How to Uninstall Advanced Mac Cleaner. If you accidentally got Advanced Mac Cleaner installed on your Mac, you can follow this troubleshooting guide to remove the app from your computer. Back up your personal files first. Remember to save. Most Mac malware tends to be unsophisticated. Although it has some rather unpolished and awkward aspects, a new piece of Mac malware, dubbed OSX.Dok, breaks out of that typical mold. Read the full story on Malwarebytes Labs. This post is more than 30 days old and has been locked. No further comments are allowed. Jan 21, 2014  Should I use AppCleaner and is it safe? These cleaner apps are fine, Mac OS X keeps installation receipts for any applications which are installed via packages (the Installer application.) This is pretty much any app that isn't a drag-and-drop installation. Safe Mac Cleaner – MacFly Pro Review. Mac computers are considered premium devices for a reason: top grade performance, all metal body, polished software – Macs check all the boxes. It’s no wonder, that most Mac users are looking for best options to keep their Mac safe, clean and secured. Finding the right app takes time, patience.

1. What Is The Safest Mac Cleaner

Finding a perfect computer to suit your needs is challenging on its own. However, it’s almost as big of a dare to snag a functional and safe cleaning application that’ll help keep your system going like clockwork. To take it down a notch, here is some advice that will guide you to making the right choice.

What is a Safe Mac Cleaner? Possible Adverse Effects

When it comes to cleaning apps, there are plenty of options to choose from. You are indeed faced with a rich variety of applications — from cache cleaning tools to free do-it-all utilities, and everything in between.

A majority of these applications offers similar functionality in different design. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of finding the safest Mac cleaning app out there. What you can do is differentiate between superstition and actual risk, as well as learn how to use cleaning apps to your advantage without undermining the safety of your files.

Is Mac Cleaner a Scam?

It goes without saying that cleaning tools for Mac raise a lot of controversy and discussion online. Most of these are fueled by tech savvy communities composed of people that possess sufficient time and needed skill to do the majority of cleaning manually. Therefore, some users with tech background consider Mac cleaner apps to have no use. Occasionally, you will notice cleaning apps being called ‘scam’ too.

But are you getting scammed if you use a Mac cleaner? Scam is essentially a fraud. In the context of Mac cleaning it could mean that you are not getting the result that has been promised. Pick carefully. Also, you have to understand, that a cleaning app won’t supernaturally add performance to your computer. It just doesn’t work that way. What it will do however (e.g. see MacFly Pro screenshot), is help clean out the unnecessary files so your Mac can channel its performance on the tasks that matter.

If you are looking to save time cleaning out and optimizing your computer using an intuitive app interface, then cleaning utilities are the way to go.

Do I Risk Losing My Files?

That is another question that seems to come up when Mac cleaning is mentioned. While this may indeed be the case with poorly put together applications, this is exactly what you should lookout for when choosing a cleaner.

Scan results in any maintenance application are sorted out based on the app’s database. Developer’s research, level of expertise in managing various Mac issues, and the amount of work put into keeping the database up to date will determine the safety of the application. Ultimately, a database lies at heart of every cleaning application and instructs the app what should or shouldn’t be considered important. The best way to determine the accuracy and reliability of an application is by taking advantage of free trial and doing your own research. Top Mac cleaning applications usually are praised for a reason and often shouldn’t raise any concerns. Research is an absolute must if you are considering an “underdog” application which, for example, comes with an appealing price tag.

Choosing Safe Mac Cleaning Software

After addressing the concerns mentioned above, you will still be left with an extensive list of apps to choose from. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a cleaning app:

#1 Efficiency

Besides the safe and secure factor, the app you are going to rely on to maintain your Mac clean needs to be efficient. This simply means that you want the cleaner to be good at its job — cleaning.

It’s important to understand that efficiency does not just mean fancy numbers. What you are looking for are believable numbers that can be easily broken down. Ideally, you want your app to explain what exactly you are about to remove from your computer.

This brings us to the second point.

#2 Transparency

Whether you are an experienced Mac user who wants to cut down on the Mac cleanup time, or a rookie who is just getting used to the new platform — you want your cleaning utility to be transparent. You want to know what is being considered “junk” or a “duplicate” on your Mac at any given time. Say, you keep some backup files organized on your computer by date and month. Naturally, you might run into files with the same name in different folders. Those are not duplicates and it’s essential to be able to manage scan results from within the app to prevent a loss of important data.

#3 Subtlety

Your trusted system maintenance app needs to be well optimized. There is no way you are going to want your Mac bogged down because the app is running another scheduled scan or something. Nonsense!

#4 Price vs Features

Putting the price at number 4 does not change the obvious importance of the app being reasonably priced. It goes without saying and really should not even be on the list.

