CleanMyMac, an innovative optimization app crafted by the renowned software developer MacPaw, serves to enhance and safeguard Mac computers. Boasting over 30 million downloads, CleanMyMac has effectively assisted users in maintaining their devices at peak performance over its 15-year lifespan.
The latest award-winning version, CleanMyMac X, has been acclaimed for its excellence and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store. This version not only streamlines system organization but also provides robust defense against malware, adware, and other threats, establishing itself as the go-to and all-encompassing solution for ensuring the prolonged and secure operation of your Mac over the years.
Oleksii Myronenko, CleanMyMac Product Manager at MacPaw, sat down with Supercharged for an exclusive interview to discuss everything there is to know about CleanMyMac X, including its future, relationship with Apple, competition, challenges, and more.
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Here are the questions and answers from that interview, slightly edited for better reading.
What are the plans for the future development of CleanMyMac X?
CleanMyMac X is a versatile utility for Mac care, designed to power up and protect your computer. Millions of users love CleanMyMac, and so do we. The CleanMyMac team strives to craft CleanMyMac as a single solution for controlling and caring for your Mac smoothly and effortlessly.
We constantly listen to users’ feedback and stay up-to-date with the latest developments on macOS and other technologies. Our passion lies in enhancing the efficiency of our software, which drives us to make regular releases.
Recently, we launched a new functionality, and as of now, CleanMyMac X boasts an updated Malware Removal tool powered by Moonlock — a newly formed cybersecurity unit within MacPaw. We also have huge updates coming, so stay tuned.
What are the challenges of developing a Mac cleaning app?
Apple adds some system limitations every year. It is a challenge to keep all our functionality working and stable. Every new system update, even the small one, can bring something new, so we need to be able to detect changes as soon as possible.
Yet, the biggest challenge now is the safety of our team because of the Russian invasion, but we make every effort to secure a stable development process for the team and deliver new updates to our users.
What advice would you give to other developers who are interested in creating Mac cleaning apps?
For developers interested in creating Mac cleaning apps, my advice is to begin by thoroughly studying the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. This comprehensive guide offers best practices that will help you understand users’ expectations for app design, behavior, and the appropriate usage of UI components. By adhering to these guidelines, you can create a more user-friendly and intuitive Mac cleaning app that meets the expectations of your target audience.
How has the transition to Apple Silicon over the last three years impacted the development of CleanMyMac X?
It has definitely added some work for our developers to support two implementations of some features for Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, because Intel and M1/M2 are technologically different architectures. As a utility, our close integration with the system means that certain features require distinct implementations for each platform.
For example, in order to get the Mac temperature component in the Menu app, we should use different approaches, therefore it requires more resources from our team.
Have Apple’s M-series chips made tools like CleanMyMac less relevant, given the chips already exert impressive performance and battery gains?
Apple’s M-series chips have undoubtedly ushered in impressive performance and battery gains, making Macs faster and more energy-efficient. However, this doesn’t render tools like CleanMyMac less relevant. Regular maintenance, care, and protection are still essential for ensuring optimal performance and longevity of Macs.
Reasoning for using CMMX on M1/M2 Macs is not only about fixing issues. It’s more about general maintenance and prevention of future problems, especially for Mac power users, who spend most of their day using the computer and cannot imagine their life without their Macs. For M1/M2 Mac users, CleanMyMac X offers indispensable modules such as Smart Scan, Uninstaller, Updater, Large&Old file management, and Malware removal.
CleanMyMac X has already achieved significant success in covering established and urgent Mac health needs, and we’d like CleanMyMac X to be a simple tool for regular Mac maintenance and care to ensure nothing will interrupt your workflow.
An apt comparison can be drawn between Mac maintenance and car engine maintenance. Just as caring for your car engine ensures smooth and safe operation for years to come, similarly, taking care of your Mac ensures its optimal functioning and reliability.
Over the years, what has been a standout feature request you’ve heard from your users?
Over the years, we’ve received several standout feature requests from our users. One prominent request was for better insights into the performance of their Macs. In response, we took the first step by enhancing CleanMyMac’s Menu applications with five different monitors. These monitors now provide detailed information about the state of Mac’s storage, protection, CPU, RAM, and battery, allowing users to understand their Mac’s performance better.
Other features are in progress, and we’ll let you know once they are released.
At MacPaw, we cherish the valuable feedback received from our users. In fact, we’ve started a tradition of naming CleanMyMac X updates in honor of the users who contributed such feedback. As a result, we have updates named after users like Alex Zambrano, Bradley Spence, and Michael Lee, acknowledging their valuable impact on the product’s development.
How deep does the cooperation between Apple and the CleanMyMac X team go?
We have a dedicated Apple Manager we work with and since April 2021, CleanMyMac has been available on the Mac App Store with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5. Apple also regularly adds CleanMyMac to its app collections lists:
CleanMyMac X was also featured in the dedicated Mac App Store story called Optimize your Mac.
What are the biggest opportunities for growth for CleanMyMac X?
