CleanMyMac X

This application is usable with VoiceOver, but I would recommend you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the layout and generally minor niggles before you run any of its “no going back” tools.

CleanMyMac's main tools are presented in a table. When you are new to this application, it might be helpful to know that when you interact with this table that some of the items are actually section headings, as this will explain why nothing appears to change anywhere on the screen when you VO+Space on them. The section headings are Cleanup, Protection, Speed, Applications, and Files.

Smart Scan is described by the developers as the “heart” of CleanMyMac,Combining most of the tools offered by the application in to a couple of button clicks. After performing the initial scan, the application displays a total amount of data that can be removed safely, a number of found threats, and a number of optimization tasks. Having reviewed the results, you click on a button to run the tasks.

Unfortunately, reviewing the results of the Smart Scan isn't straightforward with VoiceOver. They are reported as being displayed in a grid. After interacting with this, arrowing around will only have VoiceOver make a series of “ding” noises, suggesting that there is nothing to be found in this grid. However, interacting after hearing one of these “ding” alerts will give you access to results. After much experimenting and trial and error, I am still unsure as to whether VoiceOver is finding everything that is visually displayed in this grid. As a result, because I do not feel confident to know exactly which tasks will be run, I currently avoid the Smart Scan feature in favor of running its component tools individually.

There is at least one screen where VoiceOver does not correctly report the state of checkboxes. This is in the Maintenance tool, where these checkboxes are always reported as unchecked. Elsewhere on this screen there is an element which reports the number of tasks which have been selected to run, so I have to use this to determine the state of each checkbox - essentially, I VO+Space on a task, and then check whether the number of tasks to be run has changed. Obviously this is not ideal, but it sort of works.

I should stress at this point, that checkboxes ‘seem’ to behave as expected elsewhere in the application. So, it's odd that they fail in this area of the app.

CleanMyMac has a menu bar item which, along with other things, can display some information about your system (free space, trash size, network, and DropBox status). This information is reported by VoiceOver as being displayed in a grid. And, like the one mentioned earlier, you will find after interacting and arrowing around that VoiceOver will give you a series of “dings”. Again, like previously, further interacting will get you access to the displayed system information. However, I find it to be very hit and miss; offering more frustration than value.

Overall, as I said right at the start, this application is usable with VoiceOVer. However, because of the nature of the application - in that it has some tools where you really want to be confident in knowing exactly what's going to happen when you click on the Run button - it's hard to recommend. The new pricing introduced with the latest version also makes it hard to recommend, but that's a whole different matter.