is PowerMyMac safe to use on M2 Macbook Air

I agree with BobTheFisherman 100%! Apps that purport to “clean” your Mac will do more harm than good.

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ianfarrar wrote:

If you don't mind what apps in particular do you recommend, and for what purposes?

Some apps that I personally use include the following. Most people don't need them, but I use them for these purposes:

• Little Snitch by Objective Development, to monitor network traffic on my Mac and prevent selected apps from talking to servers that I don't like.

• Suspicious Package by Mothers Ruin. Some Mac apps ship in an installer package, which can install various items in hidden areas. Suspicious Package lets me see what exactly a package wants to install, and what scripts it wants to run as part of the install process. That way, I can manually delete any files that the developer's uninstaller misses (either by accident or on purpose).

• App Cleaner & Uninstaller by Nektony. It actually does a pretty good job of uninstalling third-party apps and deleting their remaining junk. I usually use it when an app developer doesn't provide uninstallation instructions, and I run it in Expert mode so that I can see and control what exactly it wants to uninstall/delete. Sometimes, I just use the app to scan for stuff and not delete anything at all. That said, I don't recommend their MacCleaner Pro product; it markets itself as a solution (not a utility), and also tries to clean caches (generally bad) and memory (really bad; that's macOS' job to manage memory/RAM).

• Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) by Bombich Software. The original purpose of this app was to create a bootable clone of a Mac, but that's become harder in macOS Big Sur and later, so it now it clones everything except macOS. For me, I use it as a better (more advanced) version of Apple's Time Machine. CCC 6 supports APFS snapshots on the target disk, which lets me have backup history - effectively recreating the backup model of Time Machine, except that I have more control over everything. CCC's backups are also done in a format that lets me manually transfer and rebuild the backups to another disk if I ever have to. That said, for the vast majority of people, Time Machine is the better option - easy to use, set it and forget it; just make sure to have your external drive plugged in.

ianfarrar wrote:

is PowerMyMac safe to use on M2 Macbook Air

There is no need to use third party apps that claim to clean, protect, manage, boost performance, etc. Such apps use system resources while providing no benefit. These apps may also cause problems. The MacOS manages the computer very well.

Hi ianfarrar,

While I haven't tried or reviewed PowerMyMac, it seems to make claims that it can easily and automatically fix your Mac for you. Such claims are usually exaggerated, and echo those made by CleanMyMac (a discouraged product on these forums).

I usually recommend using apps that serve as individual tools or utilities. These apps have a defined and narrow purpose or scope (unlike most apps that market themselves as full solutions), and put you in full control of what is going on. They also don't attempt to tamper with system-managed areas in most cases (such as performance or memory usage).

ianfarrar wrote:

Would you say that apps from Titanium (Deeper, Maintenance and Onyx) fall into this category?

Such apps are rarely needed. For most people, most of the time, it’s best to let MacOS handle itself.

Great question. I took a look at those three apps and here's what I found:

Deeper seems fine, as long as you know what you're doing. It actually has a couple of cool options that I didn't know were possible in macOS.

I wouldn't recommend Maintenance. Maintaining the system is generally a system-managed thing. The Verifying section is fine, except that it didn't actually delete any of the APFS snapshots I had on my Mac. The Cleaning section is what concerns me, especially with deleting caches. Caches are generally a good thing and speed up system performance, since it makes important info faster to access for the system and apps. The "system" option under Cleaning has me quite concerned as it offers by default to run "maintenance scripts", without disclosing what those scripts actually are and what they do. For me, that's a big red flag.

The only use of Maintenance that I'd recommend would be the Rebuilding section, and only when there is a very specific problem to fix. It shouldn't be used as a "fix-all" app.

Onyx appears to be a master tool that combines both Deeper (ok) and Maintenance (not recommended). I don't recommend using the Maintenance section, or the Erasing and AppleDouble options under Files. The Erasing option in particular could potentially hurt SSDs - I'm guessing that it attempts to overwrite selected files, maybe using multiple passes. SSDs already erase unused areas on disk using TRIM. Everything else appears to be fine.

Best of luck. See you around the forums.