CleanMyMac User Guide

http://www.macpaw.com

Version 1.9.3
1 Welcome!

1.1 CleanMyMac Overview 4

1.2 System Requirements 5

2 Getting Started

2.1 Downloading and Installation 7

2.2 Online Activation 10

2.3 Phone Activation 14

3 The Main Window

3.1 Scanning and Cleaning 18

3.2 Preferences 33

3.3 Help 41

4 FAQ's

4.1 Frequently Asked Questions 44

 Welcome!

CleanMyMac User Guide - 3

CleanMyMac Overview

CleanMyMac is the world's most easy-to-use cleaning solution. A tool that includes all you need to keep
your Mac Clean and Healthy.

CleanMyMac allows you to enjoy smooth system performance combining such vital features as
Universal Binaries slimming, removal of unneeded Languages, cleaning Logs and Caches, Quick and
Secure erasing, Extensions Management, Application Uninstallation, removal of trash left from
previously uninstalled applications and many more.

The more junk files are stored on your Mac the slower it will work. Processes of saving and storing
unnecessary files take your priceless time. CleanMyMac will professionally help your Mac reduce the
amount of operations required for your online and offline activities. It will save gigabytes of disk space
and enhance your computer's speed as a result. Go ahead and give it a shot! Your Mac will definitely
be grateful!

Key Features

• Easy to use, user-friendly interface

• Drag and drop nature
• Slims universal binaries
• Removes useless language translations
• Most accurate application uninstallation
• Quick and Secure file eraser
• Manages widgets, plugins and preference panes
• Erases garbage left from previously removed applications and widgets
• Monitors your Trash helping you to uninstall trashed applications correctly
• Keeps an eye on your removable devices to clean them up from junk service files

CleanMyMac User Guide - 4

System Requirements

* Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher

* 10.5MB of disk space

Works on both Intel and PowerPC Macs.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 5

 Getting Started

CleanMyMac User Guide - 6

Downloading and Installation

Please click here to download CleanMyMac or visit our website and click Free Download.

Run the downloaded CleanMyMac.dmg

Drag the CleanMyMac icon to the Applications folder.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 7

 Now that you have installed CleanMyMac, you can launch it from your Applications
folder:

Alternatively, you can quickly get to the application using Spotlight:

CleanMyMac User Guide - 8

 And, of course, you can decide to keep the CleanMyMac icon in the Dock and launch it
from there later:

CleanMyMac User Guide - 9

Online Activation

Please follow these step-by-step activation instructions for your copy of CleanMyMac:

1. Click Activate

NOTE: If you have purchased a box version of CleanMyMac, you will be presented with an activation
dialog automatically on the first launch of the application. The application will also require you to accept
our license agreement and provide your First Name and Last Name, which will be used as a
confirmation of your purchase later.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 10

 2. Select your option in the Activation dialog:

1. Click on Buy License to visit our web-store to get acquainted with pricing and consider purchasing
CleanMyMac.
2. Click on Later to continue using the Demo version with a 500MB limitation.
3. By clicking Enter Activation Number you can activate CleanMyMac using the Activation Number
from your confirmation mail or the product box.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 11

 3. Enter your Activation Number

Please make sure you include all the letters and numbers. Avoid entering blank spaces. As soon as a
correct number is in the field, the application will be activated automatically.

NOTE: Your Activation Number will work on a particular amount of Macs which is the amount of
licenses you have purchased. In case you need to re-activate your license due to an OS reinstallation
or if you bought a new Mac and would like to transfer your license, please contact our Customer
Support.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 12

 4. Successful Activation!

Congratulations! Now you can use your activated copy of CleanMyMac.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 13

Phone Activation

If your Mac does not have Internet connection or the connection is limited, you will receive the following
error message when entering your Activation Number:

Error Message:

Click "Activate By Phone" to proceed with phone activation, or click "Try Again" if you know that you
have re-established Internet connection or disabled your Firewall.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 14

 Offline activation dialog:

The necessary steps are described in the activation dialog itself. Please just call the number that is
provided in the dialog and follow the instructions of the operator step-by-step.

