How to Clean Up Mac with Disk Clean Pro 1. Download and install Disk Clean Pro 2.
If you plan to sell your Mac to get a brand-new one or to give it away because you've already bought a newer model, you must first erase all your personal files to avoid unpleasant surprises afterwards.
There is a very simple procedure that you should follow if you need to remove all your personal data from your Mac, and it will require you to securely format your computer's hard drive or hard drives if it has more than one (as is the case of Mac Pros).
- How to Clear Cache on Mac with MacClean. MacClean is a cleaning utility specially made to safely clean up and speed up all Mac products. With this tool, you can easily remove almost all caches on your Mac, no matter system cache, users cache or browser cache that created by Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.
- Therefore, if you want to give your system a boost, clean your Mac from the cache files. There are two ways to do that: you can delete them manually or use a MacBook cleaner like CleanMyMac X to do the job for you. Of course, the second way is an easy and fast one.
Apple also describes on their support website what one has to do before selling a Mac, and even though their procedure is quite simple to follow, it doesn't take into account the fact that a formatted hard drive will not prevent the buyer to recover files that you thought are lost forever.
This happens because even though you tell OS X to delete a file from the hard drive, the file will not be completely deleted since the operating system will only remove the memory reference to the file. This allows recovery software to scan hard drives and recover data, a quite helpful feat if you've accidentally deleted any of your files.
Fortunately, there is a way to protect your files from being revived when you part ways with your Mac: securely erasing the hard drive, a process that prevents third parties from recovering your personal data. When you are securely erasing the hard drive, you are telling the computer to overwrite your files with random data two to seven times (OS X supports 2-, 3- and 7-pass secure erasing).
Next, I will describe the entire procedure of completely clearing personal or sensitive data from your Mac, an easy-to-follow four-step procedure that should give you peace of mind once you give away your computer.
Step 1 - Backup
If you decide to securely erase your Mac's hard drive(s), you will first have to back up your information. To do this, you should use the Time Machine app because it makes it very easy to keep a copy of all your important data.
Apple has its own detailed tutorial on how to use Time Machine to back up your data, and you should follow it step by step to effortlessly set up Time Machine, as well as back up and restore your data.
It is important to note that you should always use an external hard drive, a Time Capsule or an OS X Server on your network to back up your data because backing it up on the same Mac means that you will lose all of it once you format the Mac's hard drive(s).
Step 2 - Deauthorize
Mac easy to use. During this step of the procedure, you will disconnect your Mac from all Apple services you have connected it to.
First of all, you have to deauthorize the Mac from iTunes to prevent it from accessing the content you bought on the iTunes Store, iBooks Store, Mac App Store or the iOS Store in the future.
Next, log out of iMessage by launching the Messages app, going to Preferences > Accounts and clicking on 'Sign out' after selecting your iMessage account.
Afterwards, you will have to sign out of iCloud by going to the menu > System Preferences > iCloud. Here, uncheck Find My Mac and then click on the 'Sign Out' button at the bottom left side of the window. When you sign out of iCloud, all your iCloud data will be removed from your computer, but it will reappear on your new Mac once you sign in using your iCloud account.
Step 3 - Erase
The first thing you have to do is to restart your Mac and enter the Recovery system to format your Mac's hard drive(s).
You do this by going to the menu and clicking the Restart option. Next, hold down and hold down ⌘ + R on your keyboard and release the keys once the Apple logo is displayed on the screen.
After OS X Recovery loads, you have to click on the Disk Utility entry at the bottom of the window. Then, you need to first choose the startup disk to delete your OS X installation, click on Erase tab at the top, select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as the partition format in the drop-down confirmation dialog that will appear, and then click on the 'Security Options' button.
Here you can choose the option to use when securely erasing the disk, from a 2-pass overwriting of your data, to a 7-pass US Department of Defense standard that will overwrite your data seven times. Needless to say, depending on the number of overwrites, the erasing processing will take longer.
Once you choose the secure erasing option, click OK and then on the 'Erase' button to completely delete all the files on the disk.
If your Mac has multiple hard drives with multiple partitions, you will have to repeat the procedure described above for each of the disks to avoid leaving any sensitive data on any of them.
Step 4 - Reinstall
After you've cleaned your Mac of all your personal files and data, all you have to do is to reinstall OS X by closing Disk Utility and clicking on the 'Reinstall OS X' option in the OS X Utilities window.
Reinstalling OS X is just a matter of following the on-screen directions, and you'll know you're done after the Welcome message appears.
At this stage, you can either configure the Mac and finish the setup process, or you can just power it off by pressing ⌘ + Q and leave it to the new owner to set up the Mac as he likes.
Leave a comment below if you need more information regarding any of the steps described above or if you want to share any other methods of quickly erasing all sensitive information from a Mac's hard drive with the rest of our readers.
Here's a guide on how to clean your PC's system and hard drive. By the way, if you own a Mac, switch from here to an article on how to clean up a Mac. Mac and Windows PC are pretty different, so make sure you're reading the guide that helps you solve your problem.
