Aug 12 2011

MacKeeper – boost, clean, defend and optimize your Mac

    System maintenance? Sounds like something a Windows user must know a lot about, right? Seriously, I know the sentiment. Most Mac owners, including myself, would say that system cleanup and maintenance utilities are something from a totally different galaxy, most likely, the one with the name starting with a ‘W.’ Thing is, even though we enjoy using our preferred OS so much, there are a few things we can do to help this very OS run faster and smoother. At the end of the day, it is our own productivity which is at stake. With all this, I dug into the software world and ended up with a system utility bundle known as MacKeeper.

Read on and find out about my system maintenance experience à la Apple.  

Do you love your Mac?

   The website for MacKeeper offers more than enough information to get started with this software. A whizz-like download, and there I was, with a trial version of MacKeeper which is fully functional for 15 days and includes personalized 24/7 customer support. Not bad, huh? The installation bundle is a single PKG file which takes you through only a few simple installation steps. In a couple of clicks, you’re good to go.    Now, many of us may be used to thinking that MacOS is pretty good at keeping itself nice, clean and fast-running. Meaning no extra action is needed on your part. In a way, this is quite true. For me, one of the perks of having migrated to Mac is not having to reinstall the system every once in a while after it gets too heavy with all sorts of clutter. However, you still can get a nice hard drive volume boost and get that juicy bit of extra performance by getting rid of unnecessary files before they start being a serious pain in the back. Log files, unnecessary cache files, especially font cache if you’re using Photoshop, for example (which is my case), and a few other types of files are something we could totally live without.     So, I used the Fast Cleanup window of MacKeeper to scan my system for a few most important clutter types and removed what I thought unnecessary. It’s nice that the program window shows the total disk space you save – check the small gray area in top right hand corner for that info. I also removed a few applications and plugins I wasn’t using for a while. Some unneeded languages could easily go as well.     The Wise Uninstaller section helped me go through all my installations and accurately remove them – well, not all of them of course, but the unnecessary ones. In fact, MacKeeper went through my system automatically and the scanning depth was really impressive. I saw a few plugins for iTunes and Spotlight I did not even know I had installed! It showed me different installation types, from applications to dictionaries, contextual menus, plugins for different software etc. Oh the glorious feeling of control over your system, and over plugins especially, as these end up installed with you barely noticing it all. Well, bye bye unwanted plugins, languages, monstrous cache files and other worthless stuff. All in all, in only a few minutes I was enjoying a juicy volume boost of almost a gigabyte. Handsome huh? What I liked about MacKeeper is that it really keeps things simple, scans the system automatically in many situations and offers easily understandable choices for future action. Heck, even if you’re not an expert, you can bug the support service with your questions, the dudes are there to answer them, right?     Just when I thought there was nothing more to be done to get an even bigger volume boost on my hard drive, I spotted the Duplicates Finder, Files Finder and the Disk Usage sections in MacKeeper’s left side navigation panel. All of these have pretty self-explanatory names, except maybe for Disk Usage. With it, I analyzed my data on the hard drive and MacKeeper showed me which folders take up most space. A green-yellow-red gradation is used, with red being over 1Gb, orange over 1Mb and less than 1Gb, and yellow and green below that. I wasn’t very surprised when I saw my movies and music folders on top of the list in bright red, haha. I also went deeper one level to see which folders in my fattest folders are responsible for most space. A nice way to study your data structure and perhaps to get rid of a few large files you no longer need. Still chasing the big fat volume boost, I went for the Duplicates Finder to do guess what, find file duplicates. Apparently I had quite a few. If you download a lot chances are you can have copies of the same files in different folder.    Well, anyway this is what I had. A few songs and videos ended up in different folders. An automatic scan of my 200-something hard drive took a little more than 5 minutes and after that I got a list of duplicates which I could sort by file name or by file size. That’s handy if you want to get rid of just a few largest files and not bother with the rest of them. I made sure these are not some vital system files and had MacKeeper move them to trash for me. This is nice actually as you don’t lose the files right away. I gave them a farewell look in the trash, and there they went, giving me another bit of volume boost, a couple hundred megabytes in fact.    File Finder is another feature in this block of tools, and after playing with it for a while I thought it’s in certain ways better than Spotlight or other native file search options. I liked the search presets which let you easily find music or movies, and even certain types of them. The presets are of course customizable. This is a nice add-on to MacOS native file search tools and I thought it’s even a bit faster.     With all that over and done and seen, I thought I’d move to more advanced features MacKeeper offers. Wow, data encryption! Perhaps not the most common thing system maintenance utility bundles have. A great feature though, and it’s great not having to download or buy additional software. Like generally I’m not a hardcore privacy freak but once in a while we all have a bit of data we would like to keep really safe. MacKeeper asked me to create a password and offered a choice of which folders or files I’d like to encrypt. Later on, you can only get access to these items via MacKeeper – and of course you’ll need your password. I checked and none of these files could be seen in Finder. I found out I could assign separate passwords to some items. Well, if I have a fit of computer paranoia any time soon, I know what to do. Some files you’d like to store privately, and some files you’d like to go away forever.     