How to clean and speed up a Mac

[JohnnyJazz]

I've an old MacBook pro that is getting really slow and probably need a bit of "cleaning". In the PC world there are a number of utilitaries like ccleaner, malewarebyte ... to do the job. What are the equivalent for Apple ?

[Broken Record]

CCleaner for mac.

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner-mac

[nullx8]

dont use CCCleaner or (even worse) MacKeeper ..

simple programms like Onyx can do the job .. and they not leaving ugly trails

http://www.titanium.free.fr/

[lujanit]

OnyX is good. When el Capitan was released I decided to do a clean install, meaning I backed up Yosemite with Time Machine, erased the internal HDD and installed el Capitan on that. Then I only transferred what I really wanted from the backup. Was I ever surprised at the speed increase, it was like a new machine.

My conclusion is that while OnyX is good it's not as good as a clean install. My MBP is late 2008, RAM is maxed out at 8 Gig. Of course you cannot compare it to later quad core models with 16 gig RAM.

[SoiBiker]

I agree. Time machine and fresh install.

[nullx8]

Usally its enough just to create a new user account and import from the old one the files.

[JohnnyJazz]

Thanks for the advises. I'm leaving tomorrow for a couple of days of holidays in the south, I'll need my Mac, that's what I bought it for, so now it's not the right time to tinker with it but I will definitively try OnyX when I come back.

By the way I keep on getting messages to update my OS, that's maybe the fresh start that my Mac needs

[bubba]

This has been said many times, but just once more: Regardless of how many times you get annoying pop-ups telling you that your Mac is being threatened with malware, slow and needs cleaning or whatever...do NOT take the advice the advice to download MacKeeper.

But more to the point of the OP's query...depending on how old your MacBook Pro is, and given the increasing demand of new apps and OSX for processor power and memory, sooner or later you will simply need to replace it. Onyx will not fix that.

[Jimi007]

Install a SSD, maximum RAM, as well a newer OS.