Cocktail 4.4 for Mac

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET Staff

Cocktail is both useful and fun for inveterate Mac tinkerers and would-be power-users (that is, power users who aren't hard-core enough to use the command line). This multi-purpose utility can help you keep your computer happy and healthy, giving you access to scores of tweaks and optimizations pulled together from various utilities, preferences, third-party hacks, and command-line tools. Cocktail can help you with routine maintenance and customization across your disks, system, files, network, and interface. Cocktail is organized around these five areas, with highly customizable options for everything from clearing caches and repairing permissions to changing the appearance and behavior of the Finder and Dock--and Cocktail's Pilot feature lets you schedule regular maintenance. Perhaps the best part of Cocktail is its extensive help files, cross-linked to articles on Wikipedia, Apple's site, and other Mac resources. These fall short in some spots (such as with optimizing network settings), but they can provide a valuable primer on how your Mac works. One drawback we found was the stingy 10-use trial, but even with those 10 launches, you might be sold on this cool utility. There are other cheaper--and even free--options out there, but with Cocktail, you get OS-specific stability, helpful documentation, and a well-organized interface.

Publisher's description

From Maintain :

Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions and helps hundreds of thousands of Mac users around the world to get the most out of their computers.

The application serves up a scrumptious mix of maintenance tools and interface tweaks, all accessible via a comprehensive graphical interface. Most of Cocktail's major features are arranged in five basic categories. In addition, a Pilot lets you clean, repair and optimize your system with one click of the button.

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