However, what good pricing should do is strike a balance between the number on the price tag and features provided. With that said, always opt for a trial first and test out the toolkit featured by the app. You will quickly discover that some applications provide over 15 utilities, but in reality, what you’ll use is 3 to 5.

#5 Aesthetics

Apple computers have never been about raw hardware power. It’s a premium product that combines polished software, top-tier hardware, and doesn’t compromise on design. Attention to detail reflects in all of Apple’s design aesthetics including macOS apps. The bar is set high for third-party developers as well. If you can’t seem to choose between a few options — pick what appeals by design.

To draw the line, safety and security in Mac cleaning ultimately comes down to a wise approach and use of applications. Stray away from applications that give empty promises of massively boosting performance, instead do a quick research and run an app by your checklist to see if it’s the one to fit your needs.

Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner rogue optimization tool from Mac OS X to stop its frustrating alerts and undo the concomitant bad effects it calls forth.

What Is The Safest Mac Cleaner

Update: October 2019

Advanced Mac Cleaner usually appears on Mac boxes out of the blue and floods the victim’s experience with annoying warning messages. Also known as Mac Cleaner, it dupes the user into thinking that their machine has got numerous problems hindering normal performance. According to the fake alerts, the operating system’s productivity is impacted by junk files, duplicate objects, unneeded login items, crammed up cache, trash and logs, as well as rogue apps that are claimed to occupy excessive hard disk space and thus reduce the processing speed as well as responsiveness to commands. The number of these wrongfully reported items is flagrant, going over 1000 even on a well-tuned or new Mac computer.

It’s not a commonplace distribution practice that’s leveraged by Advanced Mac Cleaner makers to promote their nasty brainchild. A great deal of infected users have caught this pseudo optimizer when installing free tools such as FileZilla or updating Adobe Flash Player via downloads from unofficial sources. In these cases, the setup wizard prompts you that an extra applet will be installed as a bonus to make the Mac run smoother. Some people are prudent enough to avoid such offers, which are generally known to deliver adware programs, but this caution doesn’t always help. Unless the bundle is manually unchecked and thus opted out of from the start, Advanced Mac Cleaner will still be installed in the background.

Furthermore, the culprit may additionally cross-promote affiliated scareware like Mac Adware Cleaner by means of prompts on its GUI. To add insult to injury, it may hijack the victim’s default web browser and redirect their traffic to landing pages pushing its licensed version or a copy of another rogue system utility, such as Mac Tonic or Mac Auto Fixer. The malware is also known to propagate alongside browser redirect viruses and persistent adware apps that affect the victim’s web surfing experience. One of the notorious campaigns pushing the scareware in question relies on sketchy browser alerts that report alleged infection with a combo of 3 viruses called Tapsnake, CronDNS, and Dubfishicv. The victims are redirected to phony web pages that mimic AppleCare and insist on urgent download of Advanced Mac Cleaner to sort out the problem that isn’t there in the first place. It appears that the gang behind the rogue program in question is deploying a well-orchestrated malicious marketing campaign with a distinct flavor of social engineering.

The user may be unaware of this forcible setup from the get-go, but not until a message like the one above pops up. It says that a huge number of issues have been found, specifying this information as follows “Issues may include duplicate files, system & internet junk, rogue software & recoverable drive space. Fix and enjoy a performance boost.” The ‘Start Repair’ button, if clicked, takes you to the junk application’s main interface that displays high improvement potential for each cluster of problems. Obviously, cleaning the purported bugs is a paid service. At that point, it’s reasonable to contemplate over what’s happening: you are being told to pay for rectifying issues that do not exist. It’s certainly the best move to get rid of the Advanced Mac Cleaner scam rather than follow the evildoers’ recommendations.

Another flavor of this scareware problem surfaced in October 2019. It was precipitated by a release of Apple’s macOS Catalina 10.15. After upgrading their operating system to the new version, numerous users started experiencing obnoxious popup activity with Advanced Mac Cleaner at its core. The annoying notifications say, “helperamc will damage your computer. You should move it to the Bin.” The process mentioned on these alerts is spawned by the rogue system tool under scrutiny and can be seen in the Activity Monitor, along with other related executables called “amcuninstall” and “hlpramc”.

Here is what’s happening: the latest macOS build, evidently, leverages an improved algorithm to identify potentially harmful apps. In particular, it will flag a program as a malicious one if it was installed on an unknown date, if its installer was downloaded from an unverified source, or in case some other telltale signs of sketchy activity are spotted. To let the users know about such suspicious objects, the system displays the above-mentioned popup dialogs. In this situation, the infection is probably in a dormant state and doesn’t manifest itself conspicuously. The Catalina update has simply unearthed the issue due to new security perks it delivers. Unfortunately, although the warnings include a “Move to Bin” button, it doesn’t work as intended. Therefore, the victims have to do their homework and find a way to remove Advanced Mac Cleaner despite its persistence.

