Needed: MAC Experts who are Comfortable with CCleaner

[Nergal]

Hi, as I'm sure you've noticed by now, we Piriform Community Members (herein PCM) are mostly PC people. While it is true the developers are skilled in MACs they rarely make comments. The PCM is not the developers and we are all volunteers, users of the wonderful software provided by Piriform, but nothing more or less than that.

 

So this is my plea to you, oh Apple Elite, share your knowledge with us. Use ccleaner, run ccleaner through all the paces you want (be sure to use time capsule first ) make ccleaner work and make it not work. Soon you will, like myself or Hazelnut or Alan_B or Winapp2.ini or Fluffy or or or or be a a revered member of our community and you will have fame in the Macintosh world*

 

Now Please note, this is not an offer of moderatorship, I definitely don't have that kind of sway . It's just that honestly, most of us don't have a MAC or even a V-Box MACOS to test and run the troubleshooting steps your valuable MACINTOSH community so desperately needs.

 

 

So, if you are good with your MAC, and you don't mind trying to recreate your fellow Apples' issues, we could realllllllllllllllly use your voice

 

thank you

and

much from the PC side of things

your silly-willy moderator

Nergal, who was much more willing to type this than to work on his day job

 

 

*Fame and Rever not guarantied

 

Please note, this is a request for helpers it's not a general bug thread, nor a call for beta testers (forum has zero control over betas if they even exist).

[TheWebAtom]

My Macbook should be delivered any day now. Hopefully once I get everything set up, I'll be able to help reproduce issues and help users fix problems.

 

While this is the first Mac I've personally owned, we use them fairly exclusively at university... so I know things!

[hazelnut]

Excellent !!

[DennisD]

You're a star Shane, and we'll make sure you're not inundated with Mac issues, that's the devs realm, but there is one you may be able to throw some light on, if you could.

 

We have a constant stream of users who lose their free space after running the Wipe Free Space feature.

 

This is probably because if the Macs own utility, which CCleaner runs, is interrupted, it doesn't appear to clean up after itself.

 

The mystery is the location of the temp folder/files it leaves behind. We've had users find these in the "Trash", and we've had others who can't find any trace of these folders or files.

 

I'm not asking you to run it and interrupt it, I'm wondering if that feature has any detailed in built instructions attached to it, which may throw light on this location, or even folder/file names.

 

A case in point is this post from another worried Mac WFS user. It's been running for 3 days. Ouch!

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=37091entry227729

[TheWebAtom]

I think I've identified the cause of this problem.

 

Most newer Macs ship with an SSD. The Hard Disk utility that handles all the overwriting detects that it's an SSD and prevents to 'Zero Out' feature from being used. Unfortunately, CCleaner isn't quite this clever and still performs the operation using the overwrite API's that (because of Apple's one-version-of-mac-for-every-device philosophy) are still present in the OS.

 

Of course, the disk utility is responsible for cleaning up the files. If it detects that it's running on an SSD it won't complete this step either. This leaves the entire hard drive full.

 

I had to use the "Repair Disk" function in the Disk Utility to get my space back. It's accessible in the First Aid tab, by clicking "Verify Disk"

 

tl;dr: CCleaner has a fairly major bug.

[DennisD]

Shane, thanks a lot for that.

 

I'll bookmark this post and refer Mac users with this issue to it.

 

Following a post by another Mac user, I was prepared to recommend users with the issue to run the "Disk Utility - Erase" directly, which seems to fix things ...

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=37091entry227791

 

... but far better is a simple understanding of what's happening to cause it in the first place.

 

Thanks again for your time and effort.

[TheWebAtom]

On my Mac, the "Erase" option is disabled. I guess a condition is needed:

 

if not using SSD, run the Erase tool.

if using SSD, use the repair option.

 

Do you want any screenshots of the interface for future troubleshooting posts?

[ignas2526]

On my Mac, the "Erase" option is disabled. I guess a condition is needed:

 

if not using SSD, run the Erase tool.

if using SSD, use the repair option.

 

Do you want any screenshots of the interface for future troubleshooting posts?

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Repair is one thing, erase is another. Plus, non-SSDs might also need repair option.

[Alan_B]

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Repair is one thing, erase is another. Plus, non-SSDs might also need repair option.

I think you are wrong.

 

The recommendation under discussion is that CCleaner should modify its behaviour when "Wiping",

and that "Repair" provides a more suitable method for an SSD than using the Erase tool

using the overwrite API's that (because of Apple's one-version-of-mac-for-every-device philosophy)

 

That recommendation has no impact upon the use by a non-SSD of any other capability in the Repair option.

[DennisD]

Do you want any screenshots of the interface for future troubleshooting posts?

