Find Useless Files?

[nickm11]

Is there a program that finds useless files that you don't need and tells you what to get rid of. I love to play with software, but I find I end up with files that I don't need in my computer.

How do I determine what to keep and what to get rid of, so my computer runs faster?

Thanx

 

[fiveainone]

CCleaner.

Deleting junk files won't make your computer that much faster, that's mostly a Windows problem. CCleaner says it does, but I've never noticed the slightest difference in speed compare to cleaning up Windows.

CCleaner will find all sorts of small stuff that you might not need, and free up some space. Which might make it faster if you're out of space on an old hard drive. If you do use the CCleaner, do pay attention to what you're deleting, and if you're not sure don't delete them.

 

[nickm11]

I think those aren't the kinds of files I'm thinking of.

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Run this, post the protocol and maybe some experts here can find anything that is slowing down your Mac:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

 

[KALLT]

When you install a program using a package installer, you should look for official instructions to remove that software again. If you are more experienced, you might also want to have a look at pkgutil. If you install program by dragging an application bundle into /Applications then it usually suffices to drag it into Trash. What remains are caches, preferences, supporting files, logs and so forth that will not slow down your system (because they are obsolete).

There is no decent program that can help you with this. I generally frown upon such programs, because they can produce false positives and encourage careless user behaviour. I can suggest Homebrew Cask as an alternative, community-driven software repository. It will download and install software for you. The best part of it is that it will automatically uninstall packages for you based on what they installed in the first place and more and more applications support ‘zapping’ of obsolete application files.