As soon as you receive your Confirmation Number from the operator, please just put it into the
corresponding field and CleanMyMac will be activated.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 15

 Successful Activation:

CleanMyMac is now successfully activated and ready to be used.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 16

 The Main Window

CleanMyMac User Guide - 17

Scanning and Cleaning

Here you can find a brief description of all the main components that CleanMyMac includes.

To start the scan just click on the "Scan" button. Prior to that you can check or uncheck the items you
would like to be scanned. Please note that the modules of the Utilities section cannot be selected,
because they can only be used on demand.

After the scan is completed, click "Remove" to remove the found items. You can also check or uncheck

CleanMyMac User Guide - 18

what you would like to remove. If needed, you can go through each of the components and uncheck
the particular items you would like to keep.

Note: The 'Tweet Result' button can be removed from the Welcome screen by control-clicking on it.

1. Caches

The Cache data is where OS X stores data it needs to access often. It also stores a lot of information
that you don't use and can only be accessed in case you will use it again. Sometimes the cache gets
corrupt because of software updates, conflicts and unexpected quits, which can cause problems. You
can even experience applications or system crashes caused by a corrupt library cache. To prevent the
cache from becoming corrupt, you should regularly delete everything from Cache folders.
CleanMyMac will allow you to clean User Cache, iPod Photo Cache and System Cache. However, in
order to clean the System Cache files you will need to authenticate yourself as an administrator by
entering your username and password.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 19

 2. Logs

By default, Mac OS X logs a fair bit of information into several files in the following directories:
@/Library/Logs/
@/private/var/log/
@~userfolder~/Library/Logs/

Here are some examples of the events that are logged:

- Firewall (ipfw) blocked packets.
- Web server access and error messages.
- Informational messages, such as subsystem status messages.
- Use of privilege escalation tools and more information that is useless for you.

It actually means that you will end up devoting good hard disk space to log files.

CleanMyMac can easily scan for those files and remove them. You can choose if you want to scan and

CleanMyMac User Guide - 20

clean User Log Files or System Log Files, or both. System Logs cleanup requires administrator
privileges.

Authentication

To authenticate yourself as an administrator, just click the LockPad button and enter your Name and
Password into the dialog that appears.

You can use the 'Authorize' option in the Action menu of CleanMyMac as an alternative to clicking the
Lock.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 21

Click OK to authenticate and remove all the items that require authentication.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 22

 3. Language Files

When you install an application on Mac OS X, localization files for over a dozen languages are
installed. These files enable the application's interface to appear in a variety of languages. You can
save disk space by removing unneeded localization files using this module.
Sometimes this single cleanup module can make some of your apps take up to 70% less disk space.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 23

 4. Universal Binaries

A Universal Binary is a term used by Apple for "fat" applications which include executable code for both
PPC and Intel processors.
Since Universal Binaries contain twice the code of a single platform application, they can be up to twice
the size and sometimes, if an application is also aimed to support both 32 and 64-bit architectures (on
PPC and Intel), the size of it can be almost four times larger than it is needed for your computer.

Use this feature to scan and clean the extra code that you do not need.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 24

 Ignore List

If you would like to exclude an application from the scanning and cleaning process, just add it to the
Ignore List.
Click on the "Ignore List" button in the info-tab and use the corresponding buttons to add or remove an
application.
You can also drag and drop an application directly onto the "Ignore List" Button.

Please note that you can share your Ignore List. In case you enable this feature in Preferences, we will
receive this information and test CleanMyMac with the application you have added to find if there are
really any issues with it. If we do find a problem, we add this application into the default ignore list of the
nearest revision of CleanMyMac, so that it does not scan that application while we are fixing the issue.
Therefore, please share your ignore list only in case you add the programs you really had issues with.

The 'Show/Hide Shared List' button will allow you to see the apps that are ignored by CleanMyMac by
default.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 25

In addition to this, disregarding the fact that we precisely test CleanMyMac and try to make it absolutely
harmless, we still strongly recommend you to backup your system prior to complete cleanup of your
applications, which includes removal of languages, binaries and development junk. You can use
TimeMachine or any other backup utility.

5. System Junk

Most of the applications create lots of files that are actually needed for debugging purposes only and
can be safely removed without affecting the functionality of the OS and the application itself. These are
classes.nib, info.nib, .DS_Store and other files that as a rule are located in localization folders. This
module of CleanMyMac will easily help you get rid of all the development junk files.

