Note: this article is relevant to version 1.18.30 of CCleaner for Mac and below.
You can also find helpful information about the latest version of our macOS app.
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CCleaner for Mac is computer optimization software designed for Mac users.
What CCleaner for Mac can do for you:
Save hard drive space by cleaning digital ‘junk’
Our app can go as far as finding which files take up the most space on your hard drive, or even securely erase an entire hard drive you want to sell to somebody else or dispose of (in macOS 10.12 or older).
Protect you from online identity theft
The app can delete your browsing history, plus temporary internet files that store information like login details and passwords. In turn, this reduces your risk of identity theft, allowing you to feel more confident online.
Boost your system startup, and uninstall apps
CCleaner can clean unneeded files from various programs saving you hard disk space, repair permissions (in macOS 10.10 and older, as this function is no longer needed in later versions), help you uninstall software and stop certain background programs from starting with macOS.
Stop your deleted data from getting recovered:
CCleaner for Mac helps stop others from recovering deleted data
If you run CCleaner with its default settings, you'll stop most attempts at recovery, but you can further decrease the chances of somebody recovering the files by doing as follows:
Note: A 'pass' refers to how many times CCleaner writes over a particular spot on your hard drive.
- Use secure deletion - the more passes that CCleaner uses to overwrite the data, the harder it will be to recover. However, this option is only available on macOS 10.11 and older, due to this function being removed from the OS in macOS 10.12.
- Wipe free space on your drives.
Note: None of these options should be used with a solid-state drive. More information can be found here.
CCleaner for Mac cannot guarantee files are unrecoverable
This is because it depends on the skill and resources available to the person attempting to recover the files, as well as what settings you used in CCleaner to clean these files.
No software can guarantee a file gets completely and utterly destroyed, and the only way to truly ensure that your data can never be recovered is to physically destroy the drive - but that’s generally overkill, and simply making sure deleted data is ‘hard enough’ to recover is good enough.
