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We clean our rooms and clothes so why not our Macs? But who can waste the entire day digging through folders and files? There are so many places like music, videos, apps and email downloads, and countless more locations on your Mac where junk and clutter accumulates. In 2021 cleaning your Mac is easier than ever. Which is why millions of people download free and low-cost Mac cleaning software.

To start off, we've made a quick comparison chart about the best Mac cleaners for Mac.

A handy cleaner may prove that your Mac is still alive and can actually perform at its best. In this article we’ve brought together some of the best Mac cleaning solutions around to clean, optimize, and maintain Macs that are available in 2021.

Top 12 best cleaners for Mac: Free and premium versions

1. CleanMyMac X

CleanMyMac X takes the first place with good reason — this cleaner combines features of both cleaning software and antimalware tool. Its Smart Scan promises a “nice and thorough scan of your Mac.” It does what it says, detecting junk like user cache files and system logs, checking your Mac for malicious software, and speeding up your MacBook. Looks like, there is a threat in my system, that I need to get rid of:

Apeaksoft Mac Cleaner is the powerful Mac cleaning and managing software which can help you remove any junk/unnecessary/old/large files on Mac and keep Mac system in good state. It can also clean emails, unneeded iTunes backups, find and remove duplicate files, and uninstall seldom used apps.

Frankly speaking, CleanMyMac X is Tesla Roadster among other Mac cleaners. And it does a great job revealing your junk and other clutter, uninstalling unneeded apps and their leftovers, and keeping your Mac’s system clean and optimized. Another pro is that CleanMyMac X is Apple-notarized, which means it’s safe for your Mac. You can download its free version right here.

Price: $39.95
Free version: Available here

2. Disk Doctor

Disk Doctor is developed in the UK and was awarded the 'Mac Gem’ award by MacWorld in 2013. CNET and other tech journalists also praise functionality. As of 2021, it still looks like a useful tool for Mac cleaning that removes junk slowing down and reducing the computing power of your Mac.

Price: $2.99
Free version: N/A

3. Gemini 2

Gemini 2 is the duplicate finder that allows you to free up gigabytes of storage and organize your files. In just a few minutes.

It quickly scans every corner of your Mac and weeds out useless copies. No matter what type of file it is: a photo, music track, or a doc… Gemini will definitely find it. And once the scan is done, you can remove the duplicates in a click. Or review results to make sure nothing important gets deleted.

If you remove something by accident, it takes just a click to put it back. And to make sure things like that never happen again, you can exclude specific files and folders from scan. Try out the free version right here.

The app has seen a major update in 2021 which included a real-time duplicate monitor. This new tool notifies you of duplicates the moment they are created on your Mac.

Price: $19.96
Free version: Available here

4. DaisyDisk

DaisyDisk gives you a visual representation of your Mac folders, making it easy to see what is taking up space and delete the folders you don't need. All you need to do is select a drive, DaisyDisk will scan it, then you can delete everything that is wasting valuable space. It comes with a free and premium version.

Price:$9.99
Free version: Trial version available

5. AppCleaner & Uninstaller

If you only need to uninstall apps on Mac, AppCleaner is a good pick. AppCleaner only removes applications, plugins, and widgets, which are again, small apps. AppCleaner works in a familiar drag & drop mode. Its interface is also clean and easy to understand for a newbie.

After feeding the apps to AppCleaner, you should visit the Leftovers section of the app to erase their remains. Why we place AppCleaner & Uninstaller among free Mac cleaner tools? Because it is 100% free. Whether you will fully clean your Mac using it, is a different question.
AppCleaner & Uninstaller is created by FreeMacSoft, also the makers of LiteIcon, an icon customizer for Mac.
Price: Voluntary donation

6. Smart Mac Care

If you launch Smart Mac Care, it will look hauntingly familiar to other free Mac cleaner apps. Not only features will be called the same, everything up to the fonts, will be identical to some other app you’ve just used. That’s not a minus, though. You can still free up a lot of space with Smart Mac Care.