In addition to this, the OS creates lots of service files in all the folders of your computer that store some
additional data, which, in fact, bares no relation to the integrity of your personal files and can be easily
removed. These additional files become annoying on your flash drives and mp3-players, because they
can be treated as corrupted media-files.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 26

Just drag any folder, volume or application onto the System Junk area and you will be able to remove
all the junk files, stored on them or related to them. Extremely handy and saves some space.

6. Trashes & Leftovers

All types of software leave traces of their work and if you even remove an app, all the old leftovers are
still there somewhere on your disk. CleanMyMac will help you locate and clean all the application and
widget leftovers, empty the hidden Trash folders, including iPhoto Trash and remove any of the broken
Preference Panes.

Using this module you will also remove the 'Startup Items' entries that refer to a no longer existing files.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 27

 7. Manage Extensions

This utility of CleanMyMac has three sub-modules to manage your Widgets, Preference Panes and
Plugins. You can easily and correctly uninstall any of those by simply selecting the undesired extension
and clicking the Uninstall button.

Widgets: shows all the widgets you have downloaded. There is no need to open your Dashboard to
remove a Widget, just select it in the list and click Uninstall.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 28

Preferences: Here you can see and uninstall the preferences panes of different programs installed.
Just select the ones you do not need and they will be removed with all their related files after you click
Uninstall.
You can look through the found related files by clicking on the disclosure triangles next to the
preference panes.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 29

Plugins: They extend or modify the functionality of some applications. Sometimes they are
downloaded automatically and you do not even know of their existence. Here you can check the plugins
you would like to remove. Also you can check the related content by clicking the disclosure triangle
located to the left of a plugin.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 30

 8. Uninstall Applications

Dragging an application to Trash is not enough to completely remove it. The application can leave quite
a lot of dependent files that will be just useless for your system.
To uninstall an application correctly, just drag it into the Application Uninstaller area shown above.
CleanMyMac will scan and find all the files related to this application.

This is much better than just dragging an application into the Trash, because CleanMyMac has a
number of special inbuilt features that can analyze installed packages and identify literally all the
dependent files of the application you remove. This will make sure you completely uninstall the
unnecerrary application just after you hit the Remove button.

Alternatively, you can drag an unnecessary application directly onto the CleanMyMac Dock icon and it
will offer you to uninstall it.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 31

 9. Quick Erase Files

Use this feature to remove files without emptying the whole Trash.
Just drag and drop a file into the area of this CleanMyMac Utility and the file will be removed after you
click Erase.

If you wish to remove the file physically, so that it will be impossible to recover it using any special tools,
please check the "Use Secure Erase" option.
With this option enabled, CleanMyMac will overwrite the files three times while deleting them.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 32

Preferences

Please find the information about CleanMyMac customization below:

Click 'Preferences' in the main window:

The Preferences dialog of CleanMyMac is divided into five sections. Please find a detailed description
of all of them below:

CleanMyMac User Guide - 33

 General

1. By Default Enable.
Here you can choose the components that will be enabled during every scan.
For example, if you do not want to clean the cache on every scan you can just uncheck this option.

2. Languages to keep.
CleanMyMac automatically adds the languages you have on your computer.
You can uncheck any of the languages and CleanMyMac will clean them out. The list you see in
CleanMyMac is taken from System Preferences of your Mac. It can be edited in 'Localizations' module
of System Preferences on Leopard and 'Language & Text' module on Snow Leopard.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 34

 Devices

The Devices tab of preferences allows you to enable or disable the features that would automatically
monitor your external devices for miscellaneous junk files and automatically remove them.

You have a choice of three sub-features to scan for Trashes, Mac OS Service Junk and Windows
Service Junk on your devices. Just set this up to your personal preference. In case your devices are
never connected to Windows computers - you do not need the third feature enabled.

Summing it up, these automatic features will help you keep your external devices clean from any
additional stuff without even having to launch CleanMyMac. This includes such items as .DS_Store,
.Spotlight-V100, Thumbs.db, RECYCLED and tons of additional metadata files that start with '._'.

