User experience with Mole app for Mac cleaning

At first look, and even after reading a bit, I would avoid it as I would avoid all such apps.

3rd party ‘protection’ includes:

• Cleaners (software claiming to automatically free up space)
• Optimizers (software claiming to make your Mac run faster)
• Antivirus software
• VPN software (unless provided by a school/employer to enable access to internal resources from a remote location)

Such 3rd party system ‘helpers’, ‘cleaners’ and ‘protectors’ do more harm than good. In fact, such products are completely unnecessary for macOS and the only ‘good’ (if you want to call it that) they do is to put money in the developers’ pockets. Cleaners and protectors cause compatibility issues, often after macOS updates. Commercial VPNs claim to hide your browsing activity from websites, and while that may be true those VPN providers just sell your browsing data to others. For the user, all of these types of software offer only harm…and if that is limited to harm to your bank account, then count yourself lucky. If you have installed such software, follow the developer’s instructions to completely uninstall it (note that some developers fail to provide instructions and their software installs can be pervasive, meaning the only way to truly remove it is to erase your Mac, reinstall macOS then restore your user files from a backup).

The Mole app you mention sounds like a free version of CleanMyMac, which many long-time users here call BrickMyMac for good reason.

If you are looking to free up space on your Mac, don't rely on an app to do it. The absolute minimum is ~30-40 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. You can check the amount of free space you have on your Mac in a variety of ways:

• Select your internal drive then click File menu > Get Info, check Available space
• Go to System Settings > General > Storage, check the graphical display at the top of the settings pane
• In Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it)
• In the System Report – hold the Option key and click the Apple menu > System Information (the top menu item), look for the name of your internal drive (Macintosh HD, unless you have renamed it as I did)

Note that on versions of macOS prior to Golden Gate, the ‘available’ space reported with the first two methods above was greater than the ‘free’ space reported by the second two methods. Apple corrected that confusion with Golden Gate, and as shown in the above screenshot, the available/free space is consistent across the different methods. For more details, see this User Tip.

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

mulberry58 wrote:

I normally don't use this kind of tools

Good, because your computer doesn't need any "cleaning". It doesn't get "dirty".

etresoft wrote:

But on the bright side, if people start using the Mole app, that might harm the market for all the paid "clean up" apps.

Good point.

Also, the more use of unnecessary cleaner apps the more participation we'll see here of users seeking help for issues caused by these third party apps. It would be nice to see more participation in these communities.

Why would anyone install an unnecessary third party app?

Thanks for this useful information

But on the bright side, if people start using the Mole app, that might harm the market for all the paid "clean up" apps.

This month there is a workshop about using the app Mole to clean up your Mac.

I suspect that was paid placement.