Smart Mac Care operates by a logic of “scans.” There is a Junk Scan, Malware Scan, Privacy Scan, etc. Just like Mac Booster, Smart Mac Care removes duplicates scattered in various locations on your Mac. There’s also a Memory Optimizer feature that promises to free up RAM on your Mac. In a word, Smart Mac Care resembles every other generic product whose only difference is in packaging. This is supported by the fact that we couldn’t find any credible third-party reviews for this app.

On another skeptical note: to uninstall Smart Mac Care you have to enter your admin password. This is not the case with other Mac cleaners we’ve used.
Price: $56.62 per year
Free version: Demo available

7. Drive Genius

Drive Genius is labeled a “Mac monitoring software.” It’s a whole suite of tools that provide powerful disk diagnostics. It’s hard to list a thing that this software doesn’t do. You can scan for malware, secure-erase files, customize icons — it’s dozens of apps in one body. What makes Drive Genius unique is, probably, its search for corrupted files and inconsistencies on your drive. If your Mac is an old one, keeping it in good health will be easier with Drive Genius.

In a free version, you can use just a fraction of tools, notably a DiskPulse utility. This is an automatic Mac health checker that notifies you before your hard drive fails. Unlike Mac cleaners that merely scan, it is able to repair damage on your disks, which makes it a real deal. Be prepared that hard drive scan may take some time, but the results are worth it. The latest version of Drive Genius released in 2020 adds long-awaited support for macOS Big Sur.

Price: $299 for Professional edition
Free version: Limited Lite edition is available

8. CCleaner

Originally created in 2004 by Piriform, CCleaner comes with a free and professional version, focusing on businesses and business customers. CCleaner is a cross-platform tool, for PCs, Macs, Android, and it has a Cloud, Network and Technician tool, depending on what you need and the platform/software you use.

The premium version comes with a lot more features, including real-time alerts, free updates, and dedicated support. Although created for PCs in the early days, CCleaner does well to identify unwanted files on a Mac, so that users can select and delete the files and folders they don't need to free up space. As a cleaner for Mac, customers are pretty happy with the results of CCleaner.
Price: $19.95
Free version: Available

9. Sensei

The Sensei app is a relatively new app on the market, but it can be another useful tool for your Mac. The Sensei software developers call the app “Pro Mac Cleaner” on their website. I would call it a performance controlling tool.

Sensei presents a detailed picture of how your Mac performs. In the Dashboard, you can find out information about your MacBook, check your CPU’s current temperature, and see how much of your RAM is used. Cooling gives you exact information on your Mac’s fans' speed.

Its Clean option helps to get rid of user cache, logs, large files, etc. The Uninstaller feature allows you to delete apps from your Mac and remove their traces. It doesn’t list pre-installed apps from Apple, such as Safari or Calendar, but it shows every app you have installed on your Mac.

Surely, you can clean up your Mac manually, but using dedicated software will save you tons of time.

Price: $29 per year
Free version: Available

Free Mac cleaners review

The following Mac cleaning apps are either completely free or donation-based. You won’t find any trial limitations here. If you’re looking for a no thrill basic cleanup, these free Mac cleaners might help you.

10. Onyx

OnyX is a french Mac cleaning solution developed by Titanium software. It weighs only 5 MB but that doesn’t mean its capabilities are limited. OnyX is a tool that programmers will have a lot of fun with. With it, you can peek under the hood of your macOS and automate a whole list of jobs, like disk cleanup and cache removal. You can even tweak the color of folders on your Mac, and even make them invisible. Deservedly, it's among the best free Mac cleaners.