Note: These feature require a small helper process to run while a device is connected. This process will

CleanMyMac User Guide - 35

not have any noticeable influence on the overall performance.

Appearance

Here you have a possibility to set the looks of CleanMyMac. A choice of two themes is currently
available - 'Titanium' and 'Marble'.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 36

 Advanced

1. Play Sounds
Enable or disable sound effects of CleanMyMac.

2. Use Secure Erase

This setting duplicates the checkbox in the Info-tab of the Quick Erase Files module of CleaMyMac.
Enable this and none of the files you erase will be possible to recover.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 37

3. Slim Protected Applications
In case you use system Firewall, the fact you slim any code-signed applications will make the Firewall
ask you to allow incoming connections for these applications every time you launch them. This can be
annoying for some users, so just set it up according to your personal preference. The functionality of
the apps will not be affected in any way.

4. Enable Automatic Application Uninstaller

This will make CleanMyMac launch automatically on your attempts to simply Trash other applications
so that you always uninstall them correctly and completely.

5. Enable Trash Status Monitor

This feature allows CleanMyMac to monitor the size of your Trash and to empty it when the limit you set
is reached. The checks are periodic, so CleanMyMac will just notify you from time to time that you can
free some space by emptying the Trash.

Note: The monitoring features require a small helper process to run on your system. It does not affect
the overall performance of your Mac.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 38

 Privacy & Updates

1. Share system information

Please enable this feature to make it easier for us to improve the application. This has nothing to do
with your personal information, CleanMyMac will only send a small system report to us while updating.

2. Share your Ignore List

This setting will allow you to send us the list of apps you have added to the Ignore List of CleanMyMac.
We will then run compatibility tests with the apps you have added and if we do find a problem, we add
these application into the default Shared Ignore List, so that it does not scan them while we are fixing
the issue. Please share your ignore list only in case you add the programs you really had issues with.

3. Check for updates automatically

Here you can enable the automatic check for CleanMyMac Updates and run an immediate check by

CleanMyMac User Guide - 39

clicking "Check Now". This option will make CleanMyMac run a check for application and Shared
Ignore List updates every time you launch it.
Please note that it is vital to always have the very latest revision of CleanMyMac, because its
functionality depends on the OS and other applications, which are also being updated quite often.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 40

Help

Click on the Help button to get to the Help dialog.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 41

You can easily contact our support team using the Help dialog of CleanMyMac.

If you still have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to contact us, our
Customer Support will be glad to help you.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 42

 FAQ's

CleanMyMac User Guide - 43

Frequently Asked Questions

Remember that if you have any doubts you can always contact our Customer Support.

1. How do I activate CleanMyMac?

If you need to download CleanMyMac, please click here, or refer to the 'Downloading and Installation'
chapter of this User Guide.

To activate CleanMyMac, please follow the steps below:

1. Click Activate in the main window.

2. Click Enter Activation Number in the dialog that appears.
3. Paste your Activation Number into the activation field including all the letters and numbers.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 44

 2. After scanning with CleanMyMac one of my applications stopped working. What now?

This problem is very rare, but it might happen. In this case please reinstall the application you had
problems with, and add it to the Ignore List using the corresponding button in the info-tab of the
Universal Binaries:

3. Can you explain what does CleanMyMac clean?

CleanMyMac will only clean the files you don't really need, but they use disk space on your system. For
example, logs from previous system activities, localizations, leftovers from previously uninstalled
applications and other unnecessary files.
To get acquainted with a detailed description of all the items CleanMyMac will clean please refer to the
'Scanning and Cleaning' chapter of this User Guide.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 45

 4. I have bought MacHider as well, where do I download it?

To download and install MacHider please click here, or visit our website and click Download.
For more information about MacHider please refer to MacHider User Guide.

5. CleanMyMac keeps popping up even if I do not launch it. Why does it do that?

This is most probably related to the fact that you have the Automatic Application Uninstaller feature
enabled in CleanMyMac. This makes CleanMyMac launch automatically if you Trash any other
application or if there is already an app file in Trash when you try to remove any other files.

This can be easily disabled in the Advanced tab of CleanMyMac Preferences. Just deselect the 'Enable
Automatic Application Uninstaller' checkbox.

CleanMyMac User Guide - 46