Mac OS X system maintenance procedures and software

There are many times when in our articles we will mention "General Maintenance" as part of a troubleshooting routine. If you are having software issues, either with third-party applications or the Mac OS itself, giving the computer a virtual scrub-down will many times help, or at least give you a cleaner slate upon which to do more in-depth troubleshooting.

OS X contains a number of different settings and temporary items, both in software and hardware, that can influence how the system and applications are running. On the hardware side there are the system's PRAM and SMC/PMU settings, in addition to the boot drive's volume and partition table structures. On the software side there are system and user caches, along with file permissions. While you might also look at settings files like user preferences, tackling those is not part of general maintenance and instead is more in the realm of troubleshooting specific system features or applications.

Quick Addendum: Keep in mind that while general maintenance is a procedure that can be run periodically and will not hurt anything to do so, it is not necessary to run it on a regular basis. If you are experiencing slow-downs or other odd behavior then it is a recommended and sometimes necessary step, which is why we mention it in our articles here; however, you do not need to conform to a maintenance schedule.