OnyX is one of the best Mac cleaners because it cleans many specific under-the-surface files, like inner databases and logs. If you know what is XPC cache is, you’ll probably like this app. But for us, ordinary Mac users who came here for the design and glossy buttons, OnyX will require some learning time.
Those who use OnyX say it is stable and reliable. There is no dedicated customer service (because OnyX is free software), but you shouldn’t be worried. The only likely damage is you accidentally deleting files by yourself.
Price: Free cleaner

11. Clean me

This open-source app that only exists in the form of GitHub download is good enough for cleaning caches and logs. It’s so small its ZIP file weighs only 1.3 MB.
Clean me shows the size of each category of cache files. It analyzes such junk as Application Cache, User Cache, and more temporary files

The developer recommends that you start your cleanup with auto-selected options. Otherwise, you may delete something valuable by accident. So treat is as an analyzer and you’ll be safe.
Price: Free cleaner

12. Native macOS cleaner (Optimize Storage)

Your macOS has its own cleaner of sorts. You’ve probably come across it when checking your occupied disk space.
Go to Apple menu.
Now, click About this Mac > Storage > Manage.

In the sidebar you’ll see the main categories of files on your Mac. Going through Documents is likely to be the most fruitful option. Check the Size and click on Last Accessed. Now you’ve found all those movies gathering dust in your Downloads.
In the same way you can delete some old apps. This feature is could be an alternative to a free Mac cleaner; the only problem is it works largely on the surface. You won’t be able to remove System Junk or analyze the grey areas occupied by “Other.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Can’t my Mac clean itself?

Your macOS also has a built-in Mac cleaner, which Apple called Optimized Storage. Though its capabilities are limited, it gives you basic directions on where to start the cleanup. But for a thorough system cleanup and removing malware, you’ll need a dedicated Mac cleaner app.

Can Mac cleaner apps delete my important files?

Typically, best Mac cleaner apps have a protection built-in. They will usually select only those files that are safe for deletion.

Will Mac cleaners slow down my Mac?

Some cleaners try to get into your Login items, thus creating an extra burden on the processor. On a flip side, the reliable Mac cleaner apps might even speed up your Mac. They remove all the outdated junk files giving your Mac an extra boost.

Mac cleaning apps you should avoid

Above we've touched the trusted Mac cleanup solutions but there are many that work on the dark side. Malwarebytes lists Advanced Mac Cleaner Pro and similar tools as unwanted applications. Here are some signs that should warn you against using scam Mac cleaners.
Signs of Mac cleaner scam:

• 'Your Mac is infected' intrusive message
• An app is installed as part of different app
• An app finds 2323 (the number is an example) threats on your Mac
• Mac cleaner redirects your search engine page

Be safe and happy cleaning.

Your Mac is a technological marvel in efficiency for getting your work done, providing entertainment, and managing your lifestyle. But just like your home or office environment, it occasionally needs to be cleaned up or decluttered, to work at peak performance.

System resources such as your hard drive storage, applications, and RAM can over time become cluttered with files you don’t use, applications that are running – often without you even realizing it, and cache files that are actually intended to boost performance, but can also consume precious resources.

There are many steps you can take to clean up your Mac manually, if you have the time and discipline to perform some regular maintenance.

If you want to venture into a little do-it-yourself Mac maintenance without investing in one of the best Mac cleaners, and your Mac has become increasingly sluggish, there is much that you can do to attempt cleanup of your machine:

Cache files are created in your Mac to retain information for loading web sites, and are also created and accessed by other system functions. These are very useful to speed page loading and other activity, but after a while, they eat up a lot of storage, and actually begin to slow things down.

It's relatively easy to clean out cache files, but the process varies somewhat depending on what macOS version you’re running.

One of the best things you can do to boost performance is to get rid of applications you no longer use – or never did use. Applications that you downloaded or installed to try out, but abandoned, can eat up both storage and memory, slowing down your Mac.

Sending unwanted applications to the trash may leave a lot of residue behind, still consuming space. Using the more detailed process for completely uninstalling individual applications is a more thorough way to fully remove these programs from your system.

If you’re like most Mac users, you get plenty of emails with attachments included, that you save in the Mail Downloads folder – sometimes even by accident.

Take a look periodically in that folder with Spotlight, using the search field (Command+Space to open the search), and point to the Mail Downloads folder. You may be surprised to find how many files are lurking about (some may be quite large), taking up space.

Just select the files you no longer want, and delete them.

