10 Best Free Mac Cleaner to Remove Junk Files from Your Mac
In this article, we’ve listed some of the best free Mac cleaner software. Click the link to read the full guide.
Author:Daniel BarrettMay 29, 2022128012 Shares1777947 Views
Best Free Mac Cleaner– Do you still remember how snappy your Mac felt when you booted it up for the first time? Unfortunately, if you’ve been using it for a while, it probably doesn’t feel nearly as responsive anymore. That’s because Macs—like all other computers—accumulate all kinds of junk over time that slows them down, including large hidden files, old settings, and duplicate apps.
But who can waste the entire day digging through folders and files? There are many places like music, videos, apps, email downloads, and countless more locations on your Mac where junk and clutter accumulate. In 2022 cleaning your Mac is easier than ever, which is why millions of people download free and low-cost Mac cleaning software.
If you believe that starting from scratch by reinstalling your Mac is the only way to restore its original performance, you’re wrong. All you need to make your Mac feel new again is one of the best free Mac cleaners described in this article.
We’ve listed some of the best Mac cleaner software in this article. Some of the listed software is free, while the premium ones offer a free trial. Here goes:
1. CleanMyMac X
CleanMyMac X takes the first place with good reason — this cleaner combines the cleaning software and antimalware tool features. 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.
This software 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: $39.95Free version available
2. Disk Drill Clean Up Tool
Disk Drill is a data recovery software first and a Mac file cleaner second, but that doesn’t stop it from ranking high on our list of the top 10 best free Mac cleaners. It comes with a truly unlimited free cleanup module that makes it possible to easily identify and visualize all files that are taking up a lot of space and get rid of them instantly.
Suppose you’re worried that an important file could find its way among junk files. In that case, you can filter the scan results by file type, keywords, file size, and several other criteria and manually verify that the files you’re deleting are unnecessary. Disk Drill is a trusted Mac cleaner, so you can leave everything up to it and save yourself valuable time.
Offers free trial
3. Disk Doctor
Disk Doctor was developed in the UK and was awarded the ‘Mac Gem’ award by MacWorld in 2013. CNET and other techjournalists also praise functionality. As of 2021, it still looks like a useful tool for Mac cleaning that removes junk slowing down and reduces your Mac’s computingpower.
Price: $2.99Free version: N/A
4. DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful apps to clean Mac. Its goal is to solve a common issue that most Mac users encounter at one point or another: insufficient disk space. When you launch the app, it gives you an overview of all storage devices attached to your Mac, including network storage. Then, you can click the Scan button next to each storage device to analyze its usage.
All files and folders are displayed as an interactive visual map that makes it crystal clear where the largest files are. The visual nature of DaisyDisk makes it incredibly easy to free up storage space and avoid an expensive purchase of a new storage device.
Just be ready that the manual cleanup process can be quite time-consuming, so don’t expect instant results. If you’re looking for a tool that can automatically clean Mac storage, pick another best app to clean Mac featured in this article.
5. 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 find it. And once the scan is done, you can remove the duplicates with 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 the scan.
Free version available
6. CCleaner for Mac
Ccleaner for Mac is an easy-to-use Mac disk cleaning tool that shares most features with its incredibly popular Windows counterpart. Initially released in 2004 by Piriform, Ccleaner has helped countless users fix annoying slowdowns, reduce clutter, and delete potentially sensitive cookies and other leftover files.
Ccleaner for Mac is fully customizable, giving you the flexibility you need to improve the performance of your Mac. You can specify exactly what you want to clean, such as Safari data, Trash, recent documents, etc. Of course, you can also choose to clean all junk files in one go, which is the recommended approach when cleaning applications and system files for the first time.
Unfortunately, Ccleaner for Mac hasn’t been updated in a while and doesn’t officially support the latest version of macOS. However, we’ve been able to install and use the latest version of Ccleaner for Mac on macOS Catalina just fine.
Price: $19.95Free version 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 healthwill be easier with Drive Genius.
You can use just a fraction of the tools in a free version, 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 can repair damage on your disks, making it a real deal. Be prepared that the hard drive scan may take some time, but the results are worth it.
Price: $299 for the Professional editionFree version: Limited Lite edition is available
8. Cleaner One Lite
Cleaner One LiteFormally known as Dr. Cleaner, this well-rated Mac cleaner is developed by Trend Micro, an American-Japanese multinational cybersecurity software company known primarily for its cybersecurity solutions. As its name suggests, Cleaner One Lite is the free version of Cleaner One Pro, which means that it lacks certain features that some users may find important.
To be more specific, Cleaner One Lite doesn’t include a duplicate file scanner, system status monitoring, similar photo finder, start-up manager, app manager, file shredder, and security center. If these features are important to you, we recommend picking another free Mac cleaning software solution from our list.
But if you’re looking for a basic Mac disk cleaner that can clean an unlimited amount of data from your Mac, Cleaner One Lite is a solid choice, and its Mac App Store reviews speak for themselves.
9. 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. In addition, 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 it as an analyzer, and you’ll be safe.
Price: Free cleaner
10. MacClean
MacClean is a good Mac cleaner that you can trust to restore your computer to its former glory. Instead of cleaning all junk files in one go, MacClean offers five distinct cleanup options: System Junk, Internet Junk, Malicious Cookies, Privacy Issues, and Security Issues. The first option is the one you’ll probably use the most because it removes user and system junk, unnecessary development files, and app leftovers.
If you want to get rid of duplicate files, you need to somewhat confusingly select Cleanup Tools under utilities. That’s where you can also find the option to remove outdated language files or securely delete sensitive files. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to run all the cleanup features MacClean offers with a single click.
Compared with other free cleaning apps featured in this article, scanning with MacClean takes more time, but at least the results are worth the wait. The bad newsis that scanning is the only thing the free version lets you do, and you need to purchase a license to delete found junk files.
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Daniel Barrett
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