MacKeeper: One app for Mac security, privacy, and performance

Keeping your Mac running in the best condition used to be easy. Not anymore, though. For most people, it’s become a necessity to have dedicated tools for security and optimization.

Among the many tools you can find for this purpose, MacKeeper is one of the popular ones. This app claims to help you take care of your Mac in terms of security, privacy, performance, and other sorts of optimization.

We wanted to test this and help you decide whether to go with this option.

What is MacKeeper?

MacKeeper is an all-in-one optimization suite that claims to remove viruses, ads, and junk from your Mac while also boosting its performance. A product from Clario Tech, MacKeeper offers several utilities across four sections.

You can use these utilities to remove viruses, clean up your Mac’s storage space, get rid of duplicates, clean RAM, manage login items, securely browse the web, and protect your online identity.

As we said, these are bold claims, but we’d like you to know the reality.

Our Hands-on MacKeeper Review

At TheSweetBits, we use an M2 MacBook Air for software testing, research, browsing, and entertainment. We installed MacKeeper on this MacBook Air, running the latest version of macOS Tahoe. We made a point of not using any other Mac cleaning apps for a week so that MacKeeper would have work to do.

The Interface: User Experience

It didn’t take us long to install and set up MacKeeper. As MacKeeper is not available on the Mac App Store, we had to get it from the official website. During installation, the app requested Full Disk access. Apart from this, everything was smooth.

We found the general UI to be easy to navigate. You can use the sidebar to access specific tools or perform a system-wide scan for security, cleaning, performance, and privacy. This overall scan may take up to a few minutes, depending on the system. You also need to create an account for full functionality, and we found this a bit unnecessary.

Another part of the user interface is on the menu bar. This menu bar widget is a quick way to see what’s happening with your Mac. For instance, you may want to clear RAM or toggle VPN. This is pretty handy when you think about it, because you don’t have to open the entire interface all the time.

The Features: Full Breakdown

We shall now share some insights from using the many utilities built into MacKeeper. We’ve arranged them into four categories.

However, if you want to perform a complete system scan without accessing individual pages, you can use the Find & Fix interface. We also tested the Daily Scan function, which performs a scan at a scheduled time. This is great if you generate a lot of junk files/install apps every day. If you think your Mac is in grave danger, you can also seek premium professional support.

If you want to address specific issues, like performance or privacy, you can do it.

1. Security

We tested both modules in the security section: Antivirus and Adware Cleaner.

• Antivirus

Setting up the Antivirus Module in MacKeeper required additional effort because we had to download the necessary software and definitions for the system. Once the setup was complete, we enabled the antivirus, which also offers real-time protection. It also lets you scan the entire Mac or custom scans for individual folders/directories.

We weren’t surprised to find that the antivirus tool found no threats on our Mac, since Mac-based viruses aren’t common. Anyway, the real-time protection feature is something we had an issue with. This consumes a lot of resources, slowing down your entire Mac. If you have a Mac like ours with 8 GB of RAM and an older Apple silicon processor, we do not recommend enabling real-time protection.

• Adware Cleaner

The Adware Cleaner module does a decent job of scanning your Mac for adware. It detected an application from Wondershare as adware, but it seemed like a false positive. However, we believe it is still worth having an anti-adware module for the future.

2. Cleaning

During the review, we regularly tested all three components in the Cleaning section: Safe Cleanup, Duplicates Finder, and Smart Uninstaller.

• Safe Cleanup

The Save/Cleanup option in MacKeeper helped us clear 9.17 GB of junk. This consisted of logs, caches, trash, language files, and installation files. The app lets you clear everything or choose which items to remove. In both cases, the removal process was quick. We found this an effective way to clean up storage space on our Mac.

However, we also noted that it doesn’t chuck certain types of junk, such as universal binaries, older versions of documents, and developer junk. This would have been a nicer addition.

• Duplicates Finder

The Duplicates Finder module helps you scan the entire Mac or a specific folder for duplicates. For context, we knew there were duplicate photos and documents on our Mac. We also tested the same folder using a third-party tool called Gemini.

We found that MacKeeper could not locate any duplicates, despite spending 3x-4x as much time as Gemini did. After trying this out for a while, we’d conclude this is an unworthy addition to MacKeeper.

• Smart Uninstaller

The Smart Uninstaller module lets you uninstall applications, plug-ins, and other extensions installed on your Mac. It can also help you remove leftover items from other applications. The UI is pretty straightforward and lets you find unused apps.

We really like the option to expand each app and understand which components are consuming storage space. It would have been nicer to see options to sort these applications by other factors, like vendor or app store.

3. Performance

The performance section of MacKeeper probably has some of the most useful utilities we found in the app.

We particularly loved Memory Cleaner, which lets you clean and manage your Mac’s RAM usage. Instead of simply offering you a click option, you get a very detailed coverage of what is using your memory. You can also quit or remove components that access memory.

The Update Tracker module becomes a centralized place to update many of the applications you have installed. This is particularly useful if you install more apps from non-Mac App Store sources. In our case, we found a quicker way to update many options. It doesn’t update all apps, though.

