TrashMe 3
TrashMe 3 is a great all-purpose cleaner utility app for macOS. With it, you can rest assured that all unnecessary files will be cleared from your system and it will also help you get your duplicate files under control. The price is reasonable based on the amount of features TrashMe 3 offers.
- DESIGN
- EASE OF USE
- PRICE
TrashMe 3 gets your digital clutter under control.
For many years I’ve struggled with digital clutter. As a reviewer of apps (as well as products), I end up with many apps on my computer that are not needed on a long-term basis. They end up bogging my system down and I’ve found that it makes my entire computer unusable after a while. Unfortunately, not every app comes with an uninstall option built into its package.
That’s why there are ‘cleaner’ apps like Clean My Mac and AppCleaner available. I’ve used both of those utilities and while they are both capable applications, they both have shortcomings as well. Clean My Mac is just a little too much when it comes to being a cleaner and AppCleaner is a little too basic.
TrashMe 3 fits right in between the two and it’s a great all-purpose cleaning utility designed specifically for Mac users.
About TrashMe 3
TrashMe 3 was developed by Jibapps, an independent studio that specializes in the creation of macOS apps and is based in France. It is the third iteration of TrashMe which was originally released in 2010. TrashMe 3 launched in 2020 and was completely rewritten from scratch. The app was redesigned from the ground up using Swift (it was originally written in Objective-C) as Jibapps develops its products using native technologies.
Main Features
- Uninstall any app or extension with all its related files
- Clean system caches to solve some issues and free up hard disk space
- Delete junk files such as large/old files or incomplete downloads
- Get an overview of your system disk files structure
- Find all duplicate files on your Mac
- Manage list of favorite apps and store registration info securely
- Get a list of available updates for your apps
- Selectively delete any file in your Trash
- Manage items launched at startup
- Enable automatic app uninstallation
- Show detailed information about your Mac (processor, memory, battery…)
- Get a warning when your Trash is full
- Display beautiful widgets (macOS Big Sur)
- Supports macOS dark mode and Apple’s M1 processor
Privacy Policy
According to the Mac App Store, no data is collected by the app. The full privacy policy (last updated May 2021) can be found here.
Pricing & Availability
TrashMe 3 is available in the Mac App Store (MAS) and the Jibapps web store. If you are new to the app, it can be purchased for a one-time fee of $14.99. There is a 15-day free trial available through the web store.
There is no difference in feature sets between the MAS and web store versions of TrashMe 3. Due to sandboxing restrictions from the MAS, users who download that version will need to download a free extension from Jibapps in order to delete files and applications that require the admin’s password. In addition to that, the maintenance section is hidden by default, and CPU temperature and fan speed are not available in the Smart Mode in the MAS version. To learn more about the differences between the two versions, check out the app’s FAQs.
If you were a TrashMe 2 user, there is a discounted price of $6.99 for the upgrade. TrashMe 3 offers extended features that TrashMe 2 does not. Those features include:
- Extended search for junk and system files
- Faster uninstall process
- Search for apps updates
- Find duplicate files
- Disk usage overview
- Information about the system
- Dark mode support
- Native Apple M1 support
- Widgets
At the time this article is being published, the current version is 3.5.1. The application is compatible with systems running macOS 10.13 or later and it’s ready for macOS Monterey. It works with the 64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon M1 processors and TrashMe 3 is notarized by Apple.
User Experience
When you install an application and use it on your system, supplemental files are created throughout your computer in order for the primary application to work correctly. When you delete the application package that is stored in your application folder, the configuration files, temporary files, caches, and any other essential files that help the app do its work are left behind. They are stored in a variety of places throughout your system such as –
- Application Scripts
- Application Support
- Caches
- Containers
- Group Containers
- Preferences
- Saved Application State
TrashMe 3 takes the guesswork out of finding those files when you uninstall apps. That’s why I wanted to give it a try. When it came to testing TrashMe 3, I decided to pick out three of the features that I use the most to illustrate how well the app works – App Uninstall, Delete Junk Files, and Duplicate File Finder. The details and outcomes of my tests are listed below.
App Uninstall
App Uninstall is my favorite feature of TrashMe. I’ve been using AppCleaner to uninstall apps for a while now. It works, but TrashMe works better. As a test case, I decided to act as though I was going to remove DaVinci Resolve from my computer. As a video editing app, it creates a lot of extra files system-wide. So, I expected both cleaners to pick up a fair amount of files.
AppCleaner found 7 files taking up a total of 2.58GB. When I selected DaVinci Resolve in TrashMe 3, it found 6 files, but they were a total of 3.26GB. What was interesting is that the app package showed as 3.08GB in TrashMe, but only 2.49GB in AppCleaner.
Next, I checked to see how many files each cleaner would find for Todoist. TrashMe 3 found 30 while AppCleaner only found 21. What I found was that both cleaner utilities can fully uninstall apps, but TrashMe found a lot more related files when searching the system. I really like the fact that TrashMe 3 also provides you a list within its UI of all the apps running on your system so that you don’t have to seek them out.
Delete Junk Files
This feature actually turned out a little different than I expected. With other cleaner apps, junk files typically refer to files that are created randomly by applications during the course of their operation. Sometimes the files are left behind after the app has been removed from the system and sometimes the app creates a cache. These types of files are what I consider ‘junk’ files. TrashMe 3 analyzes your specified folder and then provides a list of what it considers junk files. In my case, TrashMe found 19 files that total 6.06GB. After reviewing these files, they aren’t what I would consider junk. The categories that TrashMe looks at for this feature include:
- large files
- very large files
- extra large files
- old files
- incomplete downloads
- installer packages
- screenshots
- windows files
I would agree that incomplete downloads and installer packages full under the junk file feature, but almost all the files that TrashMe found for Junk were files I want to keep. That said, if you look at the System feature you will see user caches, iOS backups, system updates, reports, orphans, mail downloads, and Xcode files. I have found this a much better place to get rid of unnecessary files. I ended up eliminating 4.47GB of cache files from the System cleaner.
Duplicate File Finder
I’m always nervous to use an automated duplicate file finder because I’m never 100% sure that the system will A) find all the real duplicates, or B) give me the option to make determinations on how the files should be treated. Fortunately, TrashMe 3 does both. As we compile elements for our reviews, we often have original images that are edited and exported as a different file type, size, or completely renamed. Because of this process, I end up with a lot of extraneous duplicate files.
I started using this feature by running a complete scan of my hard drive. Naturally, TrashMe found a lot of cache files from DaVinci Resolve and files that were named exactly the same thing. What I was shocked by was the fact that it identified true duplicate files based on the content of the file.
The screenshot below shows a preview of an image that was used for one of our reviews in the past few months. You can see by the file names that they are completely different file names and stored in completely different locations on the computer. But, it is a duplicate. I actually ended up using this image for two different uses, which is why a duplicate was created.
Conclusion
TrashMe 3 is a great utility app that everyone should have to keep their system clean and free of unnecessary digital clutter. It is more than just an uninstaller – it’s a full-featured cleaner for macOS and it works – beautifully. I’m grateful to have the app on my system now because it makes my job as a reviewer a lot easier.
For more information, visit jibapps.com or Twitter.