If more apps are found to be covertly gathering user data, however, this reputation could be at risk. Macs have a reputation for having better security than Windows machines, mainly thanks to the Mac App Store, and Apple’s supposedly stringent rules for allowing apps to be included there. This revelation follows similar stories of Mac apps gathering data without permission, and could point to a worrying trend. The apps have now been removed from the Mac App Store, but if you have previously installed these apps, you should uninstall them straight away. What’s really worrying is that if these apps have access to the home directory they could potentially gather even more personal data without consent.

Cleaner does no harm to the system and does not ‘eat up’ a lot of system resources. On using the app, found it had created a zip file which, when opened, contained browser history, Google search information, and a “file containing a complete list of all apps installed on the system, including information about where they were downloaded from, whether they are 64-bit compatible and their code signature”.Īt no point did the app ask permission or inform the user that it was collecting this data. Mac OS X is already good at keeping things clean, so some users wonder if they ever need a third-party cleaner to take care of the storage. Unarchiver, and confirmed that it was indeed collecting data from the home directory of the Mac it was installed on. We gather together some of the best clean-up utilities for macOS. The website, which has reported on the issue, tried out one of the apps, Dr. It also, as the name suggests, allows you to uninstall apps cleanly from the get-go, and set which ones launch at start up.

Is dr.cleaner for mac safe