Cocktail for Mac

Cocktail for Mac offers a combination of cleaning, repairing, and optimizing tools to help you improve and maintain the performance of your Mac. It can also implement interface changes.

Pros

Comprehensive set of tools: Cocktail features five sets of tools for managing your system, disks, files, network, and interface. It can perform disk permissions repair, manual and automatic memory purging, Spotlight cache cleaning, Trash management, network optimization, and interface modifications. The tools work decently enough -- not too fast but not too slow, either.

Lightweight: This utility does not drag your Mac down, hardly causing any performance slowdowns even with the automatic maintenance function (Pilot) working in the background.

Autopilot: The "Pilot" feature allows you to automate tasks: you can set the application to run scripts, clear caches, repair disk permissions, and clear log files according to a schedule. You can even make your computer run a task or restart/shut down once the scheduled tasks are completed.

Cons

Not free: With a $19 price tag, Cocktail isn't cheap. Many of its functions are already present in your Mac OS X.

Different installers for different OS versions: It would have been more convenient if Cocktail were available in just one installer for all Mac OS X versions. You need to look for the specific version that works for your OS -- the version we tested, v6.8.6, is intended for Mac OS X 10.8 only.

Bottom Line

Cocktail for Mac does what it's designed to do but doesn't offer any standout features. There are free alternatives that provide similar and even better functions. Also, its scheme of having different installers for different OS versions means you can't get a discount if you are just upgrading from an older version.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Cocktail for Mac 6.9.

• Improved launch time
• Added Retina support
• Improvements on the "Clear kernel caches" procedure
• Updated uninstaller and Automator actions