Advanced Mac Cleaner manual removal for Mac

The steps listed below will walk you through the removal of this application. Be sure to follow the instructions in the order specified.

1. Open up the Utilities folder as shown below
2. Locate the Activity Monitor icon on the screen and double-click on it
3. Under Activity Monitor, find the entry for Advanced Mac Cleaner, select it and click Quit Process
4. A dialog should pop up, asking if you are sure you would like to quit the Advanced Mac Cleaner (it can be manifested as an object named helperamc) executable. Select the Force Quit option
5. Expand the Go menu in Apple Finder and select Go to Folder
6. Type or paste the following string in the folder search dialog: /Library/LaunchAgents
7. Once the LaunchAgentsdirectory opens up, find the following entries in it and move them to Trash:
   • com.pcv.hlpramc.plist
   • com.pcv.helperamc.plist
   • com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist
   • com.PCvark.AdvancedMacCleaner.plist
8. Use the Go to Folder lookup feature again to navigate to the folder named ~/Library/LaunchAgents. When this path opens, look for the same entries (see above) and send them to Trash
9. Similarly, go to the ~Library/Application Support folder. Locate and move the following entries to Trash:
   • Advanced Mac Cleaner
   • amc
10. Click the Go button again, but this time select Applications on the list. Find the entry for Advanced Mac Cleaner entry on the interface, right-click on it and select Move to Trash. If user password is required, go ahead and enter it
11. Now go to Apple Menu and pick the System Preferences option
12. Select Accounts and click the Login Items button. Mac OS will come up with the list of the items that launch when the box is started up. Locate Advanced Mac Cleaner there and click on the '-' button

Use automatic tool to completely uninstall Advanced Mac Cleaner from your Mac

1. Download and install MacBooster application (read review). The tool provides both optimization and security features for your Mac. Before you get down to obliterating Advanced Mac Cleaner virus proper, consider checking your machine for other security risks and performance issues by hitting the Scan button. Download Now
2. Proceed to the Uninstaller feature, find Advanced Mac Cleaner on the Applications list and have MacBooster completely eliminate all components of the app from your Mac by clicking Uninstall in the bottom part of the GUI. Doing so will ensure all components of the malware and its remainders, which may have not been removed in the manual way, will be thoroughly cleaned up.

FAQ

Unlike benign software, Advanced Mac Cleaner is a stubborn app that attempts to complicate the uninstall process. It means that you need to circumvent its hindrance before deleting the associated components and files. This adds an extra step to the removal logic. In most cases, the following workflow does the trick:

• Open the Activity Monitor, find an entry named “helperamc”, “hlpramc” or another process with “amc” part in its name, and quit the malicious executable.
• Look for related files (com.pcv.hlpramc.plist, com.pcv.helperamc.plist, com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist, com.PCvark.AdvancedMacCleaner.plist, Advanced Mac Cleaner, amc) in the LaunchAgents and Application Support folders. Remove these objects if found.
• Go to the Finder and select Applications. Spot ‘Advanced Mac Cleaner’ app and move it to the Trash. Empty the Trash when done.

/mount-dmg.html. Ideally, this technique should eradicate the scareware, but with the caveat that the files may vary as new versions of Advanced Mac Cleaner appear in the wild. Stay tuned for updates in the guide above to make sure your removal efforts are effective.

Advanced Mac Cleaner is a rogue system utility that wrongfully purports to look for and fix Mac performance issues and privacy risks. Instead of carrying through with these promises, it reports non-existent problems and tries to pressure the user into buying its licensed version to unlock the repair features. This scareware is installed behind the user’s back, usually arriving with complex app bundles camouflaged as one useful program.

At first sight, it may seem that the impact of Advanced Mac Cleaner is restricted to annoying scan reports and scary-looking popup alerts. That’s a misconception. This fake optimizer isn’t safe to use, because it can harvest your sensitive information and send it to the cybercriminals in charge of the campaign. Your usernames and passwords, as well as credit card information, are potentially at risk as long as this pest is running on your Mac.

No, it’s not. The huge amount of negative feedback about this program speaks volumes about its dirty practices, not to mention the obvious elements of foul play in its modus operandi. Advanced Mac Cleaner is distributed via covert software bundles and fake virus alerts shown on numerous malicious websites. Once installed, it deluges the host system with deceptive scans and popup alerts reporting hundreds or even thousands of imaginary performance and security issues. The objective of this brainwashing is to coerce the victim to purchase the app’s license, which is supposedly a prerequisite of addressing the detected threats. Another shady quirk is that Advanced Mac Cleaner is harder to uninstall than regular Mac applications. All in all, this scareware is neither legit nor safe.