The weather's turning warmer in our neck of the woods, which means it's time to start thinking about spring cleaning. While you're emptying your closets, decluttering, and getting rid of the bloat in your life, why not do the same for your Mac? Here are some simple, easy to follow tips to give your trusted Mac a little spring cleaning of its own.
- Free Hard Drive Cleanup Software For Mac
- Free Mac Cleanup Software
- Best Mac Cleanup Tool
- Clean Up Tool For Mac
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For any Mac user, looking to enhance the performance of the system, CleanGeeker is a perfect solution to eradicate the junk files, unused long files, duplicate files and much more. Although this is a paid tool, considering the premium features, this is definitely a must-buy the Mac cleaner app. CLICK LINKGET A FREE TRIAL VERSION clean my mac, clean mac, mac cleanup, mac clean, free mac cleaner, mac clean up, faster mac. Effectiveness – Even after spending hours learning how to clean up your Mac and carry out the tasks, you won’t be able to find all of the unnecessary files. Top Cleaner for Your Mac Now you can increase your Mac's performance by throwing away system trash and get more space on drives by cleaning up old files.
Clean It Out
Let's start with the outside of your system. Turn it off, unplug everything, and move it out from where you normally have it set up. Give the area around your Mac, whether it's an iMac on your desk, or a Mac Pro under your desk, a good cleaning—there's probably dust and grime built up around it. Apple has specific guidelines to cleaning your gear, and while each system is a little different, it's always a safe bet to take a microfiber cloth to the surface of your device to wipe away the dust and any smudges or oils that may be lingering on your screen or case. Apple suggests a damp, lint-free cloth to do the job, but even a dry microfiber cloth will get he job done—especially on displays and screens where you absolutely don't want to use harsh chemicals of any kind. Photo by Cheon Fong Liew.
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Even though it's not officially recommended by Apple, a little compressed air will go a long way towards getting the dust out of the cracks, crevices, and exhaust vents. If you have a Mac Pro, you can crack the case open and attack the inside with the same cloth and compressed air.
If your case or keyboard are seriously gunky, we highly recommend attacking the filth with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, but keep in mind that they—and other melamine sponges—are slightly abrasive, so you may be rubbing away grease and dirt, but if you keep scrubbing you can wear away the top layer of the finish as well.
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Read more ReadTame Your Cable Clutter
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Before you set your Mac back up, go ahead and take some time to tame the cable clutter that may have accumulated under your desk over months of use. Now is a good time to learn how to wrap those cables so they don't take up so much space, or order some velcro cable ties, twist ties, or zip ties to help you keep everything coming out of the back of your computer neat and tidy, and maybe even label them with milk jug labels or bread tags. If it's really bad, you can always repurpose a rain gutter, use a flower pot, or find another container to keep the cables and their slack out of sight.
But apart from this reason, if you want to partition your Mac’s hard drive then you can use the second way which is via Disk Utility that we’ll be discussing in our next section. Clone tool for mac. Once you through with the process, you can run both operating system (Windows and Mac) on your MacBook.
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Get Up to Date
Free Hard Drive Cleanup Software For Mac
If you're setting some time aside to tidy up your Mac for the spring, the first thing you'll want to do is make sure you have all of the latest patches, security updates, and application updates available via Software Update. If you're running a really old version of Mac OS and you've been thinking about upgrading, there's no time like the present to get on board with OS 10.8 'Mountain Lion.' Even if you stick to Snow Leopard, or newer verisons of Mac OS aren't supported on your hardware, it's worth using Software Update to make sure your system is as up to date as it can be.
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Uninstall Unnecessary Apps
After you've made sure your system is all up to date, it's time to dig into your Applications folder and start uninstalling programs that you know you no longer need. In most cases, uninstalling a Mac app is as simple as dragging the app to the trash, but doing just that can leave orphaned preferences files from those uninstalled apps on your computer. We'd suggest using an actual uninstaller, like our current favorite, AppCleaner, which is completely free. If you're willing to spend some coin ($13, to be exact), AppZapper has a prettier UI and a few more options, but in the end they both do the same thing. If you use one of these apps to remove those unwanted programs from your system, you can be sure you're getting rid of all of their associated files as well. Finally, head into System Preferences, click on Accounts, and clean out the Login Items tab of any applications that you don't want to run on startup. Sometimes even uninstalled apps leave entries behind, and it's a good idea to tidy up your startup items anyway.
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Reclaim Hard Drive Space
If you've been following along, you've cleaned up your Mac on the outside, your Mac is up to date, and you've uninstalled the programs you no longer use or need on your system. Now it's time to finish cleaning your Mac up on the inside and get back the hard drive space that's probably being wasted by old VirtualBox images, video game screenshots, or other assorted files you didn't know were lurking on your system.