Just like home, putting something in the trash doesn’t get rid of it. You need to empty the trash to actually free the space those items take up. Be sure to click on the Trash can in the Dock periodically, select Empty Trash, and confirm to delete it.

You may have saved some very large files in the way of documents, spreadsheets, graphic files, and even downloaded video and movies that you’ve long forgotten about. These can consume a large amount of drive storage.

Review the files on your drives to identify and delete those that are no longer relevant for your use.

When you do upgrades of your system, the process includes making backups of the iOS before performing updates. This is great to resolve problems if they occur during the upgrade, but they also take up considerable amounts of disk space. Each time you update, you have a new set of backups.

You can locate these backups by launching iTunes, and navigating to the Preferences option. Click the Devices tab to get a list of backups, and delete the ones you no longer need.

Mac Cleaners

Over time, you’ve no-doubt accumulated items on your desktop that clutter up not only its appearance, but also eat up system resources. If you have a large number of files on your desktop, move them into a folder that makes them easy to find, and clear them off the desktop. Your Mac will be more organized and efficient.

There are certainly additional tasks you can take to clean up your Mac through manual means. The truth is, many users are not confident in their technical skills to actually dig into these processes, or you may find you simply don’t have the time to invest in these activities.

Performing these tasks manually can take several hours, and there’s always the potential that you may delete files or data that perhaps should have been retained.

If you really want the most efficient, smoothest-running Mac you can find, regular maintenance is necessary. Fortunately, many technicians have put in the time and development effort for you, to create low-cost (even free), easy-to-use applications that do this work easily and professionally.

Mac “cleaners” have been around for quite some time, and most take care of all the above housekeeping activities, and so much more.

To get the most value from your cleaning efforts, you should select an application that keeps up with the upgrades of the macOS.

Products listed here not only provide a great deal of functionality with minimal effort on your part, but also continuously upgrade their software offerings.

CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac has one purpose in life – to keep your Mac running at peak performance.

To accomplish that goal, a free download is provided that will get the application installed and running on your system very quickly and easily. Once installed, CleanMyMac will provide you with many features that optimize your system:

Every Mac user can benefit from the powerful tools provided by CleanMyMac. This application is one of the best Mac cleaners available, as you’ll find as you put its many features into regular use.

One of the benefits of this application is the Health Monitoring feature, available from the program’s main menu. Selecting the monitor gives you a current snapshot of how your system is running:

• Battery status
• Available memory
• Trash that should be emptied
• Large and old files
• Data that the system identifies as “junk” in various categories (Mail Attachments, iTunes, photos, and more)

With a single click, CleanMyMac can empty the trash or “Free Up” memory, right from the monitor.

CleanMyMac has a wealth of knowledge in knowing what truly is junk that can be cleaned up. The application identifies those junk files and system logs that take up space unnecessarily, removing them to expand your usable space and allowing your Mac to run more efficiently.

Uninstalling applications is another area where CleanMyMac shines. Where doing your own uninstalls of apps may leave straggling components floating around your Mac eating up space, this application is very effective in removing files and folders associated the applications being uninstalled.

CleanMyMac includes additional features to further optimize your Mac and save valuable storage:

• Eliminate disk-consuming language files that you don’t need
• Optimize startup objects
• Cleanup extensions for web browsers

This vendor provides an additional application – Gemini 2 – which you can pair with CleanMyMac to provide even more in-depth cleanup and free up more space on your system. Gemini 2 is an application that finds duplicate files that are candidates for deletion.

You may be surprised to find how many folders contain a duplicate or similar file, consuming disk space. This app will find them, and make it easy for you to weed them out. You get a chance to review the potential deletions of course.

User Comments:

“I found over 60 gigabytes of junk clogging my HD and my processor speed. After one cleaning with CleanMyMac 3 I'm seeing faster speeds and a whole lot of newly released memory. Truly great product.”

“Really glad you added the maintenance & privacy options. Makes your app the ‘one stop shop’ for trusted Mac performance.”

