Oh, I’m sure Verity didn’t invent the word ‘cruft’. I used the word, then realised that some people may not be aware of Verity Stob – I’m not sure whether she’s still writing but for a long time she was the funniest computer columnist – and it was a chance to post that article.
But thanks for the link – I hadn’t heard of the MIT connection so I’ll check it out!
As an aside, I’ve just looked up cruft in the OED and it also has the computing slang use dating from 1959 in MIT’s Abridged Dictionary of TTMRC Language, so it seems to check out.
That is a reminder I’m due for a clean out again. I need it on my iPhone and iPads too.
CleanMyMacX replace three other tools I used as a team to do this in the past. I’ve had CleanMyMac for five or more year and a couple years ago it became the one tool I use for this.
You had 227 apps . Wow. Wait, you still have 174 apps installed. Are these like utilities that do one thing well?
Since I bought, Alfred and BetterTouchTool, they have allowed me to delete a bunch of apps or not require a new app to be installed. I just write/find a quick script and use it to get the job done.
Well don’t you know? You have to explicitly enable an app to launch on startup.
How would a dormant app add noise to search results? Are you including your Application folder in your searches (probably not).
If you don’t launch an app, it’s not going to send telemetry. And if you’re really worried about telemetry, you should install Little Snitch or something similar.
Again, if you’re never launching an app, how could it cause complications?
Of course freeing up 7 GB is a good thing, if you’re not using these apps then why waste the space. But these other reasons you give seem a bit extraneous to me.
Sometimes they were one-thing-well utilities I wasn’t using, like Moom or Tailscale. Most often they’re “apps of intention”: things I continually intended on trying someday or on picking up again but just never stuck. Scrivener or Mindnode were examples of that.
Many apps and services launch in the background. Moreover, Bartender hides menubar apps for me automatically. “Approve once” =/= “conscious of now,” especially with hundreds of installations
Alfred, the app launcher, shows all of my apps in search results
See (1)
See (1)
In general, no, none of these problems are major concerns. Neither is the size of my Trash, but I still empty it once in a while.
I know many love CleanMyMac but maybe since they do this very important job - and it’s in their name - maybe they could do a BETTER job of letting us know what deletions might cause these bad downtime issues.
. Wow. Wait, you still have 174 apps installed. Are these like utilities that do one thing well?