MacCleanse Reviews

Setting up MacCleanse is a simple process and once you open the app, you’re immediately given an estimated total of how much space you can free up from your logs, caches, and more. If this is the first time you’ve used this kind of software, this can potentially take a long time as chances are there could be a lot of stuff lingering on your Mac that you never even knew about.

The app itself isn’t the prettiest we’ve seen but it is straightforward and simple so new users shouldn’t have any issues navigating the menus. MacCleanse will give warnings when certain processes may have a possible detrimental impact on macOS’s architecture and will advise you at times to carefully review what results you may find. One minor detraction we have is the extension tab, which shows you everything connected to your browsers, however as soon as you click the button the scan starts automatically without your permission. This isn’t just nitpicking; if you’re already using a slow computer you don’t want to accidentally initiate a scan that is going to take up more of your precious resources. This seems like some poor design that could easily be remedied with a start button.

MacCleanse has a flexible approach to cleaning up your system, allowing you to change what kind of scans you’d like to perform as well as setting up your own custom scans and creating schedules for them. Annoyingly, there is no way of getting MacCleanse to ignore any connected cloud storage service, but you do have the option of adding any files or folders to the whitelist, so they’ll be left alone in the future. Once the scans are complete, you have the chance to review all files that MacCleanse flags up for deletion. This is well worth taking your time to do just in case an important system file has found its way into one of the scans.

We found that MacCleanse was slow at times, in particular when deleting a large number of files. MacCleanse also allows you to find and get rid of find unnecessary language packs, because let’s be honest, you’re probably not likely to change your iTunes language to Chinese or Hungarian any time soon. However, again we found that it took a long time to delete them after a fairly quick initial scan.

MacCleanse doesn’t just stop at cleaning up your Mac, there are plenty of added extras that will help you get the most out of your system. The startup optimizer allows you to increase the speed of switching on your Mac and gets rid of unnecessary apps that force themselves to boot up as soon as your Mac does.

The files section of MacCleanse has ways of allowing you to search for files that are long forgotten on your Mac. You can search for files by age or size, as well as search your entire hard drive for duplicate files. The archives function lets you review all the archived files and disk images in your system that may have avoided deletion in the past. The erasure mode helps users delete files definitively, so that no trace is left on your computer and data recovery apps have nothing to pick up on.

MacCleanse is available through yearly subscriptions or by buying a lifetime license. So, if you buy a yearly subscription you won’t be entitled to any available updates, but you will be able to catch up when your subscription period ends. Students get the best deal with these, saving 40% by paying $18 a year, equivalent to just $1.50 a month; if you’re not a student, then naturally you’ll be paying a little more. There are also household subscriptions that allow you to install MacCleanse on ten devices per year. Lifetime licenses start at $49 for students, $79 for solo accounts, and $179 for households.

All payments are made through PayPal’s checkout system, so all major credit cards are accepted. Be careful when purchasing MacCleanse though, as Koingo Software doesn’t offer refunds unless the app isn’t suitable for your computer and there is no other solution. So, we advise you to make the most of MacCleanse’s 15-day trial before taking the plunge.

Koingo Software’s customer support for MacCleanse isn’t the most comprehensive one out there. The only way to get a response is through filling out the online form and waiting for an emailed answer. There is a customer forum to provide assistance but the activity on it is so limited that you may end up waiting long enough to see a tumbleweed go past.

However, Koingo’s website has a great FAQ section to make up for the limited support and some well-written user guides, although they could do with the addition of screenshots. The Koingo website also links to a blog but this hasn’t been updated in years, so you won’t find any relevant information there.

In truth though, MacCleanse lacks a lot of outstanding features that its rivals have and you won’t be making great savings either as the price is fairly average. However, MacCleanse makes a really strong case for itself with its ease of use and customizable scanning, and we’d especially recommend it to anyone looking for their first Mac optimization software.