Optimization applications?

[Panja]

Coming from Windows, in the past I used a lot of optimization tools/apps for my Windows computer.

Like several defrag apps, registry cleaners etc.

 

Are there any apps that optimize our OSx computers like the ones I had for Windows?

Or does OSx not need any optimization apps at all?

 

Thanks

[Panja]

?

[Riley Freeman]

The only maintenance tool I ever use is Onyx. There are defrag tools like iDefrag, but there's little (if any) need for them.

 

There's no registry as apps save their settings to .plist files (like .ini files in Windows) and to folders usually stored in Application Support. There is a handly little freeware called AppCleaner that will attempt to find these when you delete an app. Only works for apps you install after you install AppCleaner itself, but it seems to do the job well. Don't know if there is any app that can search for orphan plist files/ app support folders for apps already deleted, but that could be handy.

 

Another optimisation aspect is "slimming". OS X apps are multilingual and often contain code for multiple architectures. Shareware tools like XSlimmer and freewares like Monolingual and Slimtool (from pcwiz here) let you strip the unwanted language files etc. This can considerably reduce some apps in size, leading to more disk space, but more importantly, faster launch times. You need to be careful as some apps will stop working if you slim them. That's why these tools often implement a blacklist. To be extra safe, do a Time Machine backup before you run a slim and if any apps break, just restore them from the backup.

[Panja]

Thanks a lot for your reply!

Very handy!