When does your computer need a cleanup?
It's quite easy to tell. There are a few solid signs you should clean up computer:
- You're running out of disk space.
- Startup takes ages.
- Apps and browsers load way to slow.
- Desktop is full of files and folders.
- You can't find the files you need in the mess.
- Programs quit unexpectedly and misbehave.
How to clean your PC
Let's go over main problems and see how they can be solved. Generally, PC cleaning boils down to two main tasks: hard drive cleaning and system cleaning.
Hard drive cleaning means working with your own files, sorting them, finding and removing the ones you don't need anymore. System cleaning is a trickier part where you have to dig into Windows folders and remove system trash that clutters your system. There's also additional part of browser cleaning and uninstalling old programs (or applications).
Let's start with the easiest part which is also much faster, system cleaning.
How to clean computer system: the easy way
If you don't feel like spending time digging about in your system or you feel uncertain about messing with Windows files in general, there's an easier way. You can get CleanMyPC that will do the job for you, sparing you the ordeal of manual cleaning.
CleanMyPC is a fast and powerful app for system cleaning. It will also keep an eye on your computer for you, making sure everything runs well. It's a good choice if you want a quick fix.
In case you have time and inspiration for manual system cleaning, read on.
How to clean computer system: the manual way
The first thing you need to remove is temporary files or simply temp files. They are generated by your activity and by the apps you use, and they should get deleted automatically (hence the name), but for many reasons some of them don't.
Removing temp files on Windows 7
- To begin with, close all apps
- Press Start
- Type Disk Cleanup into the search bar and hit Enter
- In the list you see, find Disk Cleanup and double-click it
- Select Temporary Internet Files, Temporary files (Temp), Thumbnails, Downloaded Program Files, Offline webpages.
- Delete them.
There are also hidden folders you need to clean.
- Click Start, select Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization.
- Choose Folder Options, then select the View tab.
- Under Advanced settings, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and click OK.
- Open Users$USER$AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet Files. Where $USER$ is your username.
- Clean up the folder by selecting all contents and removing them.
Removing temp files on Windows 10
- Go to Start menu
- Find Settings
- Choose System
- Choose Storage
- Find local storage called This PC
- Look for Temporary files
- Find the option 'Delete Temporary files'.
Getting rid of caches and logs
In every version of Windows there are about 7 different cache types. Believe me, you don't want to go through each of them. There are plenty of manuals if you have a free hour or two, so you can turn to them. But the simplest way to deal with caches would be to download CleanMyPC for free and let it remove all caches in one instance.
How to clean computer hard drive
First, answer the question 'Do I need to clean my computer?'. It's pretty easy, Open My Computer (you can use the following keyboard shortcut with any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key ÿ+E) and look at the bar(s) of your Local Disk(s). If the free space is running low, the bar is red. If it's green/blue — you're good. The other reason you might want to execute hard drive cleaning is to organize all your files.
Sorting to find the largest folders
Now, how do you go about all the things you have on drives? Download access 2016 for mac. It's not as hard when you do the sorting first.
- Open your most used local disk in My Computer
- Right-click anywhere in the window (just not on the items)
- Sort by — Size
Now you see everything sorted from the biggest to the smallest, so it's easy to spot the heavyweight champions that you should probably get rid of. Inside the heavy folders, you can also sort files by size (unless they're all similar, like photos) to find what weights the folder down.
Duplicate hunt
There's a high chance you've copied a folder and forgot to delete the original. Or downloaded something, couldn't find it and downloaded it again. Happens to the best of us.
To find those duplicates, you might need an app that deals specifically with this problem. Try the free dupeGuru. The interface is a little bleak, but it does the job: finds you duplicate files and helps you remove them.
How To Clean A Laptop
Cleaning the desktop
Reinstalling OS X is just a matter of following the on-screen directions, and you'll know you're done after the Welcome message appears.
At this stage, you can either configure the Mac and finish the setup process, or you can just power it off by pressing ⌘ + Q and leave it to the new owner to set up the Mac as he likes.
Leave a comment below if you need more information regarding any of the steps described above or if you want to share any other methods of quickly erasing all sensitive information from a Mac's hard drive with the rest of our readers.
Here's a guide on how to clean your PC's system and hard drive. By the way, if you own a Mac, switch from here to an article on how to clean up a Mac. Mac and Windows PC are pretty different, so make sure you're reading the guide that helps you solve your problem.
When does your computer need a cleanup?
It's quite easy to tell. There are a few solid signs you should clean up computer:
- You're running out of disk space.
- Startup takes ages.
- Apps and browsers load way to slow.
- Desktop is full of files and folders.
- You can't find the files you need in the mess.
- Programs quit unexpectedly and misbehave.
How to clean your PC
Let's go over main problems and see how they can be solved. Generally, PC cleaning boils down to two main tasks: hard drive cleaning and system cleaning.
