Ever since I swapped out my hard drive for a solid state drive, I’ve been really preoccupied with keeping my Mac neat and tidy. I’m more diligent about freeing up memory, deleting files I don’t need, deleting cookies, and just keeping everything in good nick. If you’re interested in freeing up memory or deleting tracking information about your web activity, an app called Mechanic is worth checking out.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Developed by Bitdefender, this Mac app’s benefits are basically four-fold. Mechanic frees up memory, deletes info about your web activity, helps you to identify which apps are prone to crashing, and lets you see which apps need to be updated to keep your Mac secure.

Pros

• Updated just last month to address some bugs that had plagued earlier versions of the app
• Attractive, simple interface
• Developed by trusted Bitdefender team

Cons

• App will want access to your home folder to run certain tasks, as well as to just give you advice about how to “keep your system in top shape”
• Scans were a bit slower than I was expecting based on similar apps

Discussion

There are a lot of Mac Apps out there that aim to help you free up memory on your Mac, and enable your computer to run faster and cooler as a result. I’ve tried tons of these apps over the years. Some are really excellent, and some are barely worth their free price tag. Mechanic is solid, but not my favorite.

There’s a lot of good stuff about Mechanic. The interface is really excellent and clean, quite easy to navigate. IMHO, I think the interface for MacOptimizer, a similar app, is much nicer than Mechanic’s interface. This is mostly because MacOptimizer has a lot more user-friendly dialogue in each of its sections, and it gives you a much better understanding of what processes you are running than Mechanic does.

That’s not to say that Mechanic is a bad app, or unworthy in any way. I was impressed with it overall, though some of the scans did take longer than I would have expected based on scan times in similar Mac Apps.

The most recent version of the app is Version 1.2, which was updated on Aug 26 of this year. This update tackled two pernicious little bugs, making the overall experience this time out much more enjoyable.

Conclusion and download link

If you are interested in freeing up memory, protecting your privacy, and figure out why certain apps are prone to crashing on your machine, Mechanic may be of some help to you. The interface is pretty straightforward, though not my all-time favorite interface in this genre of Mac Apps. It’s free though, so it’s worth checking out.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.2

Supported OS: OS X 10.7 or later

Download size: 4.5 MB

Mechanic on Apple App Store