We have conducted experiments with ML in the past, but we couldn’t consider them successful enough to implement them on a large scale in CleanMyMac X. Nevertheless, we are persistently researching and evaluating new opportunities to incorporate AI/ML functionality into CleanMyMac, with the aim of providing additional value to our users. There is a possibility that one day you will see it integrated into the software.
Last but not least, huge updates are coming, so stay tuned!
What are the biggest threats to the future of CleanMyMac X?
The worst case scenario is that one day, Apple limits its system entirely, so it would be impossible to access sections in the operating system that we require. But I think this is unlikely to happen, and the app offers various other useful features and benefits to users. So, even if such restrictions happen, CleanMyMac X will still be valuable.
What are the most common misconceptions that people have about CleanMyMac X?
There are 2 most popular ones about macOS:
- Some people believe that macOS is a flawless operating system and doesn’t require optimization or maintenance.
- Another misconception is that Macs are immune to viruses.
As a result, these people assume CleanMyMac is unnecessary. But CleanMyMac X is not about macOS perfection or imperfection, it’s about taking care of your Mac and giving it regular checkups. You can remove gigabytes of files you don’t need, reduce the number of background processes, manage your apps, and even scan for malware — in just a few simple steps and within one interface.
What are the biggest challenges that CleanMyMac X faces in terms of competition?
I can answer this question from different perspectives. CleanMyMac X has been around for 15 years and actually was among the first Mac cleaning and optimization utilities, and there is no application on the market as powerful and safe as CleanMyMac X.
While there are smaller apps that perform well, they often lack the comprehensiveness of CleanMyMac X. The latter is an all-in-one essential solution, encompassing a wide range of features. We firmly believe CleanMyMac X is the only utility a user needs for their Mac, making it a standout choice amidst competition.
What’s one decision from over the years of the development of CleanMyMac X that the team wish wasn’t made? One fault the team can admit to and point that they learned from.
Apple has been promoting widgets for a couple of last years. The option is interesting, but the possibilities widgets have, are very limited. We released a simple CleanMyMac widget with the idea of functionality extending, but our users were not interested in this option of accessing CleanMyMac features. We made the sunset of the CleanMyMac widget really soon after its initial launch.
What are the specific metrics that you use to measure the success of CleanMyMac X?
We take care of our users being happy with CleanMyMac and support services, so we are tracking user satisfaction. Retention metrics are very important to us, and we also track user engagement with the new features we add.
Do you think that Mac cleaning apps will become more or less popular in the future?
If saying just cleaning, possibly with higher internet speeds and cheaper cloud storage, cleaning could be less popular. CleanMyMac is much more than cleaning.
While it’s true that the primary function of CleanMyMac X is to clean your Mac, it also has many other helpful features. It can perform system maintenance, manage your apps, and protect your Mac from malware. Even more, the malware removal module is the second most popular feature in CleanMyMac X according to our reports.
Users are always concerned about privacy, and with apps like CleanMyMac X having access to a user’s entire computer, what are some safeguards in place to protect a user’s privacy and their data?
It is a very reasonable concern. Users should trust the product they use. I advise considering the application’s reputation over the years, user ratings in different marketplaces, and different kinds of certifications and notarization.
CleanMyMac X has all of that:
- We have an almost 15-year history of cleaning and maintaining Macs all over the world. This huge experience allowed us to create a truly reliable and ever-updated Safety Database that prevents wrong cleanup selections and keeps all user data safe.
- By default, CleanMyMac X offers to remove only automatically generated data related to system and app processes. All of them are either unneeded, outdated, or can be restored easily.
- For the users’ safety, CleanMyMac X will always ask your permission before deleting things.
What is the team most excited about with the upcoming release of macOS Sonoma?
Honestly — not much excitement for me about macOS Sonoma. More excitement about the future the Vision Pro brings. But I asked our team what they think about macOS Sonoma, and they are more excited about the new macOS updates, which make remote work more convenient, especially with smarter video conferencing experiences and secure Share Groups in Passwords. The team also says that the Weather widget on the desktop and Safari profiles for balancing work and personal matters makes the platform even more user-friendly. Modern Apple Silicon chips, known for their efficiency, ensure that system performance isn’t significantly impacted by new widgets. In addition, the new features in Safari improve user privacy without compromising functionality.
What are the team’s hopes for the future of macOS? What features and/or technical changes would the team like to see implemented into macOS?
The team’s hopes for the future of macOS include addressing the challenges related to restrictions and limited access. While the focus on enhancing user security is commendable, it can also limit developers and impact the overall user experience.
In the recent beta versions of macOS Sonoma, new alerts have been added, but the process of handling Full Disk Access remains unchanged. Users still need to manually check the boxes in the settings to grant access. The team wishes for Apple to create a centralized and more user-friendly solution for granting system permissions.
By implementing a streamlined and user-friendly approach to granting system permissions, macOS can strike a better balance between security and user convenience, leading to an improved overall user experience.
