How to free up precious space on your Mac
If your Mac is slowing down, you may see a significant increase in speed and efficiency when you clean out junk files with the help of Dr. Cleaner from Trend Micro.
Whether you've been using your Mac for a few months or a few years, chances are that it's not giving you the performance and efficiency it could.
Installing apps, and then uninstalling them, doesn't always get rid of all the associated libraries, temp files, app and browser caches, and logs that went along with the original app. These files are living rent-free and taking space away from data you may actually want or need.
The problem grows more acute when you consider the growing popularity of solid-state drives. If your Mac is a year or two old, it's probably packed with 256GB of fast, flash-based memory. Compared to a terabyte hard drive, 256GB doesn't really leave a lot of room for junk.
If you want to get the best performance out of your Mac system, CNET offers five valuable suggestions. The easiest ones to implement are:
- Uninstall old apps
- Clean up current apps
- Delete or archive large files
Manually performing these steps can be time consuming, confusing and in the end you may not get it right. Instead, a far easier and cleaner approach is to use a free utility designed specifically for this task.
Cleaning house
Dr. Cleaner lets you remove gigabytes worth of junk and oversized files with just one click, and it identifies and removes duplicate files, as well. After you install and launch it, Dr. Cleaner serves up a list of files that are safe to remove. Using the left-hand options menu, you can choose to address junk files, large files (over 10MB, but that's adjustable), and duplicates. Additional tools like an App Manager and File Shredder are available in the Pro version of Dr. Cleaner.
After a scan, everything that's available for removal is presented in a Finder-style window. Simply select the categories you want to clean out then click the "Remove" button.
It's important to note that Dr. Cleaner presents only files that are safe to delete. There's no danger to critical files that may impact your system. If you're not 100 percent sure about a given file, you can preview it directly in Dr. Cleaner before giving the go-ahead for removal.
Upgrade for Pro-level features
The Pro version of Dr. Cleaner includes:
- App Manager, which provides thorough uninstall capabilities for apps on your Mac, including preferences, caches, and folders that are often left behind after an app is deleted.
- File Shredder, which deletes and overwrites files until they're irretrievable. This is a useful feature for anyone concerned about privacy and proper disposal of sensitive information.
- Live Help from professional support technicians if any questions arise.
All told, Dr. Cleaner is a convenient toolkit for anyone who wants to keep a tidy Mac system. A quick glance at the iTunes store shows that it's well-liked and widely installed, with some 4 million users and a 4+ average rating from more than 1,500 reviews. You can download Dr. Cleaner free get started on the road to faster, more efficient computing with a junk-free Mac.