AVG TuneUp Premium for Mac Review: Good, space saving Mac cleaner app, some bugs

There’s no shortage of good cleanup and optimization utilities for the Mac. While AVG has historically been more prevalent on the Windows side of things, the company is making a concerted effort to enter the Mac-O-Sphere in terms of antivirus, privacy-based, and other utility software.

Enter AVG TuneUp Premium for Mac, AVG’s cleanup utility. Priced at $65.99/£54.99 for one device for one year and deep-discounted to $34.99/£29.99 for 10 devices for the first year for its subscription rate, the software arrives, citing its ability to “reclaim lost space to junk data, duplicate files, and poor-quality photos to keep your Mac clean and working better for longer.”

The software requires macOS 10.12 (Sierra) to install and run, with AVG offering no trial period but a 30-day money-back guarantee instead. It installs cleanly, but requires that you locate and add the application from the Applications folder to allow for full disk access, which seemed like an unexpected extra step.

The software is divided into several modules, each with its own tasks: Quick Clean, Clean Clutter, Clean Browser, Find Duplicates, Analyze Photos, Uninstall Apps, Manage Startups, System Monitor, and Statistics. Once underway, the modules themselves run quickly, are accompanied by a handy user interface, and do a good job of hunting down the usual detritus that similar programs target and work to recover gigabytes of lost drive space from.

The modules themselves work as advertised, and AVG has added a good level of customization that allows for certain files, folders, drives, and volumes to be filtered through. The Clean Browser module proved interesting, as it allows users to create a Cookie Allowlist wherein they can either import bookmarks or manually add cookies to avoid conflicts. The Find Duplicates application also worked well, offered good categorization of found documents, and it’s easy to add folders or external drives for it to sort through.

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Other utilities, such as Uninstall Apps and Manage Startups, worked as advertised. The Manage Startups module allowed for a deeper dive into your Mac’s startup load than what’s usually found in the macOS Settings panel, and it was easy to toggle settings on and off as needed. The System Monitor module provides a substantial amount of system information, including CPU/memory usage, sensors, disk usage, battery usage, and life. While this isn’t extraordinary, it’s handy, and the fact that it’s also available from the Menu Bar adds a nice touch.

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Still, there are some issues to sort through. The Uninstall Apps module required two authentications via my MacBook Pro’s Touch ID sensor, which seemed odd. Perhaps the most annoying shortcoming is the user interface, which, while polished, doesn’t allow for the main window to enter full-screen mode or to be clicked and resized as needed, which seems like a core design principle. These seem to be easy enough fixes, but it just seems as if these bugs could have been caught and sorted out in QA before the software was posted for download.

Finally, the Bad Photos feature in the Analyze Photos module seems vague, and the few dozen images it found didn’t seem damaged, blurry, or out of focus, but just oddities that didn’t quite fit into the rest of the Photos Library, making them something of an Island of Misfit Toys, but not worthy of deletion.

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Should you buy AVG TuneUp Premium for Mac?

There’s a good program to be had with AVG TuneUp Premium for Mac and an exceptional level of customization, such as the ability to add exceptions and whitelists before large-scale filters and cleanup routines are applied, and that’s to be commended. The software focuses on its core tasks without trying to do everything else in the world (i.e., antiviral protection, content filtering, secure internet connections, etc.).

Still, there’s room for a little more care in development, a bug hunt, and cleanup, especially if its main window can’t be clicked and resized.

AVG TuneUp Premium for Mac performs its tasks well, but doesn’t offer anything that readily surpasses similar competing programs. Yes, it’s worth a shot, and a 30-day money-back guarantee is a good thing, but a free trial might offer more credence to see what it can do for you.