*** The official 2023 and 2024 Mac mini thread (it has the M2 chip, the M4 chip and everything!) ***

My only other foray in MacOS was a MacBook Air M1 base model with 8gb of memory, when that first came out, and that managed everything I wanted it to do where video editing with DaVinci Resolve was the most taxing task for it. I sold it to someone at work, earlier this year, as I always end up not using a laptop because I do prefer to sit at a desk and I doubt I'll ever buy a laptop again. For the sofa I have my iPad Pro.

So I'm thinking the base model will be ideal for me with it's 16gb of memory and 256gb ssd as I'll buy a 2tb nvme and an enclosure for a lot less than the Apple upgrade tax to increase the size of the ssd.
 
I ran CleanMyMac for years...then one day my Mac starting to crash during boot up....turned out it was CleanMyMac.

It just clutter more than it is useful, like most of these freeware are. I don't run any of it now, no anti-virus, no firewall. Just a VPN.

If I don't use an app, I just uninstall it.
 
I've always installed it because macaddress were paid to say positive things about it
Corrected that for you.

If you need to clear the downloads folder, simply select all the files and drop in trash. There's no requirement for a pice of software to do that for you.

What you could do is set up some automation using Alfred which can do that (and many other things) for you.
 
Corrected that for you.

If you need to clear the downloads folder, simply select all the files and drop in trash. There's no requirement for a pice of software to do that for you.

What you could do is set up some automation using Alfred which can do that (and many other things) for you.
OK but what you're not getting is that I can't do that, I can't and won't dedicate a signifcant portion of my time any longer to my mother complaining that her pc is slowing down or that she's running out of space - Moving them to mac is an attempt to mitigate that. I need to be able to provide them a way to be able to clear those things themselves. If I wanted to continue to drive across town all the time just to clear a folder, i'd buy them both a new windows desktop.
 
A Mac won't slow down by not doing any regular maintenance.

Does she download so much that she's going to fill the SSD? Create a simple bash script that empties the downloads directory and put a shortcut for it on the desktop.
 
A Mac won't slow down by not doing any regular maintenance.

Does she download so much that she's going to fill the SSD? Create a simple bash script that empties the downloads directory and put a shortcut for it on the desktop.

Even better, in Settings -> General -> Storage there are options to optimise storage and delete items from the bin automatically after 30 days.
 
A Mac won't slow down by not doing any regular maintenance.

Does she download so much that she's going to fill the SSD? Create a simple bash script that empties the downloads directory and put a shortcut for it on the desktop.
My friend, she downloads so much nonsense on her pc currently and I don't know how she does it. she's downloaded videos from Facebook, and I didn't even know you could download video from Facebook! exe files, downloads from emails. my mother's not just a menace, she's a nightmare.

You know it never occurred to me to me that I could just use automator to solve a bunch of problems.

You're a genius.
 
OK, so what would be a good option to give to my parents to just press a button and do some tidying up every now and then?
As @Throrik says, you can enable 'Empty Trash automatically' under the Storage (in General Settings) 'Recommendations' section. If you need to delete anything else then you can always use Automator or bash script as someone else mentioned.

I would get AppCleaner and use it for uninstalls (helps remove crud apps leave behind) and, if your mother is trigger happy with the downloads then MalwareBytes might not be a bad shout given the increasing amount of malware and ransomware floating around for MacOS now.
If you want a maintenance app then there is OnyX but it's not something i would let the average joe access to.
 
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