CC​​leaner

CCleaner is a great application for cleaning up your drive space. It removes junk files quickly and effortlessly. Just launch CCleaner and start the Analyze function. The program scans your hard drive and provides a report of its condition. File sizes are displayed for your review.

Mac Cleaners That Work

One quick look at the junk files can reveal those that should be deleted – especially large files that take up a lot of space. All you have to do is press Delete, and they’re gone, with the space now available for use.

CCleaner also has a Tools section that includes an efficient uninstall function. This option will list your applications. A one-click Uninstall selection will get rid of the application and any residual data associated with it.

There are additional useful features provided in the Tools menu:

• Remove or disable startup items
• Erase free space
• Change repair permissions
• Erase an entire disk volume – be careful with that one!

Manage your website cookies in the Options menu. All the cookies in your system will be displayed, with a default option to remove them all. Handily, you can select those that you may want to keep. Input from satisfied users validates that this is one of the best Mac cleaners available.

User Comments:

“CCleaner helped speed up my computer. It is a very good program. I would definitely recommend this program to everyone to clean up the computer.”

“LOVE LOVE CCleaner. I have installed it on both of my children's computers as well. There are times when I forget to use it for a while and my computer or tablet start to get laggy. I'll run CCleaner and notice the difference immediately. Thanks CCleaner, great job!!!”

Drive Genius

Your hard drive is the lifeblood of your Mac. Most of the horror stories related to data loss or even poor system performance are tied back to hard drive issues.

Drive Genius exists to provide solutions in monitoring and cleaning your hard drive to maximize performance. Poorly organized, fragmented, or nearly full hard drives can significantly impact the performance of your Mac. This application will help solve such problems.

Once hard drives approach capacity, performance can suffer greatly, as the macOS has less space to perform its functions. The specialists at Drive Genius are experts at data recovery, so they know the inner-workings of your hard drive intimately.

As one of the best Mac cleaners, Drive Genius performs several functions in its continuous monitoring of your drive’s health:

• Analyzing the drive for any potential problems
• Locating and replacing duplicate files
• DrivePulse feature presents alerts when any issues are detected, so that you can take appropriate actions

Another function of Drive Genius is defragmentation. As files are added and removed from your Mac, a file may be contained across multiple sectors of the hard drive to make the best use of drive space. This can cause performance issues when accessing fragmented files. Defragmentation organizes and rearranges files to allow the operating system to handle them more efficiently.

Drive Genius also provides a tool for creating, deleting, and resizing disk partitions as you desire, which can be a very convenient feature.

User Comments:

“I do not know much about computers, and I cannot explain in technical details how this software works, but it did fix many of the issues my computer had. I have an old iMac with dual intel processor (if that matters), and it has having issues with the screen freezing, slowing down, and not rebooting properly. So, after running this program I could see a great difference in its performance.”

“This is a great product. If you could only have one Mac utility, this would be the one. Easy to use and very well done. Customer service is great as I got to talk to a software engineer not an uninformed operator, not offense to any operators. I would definitely recommend this for any Mac user.”

Each of these products qualifies as one of the best Mac cleaners and is well worth downloading and using to keep your system running efficiently, with minimal effort on your part. You might even want to try each of them to see which you find easiest to navigate or the one that has the most features you feel will benefit you.

Ultimately, the choice will depend on several factors:

• Features – which product you feel will be more relevant in keeping your system clean
• Ease of Use – presentation, menu options, built-in help, and available support
• Price – some cleaners are free, while others must be purchased, or require an annual subscription

With any of these applications, the price is minimal, when you consider the satisfaction and security of running your Mac at peak performance.

There are many reasons to install a good Mac cleaner application:

• You’re not comfortable with getting into the technical side of the system and making changes
• Your system is running very slowly, or perhaps you’ve even received the dreaded “Your disk is almost full” warning
• You don’t have the time to perform these maintenance tasks on a regular basis

Mac Cleaners Reviews

If any of those conditions is true – maybe all of them – selecting from one of the best Mac cleaners should be your next investment in keeping your system running in top condition.