Intego Mac Washing Machine X9 Review (2023)

Mac Washing Machine X9 is an essential Mac cleaner that keeps your computer clutter-free

Intego Washing Machine X9 is a Mac cleaner, or in other words, a cleaning utility program for OS X. It is intended to increase your Mac’s speed and optimize its performance. The tool is easy-to-use and can help you to get rid of clutter on your computer by deleting old, unused or unnecessary files, duplicates, cache, logs and other files. On top of that, it offers flexible options that helps you to organize your Desktop and Dock items for better productivity or even create Smart Folders for most frequently used files and apps.

Intego is known as a company that has dedicated its full focus solely on Mac products since 1997. It has a history of developing and continuously improving robust, user-friendly, and useful OS X products that are praised by Mac users worldwide.

Mac Washing Machine X9 is definitely one of the best Mac cleaners our team has tested in 2022 and continue to use regularly.

Downloading new files to our Macs is part of our daily routines – we need to view, edit, or sort files, whether they are associated with work, studies, personal memories or are just for entertainment. On top of that, the majority of applications (including web browsers) create background files that are rarely or never accessed by the user – logs, cache files, cookies, browsing history and other data. Over time, such items pile up and clutter our computers, and if the issue isn’t addressed in time, it can even lead to slow-running Mac problem. When this happens, the computer typically starts displaying “your disk is almost full” warning.

The truth is, computer users often push back the task of computer maintenance, which includes deleting files they no longer need or use. Often times, users only react to the issue when the Apple computer starts showing alerts about low disk space. Even then, many of us go and delete some large files and forget about it until the next alert shows up.

This is where Mac cleaners like Intego Washing Machine X9 carry the weight and help the user do the cleanup automatically. In this review, we will overview its features, pricing, compatibility and overview our hands-on test results.

Intego Mac Washing Machine X9 Review

Intego Mac Washing Machine X9 has a user-friendly interface that is divided into three simple sections: Reclaim, Duplicates, and Organize. After choosing a section, the software offers a simple customization of the scan. By default, the software will have all of the categories selected, but the user can toggle the ON/OFF switch above them to modify which of categories to include or exclude from the scan.

Afterward, all that the user needs to do is to click a blue Continue button above to proceed with the scan. Additionally, users can go into a detailed customization and select which specific locations to include or exclude. Now, let’s dive right into the review and see what this Mac cleaning utility has to offer.

Features

Reclaim: Clean Unwanted Files and Enhance System Performance

Disk Space Reclaim cycle allows scanning files that are rarely used by the user and takes up a lot of Mac’s space. The cycle can scan all or selected categories, including:

• Caches: these files usually contain reusable application data. Cache helps web browsers and applications access locally-stored data faster and prevents the need of downloading data (images, videos, scripts, search history, etc.) repeatedly every time you open an app or a website. Sometimes, cache files can prevent the website or app loading the latest version of data.
• Languages: Language packs are software modules that are usually installed along every app. Applications typically come with a set of language packs so that the software would support several different languages and the user could switch between them, if needed. However, if unused, they can be deleted as they take up a lot of space on the computer.
• Downloads: The Downloads folder is probably the most frequently used folder on users’ computers – but also the least maintained one. We download a lot of files just to reuse them, modify them, or just to view them, and often just leave them there instead of deleting them once they are no longer needed.
• Logs: Log files are created by the computer or applications to track user, operating system, software and related events. In other words, logs store a historical record of everything that happens within a computer. Logs can also be used to track down errors and similar events.
• Trash: Trash is where deleted files are stored – but it needs to be emptied to ensure that these deleted items are actually gone. This Mac cleaning software can do this task for you as well.

After selecting chosen categories, the tool performs a scan and then shows how many files were identified for removal. The user then can choose the level of deletion criteria using a slider. The Safe side means less data will be deleted, and the Aggressive side means more files will be deleted and also more space will be freed. In addition, when using the slider, the user can see what kind of data will be deleted.

The tool also showcases a graph with coloured sections that show different categories checked during the scan. By clicking on a colour, one can see a more detailed view of what kind of items will be deleted.

What we like about this software is that it allows the user to view scan results before allowing it to actually take action and delete the clutter. The user can also deselect items to exclude from deletion after the scan. Once all adjustments are made, the final step is clicking the Clean button, which, again, shows a summary of files that will be deleted, as well as space that will be reclaimed. To continue, the user needs to click Delete button.

Duplicates: Get Rid of Duplicate Files

The Duplicates cycle allows choosing categories for scan as listed below:

• Folders: The tool checks folders to see if they contain duplicates of files.
• Archives: The tool inspects archives as they typically contain files that were already unarchived by the user. Supports the following archive formats: .TAR, .ZIP, .TGZ, .DMG, .CPGZ.
• Movies: Checks to see if there are videos and movies (.M4A, .MOV, .M4V, .WMV) saved more than once on the Mac.
• Documents: Checks for duplicates of .CSV, .DOCX, .DOC, .NUMBERS, .PAGES, .KEYNOTE, .TXT, .XLS and other document formats throughout the system.
• Music: Detects duplicates of sounds and music files, including: .MOV, .MP2, .MP3, .MP4, AIDD, .SPX and WAV.
• Pictures: Finds duplicates of images, icons and pictures including the following formats: .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .BMP, .GIF, .ICNS, .ICO, .RAW, .TIF, .PSD.

Again, this cycle allows including and excluding specific locations from the scan, and once the user clicks the Continue button, it begins analyzing selected categories on the computer. Afterward, Intego Mac Washing Machine X9 provides a detailed list of detected duplicates and allows the user to manage which files will be deleted.

