What Is the Dr. Cleaner App?

Last November I paid Apple App Store £14.99 for Trend Micro's Dr Cleaner Pro. Since a couple of weeks ago it no longer starts on my Mac and it has been kicked off the App Store. All this without notifying or reimbursing me. No updates to if or when it's coming back. Cleaner Pro is the ONLY all-in-one App that offers Memory Optimization, Disk Cleaning and System Monitoring to keep your Mac optimized for the best performance. With a brand new user interface, it provides an easy-to-use way to optimize the performance of your Mac!

Dr. Cleaner is an all-in-one memory optimization app that aspires to help your Mac function at its best. It offers disk cleaning, system monitoring, and help uninstalling no-longer-needed apps and software. Dr. Cleaner scans big files, cleans junk, and removes duplicate files.

Dr. Cleaner Features

Dr. Cleaner is an undemanding utility app that doesn’t take up a lot of room on your system. It approaches optimization of storage and RAM with the help of following features:

• Deletes unwanted files on your Mac
• Displays your available memory
• Displays CPU and Network usage monitors
• Locates duplicate file copies (Pro version only)
• Help manage installed applications (Pro version only)

Dr. Cleaner Pros

Aside from its basic ability to clean up your Mac from junk files (caches, logs, etc), Dr. Cleaner has a few more things going for it:

• Comes with a polished, fluid interface
• Core features are available for use with a free version of the app
• Conveniently displays folders contents in pie charts

Dr. Cleaner Cons

Despite all the praise and immaculate 5-star App Store rating, Dr. Cleaner falls short of expectations:

• Takes a few extra steps to get to the main app: opening the app brings up monitors windows, where you have to click System Optimizer to get to the main app.
• Groups 10 to 500 MBs files within the same “big files” group
• Provides poor selection of tools in a free package
• Duplicate Files & App Manager features come in Pro package. Unarchiver and Antivirus come as standalone apps only

How to Use the Dr. Cleaner App

Here is how to get started on using Dr. Cleaner to clean up your computer:

• Open Dr. Cleaner on your Mac
• Select System Optimizer in the bottom right corner to start the main app
• Choose one of the tools from the side menu
  • Junk Files
  • Big Files
  • Duplicate Files
  • App Manager

Likely to be one of the chief reasons you downloaded the Dr. Cleaner app, cleaning up Junk Files is one of it’s most valuable and practically the only ones available for free functions for you to use. Junk files helps clean out caches, logs, temporary files, leftovers, etc. Click the Scan button and wait for Dr. Cleaner to locate redundant files on your Mac.

Select the files you want to delete and hit Remove.

Equally as important as deleting junk files is removing duplicate files and unused apps. Unfortunately, these features are not available in the free version of Dr. Cleaner and require an upgrade to Pro to be used.

Dr. Cleaner Pricing

Dr. Cleaner is a free download available in the iTunes App Store. Although it’s free to download and use, there are only a handful of features that you can make real use of. The Pro version of the app with cost you $14.99 and delivers two additional features.

Is Dr. Cleaner Safe?

In the age of malicious malware and seemingly innocent downloads that offer no functionality, or even worse, pack a nasty punch, users might have some concerns about downloading Dr. Cleaner. You can lay those concerns to rest, as Dr. Cleaner, despite not having a rich selection of features, removes unwanted files with surgical accuracy. When testing out the app, no system files were harmed or user files lost.

How to Uninstall Dr. Cleaner

If you are looking to delete Dr. Cleaner manually you will have to take the following steps:

• Start by open Finder>Applications and moving the main Dr. Cleaner.app to Trash
• In Finder press Shift+Command+G and first go to the ~/Library/Application Scripts folder; remove all TrendMicro associated folders:
  • com.trendmicro.ATLoginItemHelper
  • com.trendmicro.DrAirSupport-DrCleaner
  • com.trendmicro.DrCleaner
• Follow up by opening the ~/Library/Containers directory and deleting addition supporting files here:
  • com.trendmicro.ATLoginItemHelper
  • com.trendmicro.DrAirSupport-DrCleaner
  • com.trendmicro.DrCleaner
• Finally, removing com.trendmicro.DrCleaner.plist preference file by accessing it in the ~/Library/Preferences folder

Move to Trash all of the files and folders mentioned above. Right click the Trash bin and select Empty Trash to fully remove Dr. Cleaner app from your Mac.

Bottom Line

Mac desktop and Macbook owners running OS X 10.10 or higher who are looking for a free simple way of cleaning temporary files, caches and logs from their computer will enjoy this app. Yet if you are the type of person who needs a more through cleanup app, that is not burdened with unavailable functionality and capable of running deeper system maintenance, then you’ll have to pass on this one.

Positives

• Live chat support
• Clean, easy-to-use interface
• Light app size
• Decent pricing
• One-time purchase for a lifetime license

Negatives

• Confused versioning
• Sandboxing imposes serious limitations

Trend Micro is an established name in the IT industry, the Japan-based company having built its name over the course of three decades already. Dr. Cleaner is its Mac optimization app and has been available on the App Store since the end of 2014, seeking to serve a growing market of Apple fans looking for ways to optimize their computer's performance, monitor their system, and clean it of junk.

