February 2022 • Macworld 41to repair the past damage to the
product’s reputation. The new owner
has pulled back on the aggressive
marketing schemes and rid itself of
dubious affiliates. The software itself
received a good grade from AV-Test
as well as ISO 27001 certification and
notarization from Apple. Assuming the
company and product have learned
from past mistakes, is it worth giving
the suite another shot at this point?
MacKeeper consists of 11 separate
tools organized into four different
categories. The Security category
provides an antivirus scanner and an
adware remover. Under the Cleaning
category are a safe clean-up feature,
a duplicate file finder, and a smart
uninstaller. In the Performance
category are a memory cleaner, a
software update tracker, and a start-
up item locator. And
under the Privacy
category are an ID
theft guard, a VPN,
and an online ad
blocker.
MacKeeper
comes in a free
version and a paid
subscription-based
edition. The paid
edition starts at
£5.95 a month for
an annual subscription and £10.95
a month for a monthly subscription.
A family plan that covers three
computers runs £7.45 a month for an
annual subscription.
The free version gives you access
to most of the 11 built-in tools. The
anti-adware tool provides on-demand
scanning for free but requires a paid
subscription for real-time scanning.
The safe clean-up tool scans for
junk files clogging up your Mac,
while the private connect feature
offers a VPN to secure your online
connection. Both of those tools
require the paid version.
After installing MacKeeper, the
program offers to scan your Mac for
viruses, privacy problems, wasted
storage space, and performance
issues. You can review the findings butMacKeeper has a chat module so you can ask a ‘personal
tech expert’ any questions.