 

That would help us non Mac owners Shane.

 

Thanks a lot.

 

 

EDIT: Almost forgot, I pointed out your efforts and reasoning to the devs, and their response was that they believe it's a bug in OS.X, and not CCleaner.

 

So for all the "CCleaner for Mac" users out there, I would assume from that response that there will be no assistance or input from them on this issue.

[TheWebAtom]

I think it's CCleaner's responsibility to disable a (potentially dangerous) feature when an SSD is detected. If Mac was smarter it would prevent CCleaner from being able to run the tool, but I dont think it's the OS's responsibility to intercept every stupid thing 3rd party developers attempt to do.

 

I've just discovered that the repair tool is disabled on the primary (operating system) disk drive. That means anyone who runs the Wipe Free Space tool on an unsupported volume is basically screwed, unless they can find the files created. That's actually a rather challenging task, as the location of said files seems to change.

 

For future support queries, here's an image of the interface in question. It's called 'Disk Utility' and you can easily find it with the search function.

[DennisD]

Thanks for that Shane.

 

It's appreciated.

[VincentU]

I think it's CCleaner's responsibility to disable a (potentially dangerous) feature when an SSD is detected. If Mac was smarter it would prevent CCleaner from being able to run the tool, but I dont think it's the OS's responsibility to intercept every stupid thing 3rd party developers attempt to do.

 

I've just discovered that the repair tool is disabled on the primary (operating system) disk drive. That means anyone who runs the Wipe Free Space tool on an unsupported volume is basically screwed, unless they can find the files created. That's actually a rather challenging task, as the location of said files seems to change.

 

For future support queries, here's an image of the interface in question. It's called 'Disk Utility' and you can easily find it with the search function.

 

Completely agree with this. The option should just be disabled with a little note there telling people that they can't use this feature because they have an SSD and that it's for their own protection

BTW, after a few months, I guess this should've been included already :S

[traisjames]

I love CCleaner on Windows and Mac and will be happy to help out on the Mac side once it is released for 10.9

[DennisD]

Hi traisjames, and welcome to Piriform.

 

That's very kind of you, and it is appreciated.

[Sir_Penguin]

As I was scrolling through the forum posts on here I ran across this posting and I thought I would also lend my skills and my MacBook Pro (although not literally ) to anyone who might need assistance.

[Nergal]

Thank you. Any help you can provide is well appreciated

[scrabble]

Firstly, a BIG thanks for getting CC for Mac. It was such a relief, especially for me, who until a few months ago, was a Windows user (and not to forget, a die-hard CC fan )

 

Okay, so when used with Mountain Lion, CC would often skip the Trash Can. Happened once to often.

Post a Maverick update, this has not happened.

 

However, in both version, CC does not detect non-Mac programs (like Word/Excel/Powepoint for Mac). Nor does it detect any game cache (which come from Mac store). Can this be looked into?

[jb4502]

I've been a CCleaner user for 6 years and a Mac user for 4, have 2 macs (one Snow Leopard, one mavericks) both running parallels with windows 7 and 8. I honestly use Onyx for more complete maintenance solutions but love the speed and simplicity of CCleaner. I would be happy to offer my services, are you just wanting us to skim through the forums and offer insight/resolution on mac specific questions/issues?

[Nergal]

are you just wanting us to skim through the forums and offer insight/resolution on mac specific questions/issues?

Yes please and much thanks.

[Abo-Kofta]

Add me to the list of helpers for the CCleaner OS 10.9 edition

[jantenerife]

Knowing it from XP, nice software and free, Cleanmymac was fine but it has its price and I was not convinced.

Thank You very much!

[itsonlycomputers]

Would like to be considered as a beta test user of CCleaner for MAC and PC!

 

Please and Thank you!

[KG6EAR]

I have used CCleaner on Windows for years.  On Mac, relatively new to CCleaner for Mac, but not the Mac.  I can say this... with the current version of Mac OS (Sierra 10.12.3), Secure file deletion is not happening on my system.  It takes longer like its doing something, and yet it shows nothing except a 0KB file from Firefox deleted...  Could this have something to do with secure deletion having been removed from the operating system for emptying trash???  (This was done because when using File Vault on a hard drive, everything is encrypted, so in the view of the Apple wizards, securely deleting encrypted data is unnecessary because once the decryption key for that set of data is deleted, the data is as good as dirt and unrecoverable anyways so it is unnecessary to securely delete anything--but this does no good for those not using File Vault on their drives)...

 

That's the first thing I see that is problematic with CCleaner not being functional on Mac.

 

 

[Nergal]

Please note, this is a request for helpers it's not a general bug thread, please @KG6EAR please start a new thread and (our few mac users) members may be able to help you.