CleanMyMac 5 Review

Macs have earned their reputation as computers that ‘just work.’ Apple has done an excellent job of providing a quality operating system free of the issues that plague Windows machines, but despite their attention to detail, macOS isn’t perfect. CleanMyMac offers a simple solution to keep your Mac running at its best – but do you really need to use it? 

My name is Thomas Boldt, and I’ve been working with Macs personally and professionally since the days of the original iMac. Since then, I’ve tested hundreds of apps and published countless reviews, and I refuse to mislead anyone about the value of the apps that I test (even when it annoys my editors).

In this CleanMyMac 5 review, I’ll address some common concerns about CleanMyMac, take you through each section of the app, and show you the results of my testing. Let’s get started!

Note: MacPaw has no editorial control over the content of this review, and all the opinions are my own. 

Why CleanMyMac Got So Many Mixed Reviews

Online reviews are regularly manipulated to push a particular point of view, regardless of facts or accuracy. Even when the bad reviews aren’t intentional disinformation, it can be hard to sort out the important details from the ones that don’t apply to you. To help out, here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the mixed reviews for CleanMyMac. 

CleanMyMac offers a lot of simple tools that duplicate complex features already found in macOS, and that makes some power users dismiss it as unnecessary. However, like many IT pros, they tend to forget that other Mac users may not share the same technical knowledge, so they call the product useless and give it unfairly bad reviews.

While that motivation is understandable, some of the negative CleanMyMac reviews are not motivated by misguided altruism. CleanMyMac developer MacPaw was founded in Kyiv, and Ukraine is currently at war to defend itself against a brutal and illegal Russian invasion. 

Russian digital activists are engaged in a smear campaign against anyone who supports Ukrainian sovereignty, and MacPaw and their charitable foundation are doing everything they can to support their country. Fighting state-sponsored trolls is an unfair disadvantage for any software developer, and I think it’s impressive that MacPaw has continued working so diligently despite everything. 

Always remember: both positive and negative online reviews can be helpful, but they don’t automatically deserve your trust. 

(Yes, even this one – but I think I’ll earn it.)

The Difference between CleanMyMac X and CleanMyMac 5

	CleanMyMac 5	CleanMyMac X
Release Year	2024 (newest version)	2018 (old version)
OS Compatibility	macOS 11 Big Sur or newer	macOS 10.13 High Sierra or newer
Duplicate Finder feature	Yes	No
File Shredder feature	No	Yes
Mac Health Score feature	Yes	No
Passes EICAR malware test	Yes	No

Despite the confusing naming system, CleanMyMac 5 is newer than CleanMyMac X. CleanMyMac X was released in 2018, while CleanMyMac 5 was first released in October 2024.

The biggest change between the two versions is the redesigned interface in CleanMyMac 5. The new UI condenses the old list of individual features into streamlined sections, which provides a cleaner look overall, though some users who relied on specific tools have complained it takes a few extra clicks to reach them.

CleanMyMac X was a great start, but some of the new features weren’t polished enough. Its anti-malware features needed additional work, but CleanMyMac 5 seems to have corrected these issues.

My Experience Using CleanMyMac (with Test Results)

The CleanMyMac interface is divided into several modules: Smart Care, Cleanup, Protection, Performance, Applications, and My Clutter. There’s also an ‘Assistant’ module that provides an overall assessment of your Mac’s health, as well as additional tips and suggestions for ways to improve your Mac experience. 

For the most part, the UI design works quite well, although there is a bit of scanning overlap between some of the modules. The scans ran quickly on my M4 Macbook Pro, but your mileage may vary depending on your Mac’s processor, storage drives, and usage habits. 

However, before we go any further, I have to emphasize the importance of checking the details of each scan result before applying any of the recommended actions. Some of the modules offered to remove items I needed to keep, and deleting them could have caused me a serious headache if I hadn’t been paying attention. 

