14 DAY TRIAL // The Mac, despite being a well oiled and tuned machine, does need regular maintenance. Now, most users just use their Macs, as well they should... Part of having a Mac is not having to worry about all that stuff that goes on behind the scene. As most people expect, OS X is quite capable of taking care of itself, being equipped with the necessary tools it needs to conduct self repair procedures. The only catch is that the more important ones are scheduled to take place late at night. While this may be a logical time for it, because most users are not working at that time, it is also a bad time for it since the computer will not turn on, or even wake from sleep to perform these maintenance routines.
For those of you who leave the computer running all the time, this is not an issue, for the others, who do turn off their computers when they are not working, there are two solutions: either leave the computer running, or get some third party software to run the maintenance routines at a more appropriate time. Enter Macaroni.
Macaroni is a program designed to keep the OS X system maintenance tasks on schedule, by performing them as soon as it can. In a nutshell, it will notice if a task is overdue and run it at the next opportunity, either as soon as it can, or as soon as the computer is idle, depending on your choice. This program will work on any version of the system above 10.1.2, and is content if you have the BSD Subsystem installed, although it can live without it. Now let's take a look at what tasks Macaroni can run for us.
Daily Unix maintenance This task will help keep your Mac free of old junk by removing any temporary files that were created by the system and then, for whatever reason, left there. Several other operations performed by this task include backing up the Netinfo database, maintaining and restarting the system log files, removal of old printer spool files, old installer and crash logs. Unlike the normal, discreet task that you never know is running, Macaroni provides detailed information on what it is doing at the moment and how much disk space has been saved.
Weekly Unix Maintenance This task will rebuild the two system databases. The 'locate' database is used for fast searching through files, either using the Unix 'locate' command or with OS X tools such as Locator. The 'whatis' database is used when searching through documentation. In addition to the rebuilding of these databases, it also performs the same log file and system log maintenance as the dayly maintenance task.
Monthly Unix Maintenance This task is less important than the others. It manages system log files and the system log and will also print the login accounting information for the past month.
Mac OS X Repair Permissions Because OS X is in fact Unix underneath all the eye candy, it uses Unix-style permissions. Problems with permissions can take a wide variety of forms and most of the time, the cause of the problem is not readily identifiable as being permissions related. Macaroni uses a command line version to achieve this task that can also be called from within Disk Utility. In fact, the only difference between using Disk Utility and Macaroni is that the latter does this automatically on a regular basis.
Mac OS X Remove Localized Files Most Mac applications contain 'localized' files. These files make it possible to run that application in many different languages. Most installers do not give you the option to not install these localized files, and, depending on the type and size of the application, they can add up and waste disk space. Chances are, you don't speak all those languages that most applications have in localized files, and thus never need them. This task makes it easy to remove all the localized files you don't need and save up on disk space.
The Good Macaroni lets you make sure those maintenance tasks get run, and gives you feedback about them that you would not get otherwise.
The Bad It doesn't really add anything new to the table. Other than reschedule the tasks that the system would run automatically, it doesn't really have any features.
The Truth If you feel your Mac has been skipping out on maintenance work, then you can try Macaroni to make sure those tasks get done.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