The Login Items manager is also a great way to improve your Mac’s performance. It helps you understand which of the apps start up when you open your Mac. If your Mac takes a long time to stabilize after booting, you may want to remove certain login items.

In our case, it detected 38 login items, but we had already configured them, so there was nothing to remove.

4. Privacy

We found all three modules in the Privacy section—ID Theft Guard, Private Connect, and StopAd—to be highly valuable.

The ID Theft Guard feature identified 300+ breaches that affected many of the email addresses we use. It offered a quick way to understand what could have been affected and some suggestions to improve the situation. The custom way to add an email address was also impressive.

Private Connect from MacKeeper is a VPN service we tested; it offers access to several servers, but it’s not comparable to a dedicated VPN service. Yet this VPN helped us unlock region-locked content and avoid ads. There was a noticeable lag with Netflix, though.

StopAd is not a fully-fledged ad-blocker, though. Instead, it works via Chrome and Safari extensions. We found the Safari extension decent, but the app should either offer extensions for other browsers or a full-system ad protection plan. As of now, this is very reductive.

Dig deeper: The Best Ad Blockers for Mac and Safari 

The Independent Lab Test Results

Here’s what independent lab results say about MacKeeper:

Major versions of MacKeeper Antivirus starting with 5.0 have been tested by AV-TEST and certified. It means the antivirus program does a decent job of protecting your Mac from viruses and other malware. Tests from AV-TEST revealed that the app detected 100% of the 842 samples it was supposed to detect.

In addition, MacKeeper is notarized by Apple and approved by AppEsteem for software transparency. Hence, you don’t have to worry about the security aspect of MacKeeper.

The Performance Impact

Note: We are talking about the impact MacKeeper had on our Mac while using the app, not the impact of its tools in the Performance section.

During our testing, we noticed minimal impact on the multitasking performance of our Mac. MacKeeper does a great job of keeping a low profile, even when we use the scanning options. The only exception was the real-time protection mode, which almost made our Mac unusable when enabled, so we had to turn it off.

Therefore, if we exclude this real-time protection option, we think we are okay with the performance impact of MacKeeper.

The Customer Support

We were consistently impressed by MacKeeper’s customer support. You can reach their tech support team via live chat and an international toll-free number. Crucially, you can be assured you’re talking to a real person at the other end – a fact we rigorously tested and confirmed.

Beyond standard support, MacKeeper offers a ‘Premium Services’ section within the app itself. If a ‘Find & Fix’ session doesn’t resolve your issue, this feature allows you to schedule a one-on-one appointment and get personalized solutions for your Mac.

We tried this, and MacKeeper’s tech support was remarkably quick to transfer our chat to a live technician. It’s impressive to chat with an expert directly from within the MacKeeper app. The expert also offered to set up a remote connection to analyze our Mac better and resolve the issue.

While the remote connection was helpful, we personally prefer the support team to listen more carefully to the user’s initial problem description before initiating a remote access request. Nevertheless, the overall responsiveness and efficacy of the support were highly commendable.

MacKeeper Pricing

You can choose between Free and Premium plans from MacKeeper.

The free plan from MacKeeper offers limited antivirus protection but allows you to scan for malware. You can get antivirus protection for a week, scan for junk files, and remove them once. It also lets you quit RAM-draining applications and get tech support.

Here’s a breakdown of the standard pricing:

• 1-month plan: $10.95 (monthly billing)
• 12-month plan: $5.95/month (annual billing)
• 12-month plan for 3 Macs: $7.45/month (annual billing)

Given the impact they have on improving performance and storage space on your Mac, we think these pricing plans are reasonable indeed. You must also consider that this subscription includes a VPN, online security, an ad blocker, and antivirus protection.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• All-in-one solution for cleaning, optimization, and security.
• Easy setup and minimal system impact.
• Comprehensive privacy tools (VPN, ad blocker, ID theft protection).
• Affordable pricing for premium features.
• Responsive customer support with live chat and remote help.

Cons

• Background processes, especially real-time protection, can affect the Mac’s performance and stability.
• Some features, like the duplicate scanner, seem to need more work as they often miss the targets.

Is MacKeeper Safe to Use?

After reviewing multiple third-party sources and our own testing, we found that MacKeeper is safe to use. For one, this app has been notarized by Apple and undergone third-party testing, which means you don’t have to worry about security or privacy.

As for features, they are also well optimized to avoid interfering with your Mac’s important aspects.

The Final Verdict

Here’s what we think after using MacKeeper for over a week:

MacKeeper remains one of the best ways to keep your Mac running at peak performance and protect it from viruses and other malware. It remains quite lightweight and has little impact on the system’s multitasking performance, except for the real-time protection feature.

We found it pretty useful, and it offers some handy features like VPN, ID Theft Guard, and an ad blocker. So, if you need a reliable way to protect and optimize your Mac, you may consider MacKeeper.

Updated on March 12, 2026, by TheSweetBits Team