The market is getting crowded, though, and developers are having a hard time coming up with attractive new features to pack into software, but Trend Micro's vast experience has yet again proven to be helpful. By providing instant live chat with Dr. Cleaner Pro users, the app's usefulness increased since this way you’re counting on a real person – a professional developer even – to address any technical problems that users might face while using the app. It’s certainly an interesting addition to the market that might give a reason to explore the service deeper.

Features

It's kind of confusing to begin with because Dr. Cleaner can be downloaded from two sources, and which of the two versions will be installed is dependent on where it is taken from. The free version of Dr. Cleaner is available from the Mac App Store, while the Pro version – with a promising feature set – is available from a dedicated site. For our tests we used the Pro version.

There are several reasons to opt for the Pro version, though. The feature set is much more promising with this version as otherwise the duplicate files finder and the Intelligent App Manager are limited to only scanning the user’s account in the free version. The file shredder is limited to the Pro version, as is the unique live support tool and additional customization preferences such as duplicates, whitelists, and auto select.

System Optimizer

After confirming the user’s home directory, first launching Dr. Cleaner Pro by Trend Micro will automatically display the “System Optimizer” window, presenting clean, easy-to-understand visual information about the Mac's current status. The information is divided into three main columns: one for the memory usage; another for the amount of space that junk files are occupying; and the third for CPU and network usage.

Cleaning

Dr. Cleaner for Mac provides a simple and quick way to remove junk from the computer, you just need to click on the “Clean” button displayed in the system optimizer window. Doing so will empty any Mail cache files, clear away application logs and caches, and delete iTunes temporary files in an instant. Hitting the “System Optimizer” button, however, provides a much deeper level of cleaning: deleting unneeded junk files, system files, large files, duplicate files, apps, and app files.

Scanning Results

To do so Dr. Cleaner opens the main app window and clearly displays each of these functions in a column on the left with the corresponding action button on the right, with a nice animation signaling the scanning process. At this point Dr. Cleaner will neatly display the files it’s flagged for removal, which can then be selected by yourself before deletion.

During our testing the scanning processes for both junk and big files were underwhelming: Dr. Cleaner simply wasn't able to identify a huge chunk of cache files that had piled up from using Spotify. That doesn't make too much sense because the app was otherwise able to detect this junk data using the app manager function, and Spotify wasn't an app requiring admin access. The scan results for big files were poor compared to its competitor’s findings. That’s not what you’d expect from a paid Mac optimization software.

Utilities

There are a number of utilities available with Dr. Cleaner Pro by Trend Micro, such as the useful Disk Map function. By selecting a folder and using the associated graphical information, the app will help you spot which files are taking up space in that specific folder that can then be removed.

Disk Map Feature

App Uninstaller

The app uninstaller has a neat twist, too, which naturally enables app removal but also allows for just the deletion of any cache data. This function is only available to Pro users, however, as is the case with the duplicate files finder and file shredding tools. This means that by downloading Dr. Cleaner from the App Store these services will be greyed out. The results of the duplicate finder were acceptable, although it found fewer duplicates than a dedicated app might.

Dr Cleaner Pro Download

The software even comes with built-in real-time memory usage data, and if the system is suffering from high memory pressure or you’re looking to quickly free up some memory, then Dr. Cleaner will let you optimize your Mac's memory usage.

Pricing

Unlike many of its competitors, users can get a license for Trend Micro's Dr. Cleaner for a one-time payment of $19.99. This is the only pricing option that Trend Micro provides as the purchase page doesn't allow for the number of licenses to be increased prior – therefore meaning there is no option to score a discount with bundle deals.

Trend Micro accepts various payment methods, such as bank cards from the major payment networks – Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express – and PayPal. Those looking for wire transfer or other alternative payment methods such as cryptocurrency will be out of luck here.

Customer Service

Dr Cleaner Pro Mac Free Download

One area in which Trend Micro does succeed is with its customer service. In fact, it’s quite smoothly implemented into the program itself, with the DrAirSupport live chat function available immediately with a click of a button on the system optimization screen. This way you’ll have instant access to answers for whatever technical questions you might have.

Dr. Cleaner Knowledge Base

Sadly Dr. Cleaner’s support engineers aren’t online 24/7 – the difference in time zone could affect availability – and if this is the case simply try a bit later or send an email inquiry. This can also be handled directly within the app itself too, so feel free to shoot an email to support if you need. They will likely answer your question within a reasonable time frame, which in the best conditions means up to roughly 48 hours.

Trend Micro also provides links to the Dr. Cleaner knowledge base and FAQ page on the dedicated site. The knowledge base also encompasses a blog, which is regularly updated with general information about keeping a Mac in optimal shape.

Bottom Line

As Dr. Cleaner by Trend Micro shows, an appealing user interface helps to make the service as a whole appealing, but that isn't enough when you have high expectations from a Mac optimization app. The program helps users to monitor their Mac's pivotal resources such as memory and CPU or even network usage, but its care for privacy – since it is sandboxed software – imposes certain limitations on key features such as junk data removal and cache cleaning.

It's not just the limitation of only accessing a user's home folder that is a problem, either, but also its inability to properly identify caches that have built up with apps running on the Mac. This, combined with the average large and duplicate file finders that are capable of only acceptable results, leads us to conclude that the Pro version of Dr. Cleaner needs some work. For $19.99 you'll get an application that will admittedly help clean a Mac, but it won't take out all of its junk, unfortunately. The live support, however, is great.