Shredder is a MacKeeper’s feature which lets you get rid of files forever by dropping them onto what looks like a mean black propeller. Apparently the files won’t be able to undergo any recovery. Got a few pictures you wouldn’t want your wife to see? Start the shredder! I did a few experiments deleting a couple documents to Trash and emptying it. MacKeeper helped me recover them with its Undelete capability – but only until I threw them into the almighty Shredder. After that, no recovery, sorry. So, good files go to encryption, bad files go to the Shredder. Check this out: if you accidentally deleted crucial files, try not to do other stuff on your Mac and not to save any other data. What you need to do is launch MacKeeper ASAP and recover the files before any data gets written in the space where they once were. Chances are you’ll still get them back, and good luck with that.     Without going too much into all this delete-recovery detail, you can actually back up important files through MacKeeper’s native backup utility. I tried creating a backup group which is something you need to do in MacKeeper before you can backup certain files. My impression? It’s nice to be able to back up only selected files, not whole volumes or even folders. This can take a lot of time. Also, you can set up MacKeeper to back up your data to the same drive, other drives, Flash disks, even FTP servers. Looks like it’s pretty fast and flexible, and in my experience backups are rarely this way.     Viruses? On MacOS? You must be kidding. This is what many people think and I absolutely have a few friends who moved to Macs because it’s less prone to get infected. But I did some research and hey it’s not that simple. Yeah, sometimes research sucks, it can totally ruin the day haha. Anyway, there are a few known viruses and malware types targeting Mac users already. You can google it, there are known Safari vulnerabilities which may lead to unwanted activity on your Mac jus after some web browsing. Another thing, as more people become Mac users more bad guys will try to hack into their Macs or do other bad guy stuff. So, it’s better to get safe now than regret it later, right?     I checked out what MacKeeper has to offer in the security department, and here’s the deal. The Antivirus module scanned my system for suspicious files. One can schedule automatic scans or just do them with some sort of regularity. MacKeeper does not overload you with options and settings. No need to tweak through countless options. I just run the scan, set up automatic malware database updates, and if, god forbid, some bad stuff is found, I check quarantine zone where MacKeeper sends the infected files in exile. Guess it’s a good idea to check your Mac once in a while. The world we live in is a mess and sometimes malware and all manner of Trojan horses disguise themselves as legit software or addons. One has to watch out for these things of course, but it’s still a good idea to run this scan once in a while.     Another curious feature MacKeeper has in the security department is AntiTheft. Via a special online service, you can set up an account for you and your Mac. If your computer gets stolen (those bastards!), you can log into the service from another computer and flag your Mac as stolen. When the thief goes online on your Mac, the AntiTheft module will track down its location. The rest is police work. Thanks god I did not have a chance to test it, but sounds reasonable anyway.     Enough with security and maintenance, I thought. Give me something easier to understand and still nice and possibly good for system performance. With this sort of thinking I started exploring the Optimization area of MacKeeper’s navigation panel. I loved the Update Tracker thing right away. Get a load of this, you can actually see all your software in one place and MacKeeper shows whether there’s a newer version available and if so, how much you will have to download. Awesome, especially taking into account that most of these programs won’t show in MacOS’s Software Update window. You get to see the version numbers too. I clicked Update All, kicked back and saw my Mac get the latest and possibly cooler versions of all my software. Yay! Login Items is a pretty self-explanatory feature here. I checked what programs load when I start up my computer. Luckily, everything looked legit. Sometimes you’ll end up with unnecessary login items which increase your boot time and can slow down your Mac. I thought I’d check this section from time to time just to make sure. Default Apps is another handsome feature which, as the name suggests, lets you set up default applications for different file types. Normally you won’t need to do this, but things happen. I don’t like QuickTime very much for example so I totally changed default apps for all video file types to my player of choice. VLC, if you’re curious.      Geek on Demand? That almost sounds sexy! On a serious note, MacKeeper comes bundled with a feature which lets you ask a question, however complicated, and get a reply from tech experts on the MacKeeper team. To be able to do this, you need to get an online account which also enables the AntiTheft capability I touched upon earlier. The ‘find the badass who stole my Mac,’ remember? With that account, you can post a demand and have geeks get back to you in 48 hours. You will need to enter a title for your demand, a description of it, obviously, and your phone for faster contact. Apparently these geeks can even remotely access your Mac to do stuff you are not sure you will be able to do yourself. I got one demand with my free trial and registered users get literally infinite demands to submit. I gotta say, it actually feels good to have geeks behind your back, hehe. But hey, MacKeeper looks friendly and powerful enough to help me be in control over my system stuff myself!

Updated:  MacKeeper CAN and WILL protect your lovin’ Mac from VIRUSES! A lot of new viruses appeared on Mac Os X last time and MacKeeper will help you!

So download MacKeeper and try it.

By jonnyb • Software Reviews • 2 • Tags: boost mac, mackeeper, optimization