Like any powerful tool, you have to be careful and responsible about how you use CleanMyMac. If you are unfamiliar with a particular action, do some online research first!

Smart Care

This module provides easy access to all of CleanMyMac’s scanning features in one place. It’s convenient, but I recommend that you take the time to become familiar with each individual module before relying on the Smart Care function to handle everything automatically.

Fortunately, each section of the Smart Care interface offers a handy ‘Review’ button so you can select and confirm the files that will be modified. This is always a good idea! 

I noticed that there are some differences between the results of the Smart Care scan and the scans run within each individual module. For example, the Cleanup section of the Smart Care scan identifies 6.1 GB of junk files on my Mac, but scanning within the Cleanup module identifies 7.1 GB of files that can be removed. Similar variations appeared between the other modules. 

This isn’t a problem, but it’s important to note that Smart Care only applies the basics of each module’s scanning features. It’s intended to function as your regular maintenance upkeep tool rather than providing in-depth access to every feature. As a result, you may want to run each module individually and familiarize yourself with its features before you start using Smart Care to handle everything. 

Cleanup

Cleanup checks your Mac for a wide and surprising variety of files that you may not want to keep around, including user and system cache files, unnecessary universal binaries, log files, iOS device backups, and more. 

Most Macs don’t make it easy to upgrade your storage space, so this module may quickly become your favorite section of the app, especially when paired with the My Clutter feature. 

My initial scan on my new Macbook identified over 7GB of files it wanted to delete, including 5.3 GB of user and system cache files, plus a whopping 725 MB of log files – all from a single week of light use! 

Now before the tech-savvy Mac users get spicy, it’s worth pointing out that large cache files are not intrinsically bad. They do serve a useful purpose, and they’re typically fine to leave on your system unless a specific app is misbehaving. Dealing with corrupted cache files manually can be a pain, so CMM’s approach is much easier. 

In many cases, a deleted cache file will be rebuilt as soon as you launch the app again, which means your reclaimed space may not stay free for long — but if you’re running out of space on a 256GB drive, an extra 7GB could come in handy to finish a project or complete a file transfer. 

The universal binaries result is a bit more surprising (at least to me), since this is my first Mac with Apple Silicon. Because Apple is still technically in the transition phase between Intel and the new M series chips, most developers still include the code for both versions of an app during installation, even when it’s not needed.

While this seems convenient, some Reddit users have reported issues when removing “unneeded” universal binaries with other tools, so be cautious when using this feature. 

Protection

Testing a malware scanner can be a difficult task because no reviewer wants to infect their machine with malware. Instead, I’ve downloaded some harmless sample files created by the European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research (EICAR) for this exact purpose. 

The test file comes in three forms: the raw file, a zipped version, and a double-zipped version. The zipped versions test your malware scanner’s ability to detect malware hidden in compressed files, even if it’s compressed twice to hide from scanners that only check one level deep. 

CMM detected the unzipped file during the download process, offering me an immediate option to delete the file. The zipped files were not detected as malware during download, but all three files were successfully identified when I ran a full scan, as you can see below.

MacPaw has also run tests privately with the independent testing firm AV-TEST, although they provide conflicting data about their success rate. In the CMM knowledge base, it is claimed that CMM’s Moonlock Engine identified 99% of all threats in the test, but when you visit the Moonlock Engine website, they state that only 93.3% of all threats were identified. 

It’s important to remember that no anti-malware is perfect. Hackers and security companies are in a constant arms race, and there’s no way to be 100% secure all the time by relying on software alone. If you’re unsure about the source of an app or file, don’t download it! 

The Protection module also includes some privacy-related scanning features. To highlight the importance of checking each scan result before applying the recommended actions, check out the results of my scan below. No malware was found after removing the EICAR test files, but CMM also identified over 40,000 temporary files created by the Firefox web browser. 

If that seems like a staggeringly high number, you’re correct – especially when we look at what it wants to remove. I’m happy to remove cookies and browsing history, but I absolutely do not want to remove my saved passwords or autofill data, and I can’t understand why those options would ever be automatically selected. 