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The venerable Disk Inventory X is a great tool that will scan your drives and show you what's eating up all of your space in an easy to understand view, and it's completely free. Alternatively, $10, if you have it to spend, will buy you a copy of Daisy Disk, an app that many of you preferred because it allows you to not just see the contents of your drive in multiple views, but go ahead and delete, compress, and organize your drive quickly—and automatically, without you having to lift a finger. Just make sure you empty your trash when you're through with everything to really get the space back.
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Do Some Maintenance and Optimize Your System
Now that you've cleaned out the mess from your Mac, it's time to give OS X a little TLC. Head into Disk Utility and click 'Verify Disk.' It shouldn't take too long, and if you see any errors, wait for it to finish and click 'Repair Disk.' It's always a good idea to verify your disk every few months, just to make sure you're not missing some creeping issue with your hard drive or your OS X installation. You may also notice that you can verify or repair disk permissions. It doesn't hurt if you do it, but whether or not it's actually useful as a troubleshooting step is hotly debated. All-things-Mac writer John Gruber says it's voodoo, and honestly, he's right—it's not very useful for regular troubleshooting. However, Dwight Silverman says it's saved his bacon, although he had to dig deeper to fix his issue. Apple still reccomends repairing permissions for specific issues and references it in its knowledgebase. Your mileage may vary.
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Beyond Disk Utility , you may also want to look into a system optimization utility like Onyx, our favorite system tweaker for Mac. Alternatively, previously mentioned cleaning utility iBoostUp does a great job of tidying up your system, as does the newly releasedCCleaner for Mac.
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Back Up Your Refreshed Mac
These steps are all well and good to keep your Mac running smoothly, and even for periodic cleanups like these to get everything back in top shape. That said, they're all but wasted if you're not backing up your system. If you need help getting started, here's how to set up a bulletproof backup system using our favorite tool, CrashPlan. I use it personally to keep both my Mac and Windows systems backed up, and once it's set up, it really is fire and forget—and you get to sleep at night knowing all of your data is safely backed up to another computer, external drives, or—if you have the money to spend—an offsite location.
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Read more ReadYou may also consider taking a disk image of your freshly tidied Mac in case you need to restore later after a hard drive upgrade or replacement. You can do this in Disk Utility, but our favorite disk cloning tool for Mac is Carbon Copy Cloner, which is a bit more robust and reliable.
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Free Mac Cleanup Software
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That's all there is to it. Macs usually don't need much in the way of maintenance, but they can definitely use some cleanup from time to time, especially after heavy use. Apple doesn't ship too much in the way of tweaking or optimization tools for your Mac, but there are plenty out there for all versions of Mac OS, so don't be shy when it comes to giving your ailing Mac a tune-up. After all, it's spring, and now's the perfect time to declutter and clean up your Mac as well as the rest of your life.
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Do you have any spring cleaning tips that we left out? Share your tips—and suggestions—in the comments below.
If you're troubleshooting Office and would like to remove the license files on your Mac, you can use the license removal tool. This will completely remove all licenses for Office for Mac.
Important: Before using the tool, make sure you have the correct account info and password associated with your purchase of Office available for when you reactivate.
This tool can also help if you've subscribed to Office 365 but previously had a one-time purchase of Office for Mac on your computer, and aren't seeing certain subscription features. This can be due to your copy of Office still using the license of your one-time purchase and not your subscription.
Before you begin
1. Check what license your version of Office is currently using. See, What version of Office am I using?
Note: If you're looking for subscription features and your version is using an Office 365 subscription license, then you don't need to do the rest of these steps. You're already using the correct license. See When do I get the newest features for Office 365? for more info on why you may not be seeing subscription features yet.
2. If you aren't uninstalling the Office apps to reinstall them later, quit out of all Office apps. If you've already uninstalled Office, go to the next step.
Best Mac Cleanup Tool
Download and run the license removal tool
1. Download the license removal tool.
Clean Up Tool For Mac
2. Open the .pkg file from your Mac's Downloads folder.
Note: If you get an 'unidentified developer' error, try opening the file by holding Control + clicking the file > Open.
3. Select Continue and follow the prompts in the setup wizard.
Caution: We recommend you double-check that you have the correct account info ready by logging into Office.com/signin and checking for the license you want to activate with.
4. When you're ready to complete the license removal, select Install. You may need to enter your Mac's local admin account password.
After the tool successfully removes licenses, select Close.
5. Now launch any Office app and sign in to activate with the email account associated with your Office for Mac license. If you're troubleshooting an issue, you may need to reinstall Office before signing in.
After you've successfully activated, restart your computer and then you're good to go!
Note: If your account has both an Office 365 for Mac license and a one-time purchase associated with it, you'll be prompted to choose which license you want to activate with. We recommend always choosing Office 365 for Mac if available.
6. Uninstall the License Removal Tool by dragging the Microsoft_Office_License_Removal file from Finder > Downloads to Trash.