14 DAY TRIAL // Routine computer cleaning and maintenance work is essential not only for a functional computer, but also for a proper computing environment. The computer will accumulate all kinds of information as you work with it, from applications to documents, images, music, mail and so forth. Furthermore, those with proactive approaches will often have multiple versions of their work, to avoid unpleasant accidents such as corruption or deletion. All that stuff adds up and even if their daily load is small, over weeks and moths it will pile up like crazy. Of course, normal computer limitations such as disk space will eventually force everyone to do some cleaning. While everyone has run into this and knows these issues well, there are other files that accumulate over the normal usage of the computer, files that for the large part remain unnoticed. These are caches, temporary items, various preferences, incomplete downloads and the likes. These files are usually tucked away deep within the system and user folders and most people are not aware of them. While they don't necessarily take up too much space regularly, these files also need cleaning up from time to time. For this purpose of spring cleaning your computer and getting rid of all those buried files, you can use something like MacDust.
What it does MacDust is a spring cleaning application that lets you perform a wide array of maintenance and cleanup actions with just a few clicks. It gives you easy access to all those files normally hidden in the system and home folders so you can dust off those files without having to hunt for them. The application covers a wide range of uses from dusting off the system, browsers, chat programs, download programs and others.
Working with it MacDust is so easy to use that it's almost insulting. Just select what you want it to do via the checkboxes and hit start. All of MacDust's functions are grouped under various tabs, either by application name or by the function of the group of applications.
Thus, under the system tab you find various system specific tasks such as emptying of local caches and deleting logs. Under the various browser tabs you can erase cookies, history, download history, the icon cache, as well as resetting the entire application. Under the Chat and Torrent tabs, you can find tasks related to the most popular Mac instant messaging applications and Bit Torrent clients. Last but not least, the Other tab holds a veritable potpourri of tasks that have little in common but could still be useful to some users.
MacDust is also capable of running cron jobs. These OS X maintenance scripts are intended to be run at regular intervals to keep everything shipshape, however should your computer be turned off at the times they are scheduled to run they will never actually happen. As such, you can run them manually either from the System tab or the File menu.
Potential whoops MacDust might be very easy to use, but because it deals mainly with deleting stuff, there is also a potential for bad things to happen when using it. Some of the options, such as the reset ones for the browsers will delete all information related to that particular browser, including cookies, bookmarks, preferences and history. As such, great care should be taken when using it, especially since the program will execute all tasks you give it, regardless of what tab they might be on.
All tasks you do perform get logged, however, these logs are highly simplistic, telling you little more than the time of the start of the action, the name of the action and the time at the end of the action. There is no detailed list of exactly what files got deleted during that particular task, so you have no way of knowing. Furthermore, unlike other applications that do cleanup jobs, MacDust will directly delete everything, instead of just moving things to the trash. As such, if you do make a mistake, whatever you deleted is gone for good, unless you have some other method of recovering deleted data.
Organized much MacDust organizes all its tasks under various tabs. While this system is practical because you can easily jump directly to what interests you, the program has various inconsistencies. The browsers for instance are grouped under various tabs, one for each browser, but other programs are grouped. There is even an option to reset Internet Explorer, yet another browser, in the Others tab. Similarly, there is a 'Erase Acquisition Incompletes' option in the Others tab, which should really be under the Torrents tab, with the other Acquisition tasks.
Similarly, the tooltips that are present for all of the tasks don't follow any specific rules, some explaining what the task does, while others provide warnings. Some tooltips even contain bugs, such as the reset ones for the browsers that all say Firefox, even when they are in other browser tabs.
The Good Makes it easy to do spring cleaning and get rid of all those hidden files that can add up over time.
The Bad It is a bit inconsistent but, more importantly, it offers little protection against user error as all information is immediately deleted.
The Truth You don't really need a dedicated application such as MacDust since you could accomplish the same thing by manually hunting down and deleing all these files, or simply by deleting them from their associated application. However, this program gives a one-stop solution for quickly doing a batch cleanup.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