Hard drive cleaning means working with your own files, sorting them, finding and removing the ones you don't need anymore. System cleaning is a trickier part where you have to dig into Windows folders and remove system trash that clutters your system. There's also additional part of browser cleaning and uninstalling old programs (or applications).
Let's start with the easiest part which is also much faster, system cleaning.
How to clean computer system: the easy way
If you don't feel like spending time digging about in your system or you feel uncertain about messing with Windows files in general, there's an easier way. You can get CleanMyPC that will do the job for you, sparing you the ordeal of manual cleaning.
CleanMyPC is a fast and powerful app for system cleaning. It will also keep an eye on your computer for you, making sure everything runs well. It's a good choice if you want a quick fix.
In case you have time and inspiration for manual system cleaning, read on.
How to clean computer system: the manual way
The first thing you need to remove is temporary files or simply temp files. They are generated by your activity and by the apps you use, and they should get deleted automatically (hence the name), but for many reasons some of them don't.
Removing temp files on Windows 7
- To begin with, close all apps
- Press Start
- Type Disk Cleanup into the search bar and hit Enter
- In the list you see, find Disk Cleanup and double-click it
- Select Temporary Internet Files, Temporary files (Temp), Thumbnails, Downloaded Program Files, Offline webpages.
- Delete them.
There are also hidden folders you need to clean.
- Click Start, select Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization.
- Choose Folder Options, then select the View tab.
- Under Advanced settings, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and click OK.
- Open Users$USER$AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet Files. Where $USER$ is your username.
- Clean up the folder by selecting all contents and removing them.
Removing temp files on Windows 10
- Go to Start menu
- Find Settings
- Choose System
- Choose Storage
- Find local storage called This PC
- Look for Temporary files
- Find the option 'Delete Temporary files'.
Getting rid of caches and logs
In every version of Windows there are about 7 different cache types. Believe me, you don't want to go through each of them. There are plenty of manuals if you have a free hour or two, so you can turn to them. But the simplest way to deal with caches would be to download CleanMyPC for free and let it remove all caches in one instance.
How to clean computer hard drive
First, answer the question 'Do I need to clean my computer?'. It's pretty easy, Open My Computer (you can use the following keyboard shortcut with any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key ÿ+E) and look at the bar(s) of your Local Disk(s). If the free space is running low, the bar is red. If it's green/blue — you're good. The other reason you might want to execute hard drive cleaning is to organize all your files.
Sorting to find the largest folders
Now, how do you go about all the things you have on drives? Download access 2016 for mac. It's not as hard when you do the sorting first.
- Open your most used local disk in My Computer
- Right-click anywhere in the window (just not on the items)
- Sort by — Size
Now you see everything sorted from the biggest to the smallest, so it's easy to spot the heavyweight champions that you should probably get rid of. Inside the heavy folders, you can also sort files by size (unless they're all similar, like photos) to find what weights the folder down.
Duplicate hunt
There's a high chance you've copied a folder and forgot to delete the original. Or downloaded something, couldn't find it and downloaded it again. Happens to the best of us.
To find those duplicates, you might need an app that deals specifically with this problem. Try the free dupeGuru. The interface is a little bleak, but it does the job: finds you duplicate files and helps you remove them.
How To Clean A Laptop
Cleaning the desktop
How Do I Clean My Laptop
Did you know that the amount of icons on your desktop directly impacts the time it takes to load it? Give your PC a break and pack all everything but the very basics into one folder. Displaying only one icon instead of 50 will make a difference.
How To Clean Laptop Cover
Uninstalling unnecessary programs
Here's the deal with apps: the more you have, the worse off is your computer, even if you don't use them. They pack up memory, the get into autorun, they leave random pieces behind. Here's how to uninstall apps you don't need:
- Open the Start menu
- Find and click Control Panel
- Open Uninstall a program
- Look through the list
- Find programs you don't need anymore
- Choose them and then click Uninstall
Be careful: DO NOT uninstall anything that has Windows in its name. Also, make sure you KNOW what you're uninstalling in order not to remove system drivers accidentally.
Also, some apps leave chunks of information and registry entries behind even when uninstalled, so it's safer to use CleanMyPC for this procedure. It's kind of a CleanMyMac alternative for PC. Just download it, install, and find the Complete Uninstall feature in the left menu.
CleanMyPC quickly removes the apps you choose, searches through the system to find leftovers, and cleans up the registry.
PC cleaning final step: Trash the Trash
You only need this if you removed files with a simple Delete, not CTRL + ⇧Shift + Delete. The latter removes items completely, omitting the Trash bin.
To empty Trash from all that you've just thrown in there, simply click on the icon and choose Empty Trash.
If you don't see the Trash bin icon on your desktop (in Windows 10), follow these steps:
Step 1: Open Settings in the Start menu
Step 2: Choose System
Step 3: Find and click Storage, select This PC (or a hard drive)
Step 4: Click Temporary files and recycle bin
Step 5: Click Empty recycle bin and tap Delete.
That's it! Now your computer should run faster, feel lighter, and have more free space on drive. Enjoy.