The summary of duplicates will be divided into categories and the user can manage them all at once or by specific category, for example, only movies or documents. The tool provides a listing of files as well as count of duplicates found for each of them. The first number indicates how many of them the user has selected for removal, while the second determines how many were found in total.

On top of that, the tool allows two search options: the first one, Auto Select, allows choosing which files to keep. There are several options for this setting, including Earliest Files, Latest Files, Shortest Path, Longest Path, Originals, Files on Specified Volume, and All Files. Picking an option from these means these files will be untouched and the rest of copies will be deleted.

The second setting, Sort by Options, allows modifying the order of files by Name, Count, Type, Size, Selected, Extension, and also pick an option between Ascending or Descending order. This allows easy detection of files that you’re trying to locate.

The tool’s pane on the right side allows selecting which duplicates to add to the deletion list. There are also two little icons next to each file. Show icon opens the file location on your Mac (via Finder) and the Quick Look icon shows a preview of the file.

Once you select files to delete, just select the Clean button and wait for the magic to happen. That’s it – the tool will clean up unneeded data copies and free up a lot of space on your Mac.

All in all, we find this Mac Washing Machine X9 feature very useful and easily manageable, as none of us want to accidentally delete files that we need. It allows easy detection of duplicates and also allows you to sort out the data that you actually do not need.

Organize: Organize your Mac Automatically

The Organize cycle is a convenient tool for decluttering and organizing your files. It provides an interface that allows you to quickly sort files into appropriate locations for easier access. You can choose categories to include in the tidying up procedure – Desktop, Dock and Smart Folders.

The Desktop organization can be done automatically by using Auto Select Feature and clicking Tidy button; however, you can manually arrange desktop items into three sections – Organize files in Home Subfolders (places items into proper folders according to file type), organize in Desktop folder (creates a folder with chosen items on Desktop), or move files to Trash (for deletion). All that it takes is simply drag and drop items into each section.

The Dock organization pane allows you to quickly rearrange the order and count of Dock items. All you need to do is to drag and drop the needed items to the “New Dock” pane and remove the ones you no longer want to have there.

Smart Folder’s is Intego Washing Machine X9 feature that allows keeping apps and files that you use the most in one place. These folders can also update the Smart Folder with new items that you use regularly.

To create a Smart Folder, all you need to do is drag the chosen folder type to the right pane of the tool’s window, into Your Favourite Smart Folders. The folders you created will appear under Favorites in Finder window.

Settings explained

Customizing Intego’s Washing Machine X9 for Mac settings is easy as these are not overcrowded with complicated options. In its Preferences, user can find General, Scheduler, and Advanced tabs.

The General tab opens a panel that allows the user to reset Help Overlays (so that overlays reappear once the application is started) and reset Notifications (resets any notification window that was dismissed earlier). Additionally, you can choose whether you want anonymous information (such as software usage patterns that can help the software developer to make improvements) to be collected or not.

The Scheduler tab opens a panel that the user can use to set reminders about Mac’s maintenance so that the user could perform them regularly. There are options to be reminded every 2 weeks, every month, or every 3 months. If one doesn’t want to receive these reminders, the box should be unchecked.

The Advanced panel allows modifications to scanner functions. In Dock section, you can choose to include utility applications and include applications not in standard locations, which means the scanner will include entire computer for apps that you use regularly. If you do not want these apps to be included, you can deselect these options. In Reclaim section, user can choose whether to delete Trash on external devices or not. Next, the tools allows choosing to move cleaned duplicates to Trash instead of permanent deletion, which is a default setting.

Finally, the Secure Cleaning option allows to securely remove data from your computer once it has been marked for deletion. Typically, file can only be removed from a computer without chances to recover it once it has been overwritten by new information. This option allows choosing between Basic, Medium or High levels that correspond to 1, 7 or 35 passes of random data that will overwrite the file marked for deletion. This cleaning option also takes more time to delete data. This function doesn’t work with SSD drives.

About the blueprints

Sometimes users are hesitant of what will happen after clicking a button or what specific settings in software are meant for. In order for the user to understand the functionality of each button and how to use Intego Washing Machine X9, the tool offers blueprints that can be launched by clicking the info icon in the upper-right corner of the window.

The blueprint is like an overlay that provides explanation what each clickable item does. We believe these blueprints are a nice touch that really help to make user’s experience better.

System Requirements

Washing Machine X9 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.12 or higher operating system and 64-bit processor.

In other words, this cleaning utility program runs on macOS Sierra, macOS High Sierra, macOS Mojave, macOS Catalina, macOS Big Sur and the app is also compatible with the latest OS X version – macOS Monterey.

It also requires 1.5 GB free disk space and is currently available in these languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish.

Final thoughts

Using a legitimate and trustworthy Mac cleaner like Washing Machine X9 is a highly advisable option for those who are looking for ways to speed up their Macs and get rid of clutter files.

While some may argue that these programs are unnecessary and and users can do the cleaning themselves, we believe that this is a very one-sided opinion. Experienced computer users who have the knowledge of how applications store information, cache, logs, or those that have the habit of finding and deleting unwanted files manually can, of course, clean their computers on their own.

However, the majority of Mac users (us included) normally don’t have time to perform computer maintenance routine on a regular basis or simply push this task for later again and again. As a result, we face the problem of slow Mac only when the system clutter is already piled up. In such situations, a good OS X cleaner and optimization software comes in handy, especially when it can be set up to remind us to perform a computer maintenance routine regularly.

We personally find Intego Mac Washing Machine X9 to be extremely helpful, customizable and easy-to-use, and during our regular usage of it we also found that it can significantly boost Mac’s performance and speed by decluttering piled-up items.