Performance

The Performance section of CMM is the only one that makes me cautious because the actions recommended for me don’t seem to fit my needs. This may be because my test Mac is so new, but that’s also why I don’t think I need to apply any of their suggestions.

The Background Items section is more practical, especially since it helped block a long-time nemesis on both PC and Macs: the Adobe Acrobat Update Helper. (I’m mostly kidding, but only mostly.) The Activity Monitor and Login Items features in macOS can help you manage these annoyances, but it’s simpler to handle them in one spot with CMM. 

When your Mac is in heavy use, the Performance module also offers to close apps for you to free up more memory. It can also shrink the size of Time Machine snapshots, although I haven’t had a chance to test either of these features. 

Applications

The Applications section monitors both macOS and your installed apps for updates, but it also tracks your unneeded installation files and other leftovers from uninstalled apps that may get stranded on your drive, taking up space. 

As a software reviewer, I’ve installed countless apps on my Macs over the years, but I’m not always as diligent as I should be about removing them when I’m done testing. I’m also terrible at remembering to delete all the installer files I’ve downloaded, but CMM easily identifies them all for removal. 

The CMM Applications Manager provides an interesting overview of your Mac apps that actually feels more useful than the App Store, especially if you install apps from other sources. The macOS uninstallation process is extremely basic, and not all developers are as responsible with their app files as they should be. 

The App Store insists that it keeps your apps up-to-date, but I’ve found that it doesn’t run its update process as often as I’d like, especially for apps that constantly release new versions (looking at you, Telegram).

I appreciate the convenience of having all these features in one place, although you may not find it as helpful unless you regularly install and remove apps on your Mac. 

My Clutter

As I mentioned earlier, this is another very useful section of CMM designed to help you identify and remove large, unused, and duplicate files. This also makes it one of the longest scans to run, depending on the number of files stored on your Mac. 

Personally, I don’t want CMM to handle my duplicate photos because I prefer to use the built-in feature in the Photos app, but it helps to manage images that aren’t part of your Photos library. The ‘Similar Images’ section is a bit more useful if you’re running out of space, but as a photographer, my ‘similar images’ are actually different shot options that I want to keep. 

The Large & Old Files feature correctly identified some large app installation files that I didn’t need, which were also detected by the Applications section. Interestingly, the same files did not appear in the ‘Downloads’ category, but perhaps CMM didn’t want to log them twice within the same module. 

Assistant

This section has some basic helpful tips, like recommending regular restarts, but I’m wary of the system used to categorize your Mac’s health. My brand-new Macbook received a score of ‘Good’ instead of ‘Excellent’ the first time I checked, which surprised me a little. After downloading the EICAR malware test file, the health rating tanked to ‘Critical’ but improved to ‘Excellent’ after running a malware scan and removing the EICAR test file. 

Considering that it was ‘Good’ before my malware test, I would expect it to revert to ‘Good’ until I applied some of the other scan recommendations. This inconsistency suggests that the health score is only based on how recently you’ve run any of the scans rather than a fair assessment of the state of your Mac.

Final Verdict: Is CleanMyMac Worth The Cost?

Annoyingly, the honest answer is a qualified ‘maybe’ – it depends on your level of knowledge and how you use your computer. 

If you’re a power user comfortable tinkering with macOS settings and running terminal commands, then CMM may not be for you. If you’re a complete novice who doesn’t want to learn any technical details about macOS, then you may accidentally delete files that you should have kept. 

If you use your Mac daily with multiple third-party apps and you are comfortable with macOS but want an easier way to manage your system, CleanMyMac is an excellent choice for keeping your machine running smoothly.

However, CleanMyMac is a bit expensive for the features that it offers, especially if you’ve got multiple Macs to clean. I recommend purchasing it with one of the many discount options or as part of a Setapp subscription to help reduce the cost.