to get a sense of what’s taking up space on your drive, try Disk Inventory X, or Grand Perspective.

(But as noted above, you don’t have to worry about arcane notions like “defraging” on OS X. Having lots of files won’t hurt you, until you run out of disk space.)

ttheir are some free apps at apple.com that removes Programs and another program is Duskwarrior to keep a clean system.

”The Unix subsystems on Mac OS X were originally written for machines that were typically never shut off. Mac OS X inherits this assumption in version 1.x, and has many system maintenance tasks that are scheduled to run between 3 am and 5 am. In addition, there are scripts designed to run weekly on weekends, and once a month in the middle of the night.

If these maintenance tasks are never run (such as on a laptop that is always shut off at night), many log files and system database will grow extremely large or fail to get backed up.

MacJanitor provides a way to run these system tasks at the click of a button. Laptop users could click the ‘daily’ button every morning (or every few days), or office workers could click the ‘weekly’ button on Mondays.”

From http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

@benseven… very good point for laptop users or greenies in general.

I use appzapper for uninstalling programs and I find it extremely useful.

This is especially true if you download lots of trial versions of programs and then do not want to purchase a registration key for it. While it may not be absolutely necessary, it’s nice to know that you are not wasting any extra space on your computer with junk from programs that are no longer even on your computer any longer.

…or maybe Im just ocd lol

@arcoarena, it’s OCD. But hey, everyone’s a bit OCD.

No, wait; I forgot! It’s CDO. Letters have to be in the right order.

If you want to be able to do a nice cleanup of your hard drive, I’d use onyx. Be very careful with it though because it’s very powerful and can screw up your stuff if you don’t read what you’re doing first. I use it once a week to clean out my “crap” and it’s been sweet. I would liken it to ccleaner for windows, but on steroids. You can grab it link <—there.

I think that needs a stronger disclaimer – I’ve heard some really, really dodgy things about it ripping up systems…

Onyx needs to be used carefully, and certainly not by newbies.

I’d recommend Appcleaner as a free alternative to Appzapper.

http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/

@benseven and @phred78 I stated to be careful and read. Onyx is no joke.

Happy Mac =

1) AppZapper
2) Prosoft Drive Genius 2
3) Maintenance 3.8 by Jesse Hogie to run the elusive “midnight scripts”

The Mac OS will only defrag files less than 20 MB, and it will not defrag/optimize a disk. I’ve heard good things about Prosoft Drive Genius 2, but I haven’t used it yet. In my 8 years of running two university Mac labs, I’ve never had to run a defrag utility. Disk Warrior, on the other hand, has saved my butt on numerous occasions.