Mac maintanence

In addition to the excellent advice given, I offer the following comments regarding maintenance. There are some useful maintenance activities we can do which can be very useful. They are “maintenance” steps which are often ignored.

·      It is important to occasionally restart a Mac. Ideally, once a week or more often. This does some system cleaning.

·      Periodically clearing the history of your browsers can help as all the data is stored in RAM. Clearing frees up RAM for system use. Ask yourself how much history you need to keep.

·      Some people seldom empty their trash. If you haven’t, then do so. Also empty your email trash.

·      Some programs use a lot of RAM. (Like many Adobe apps and the Chrome browser.) When using them, close any other apps not being used.

·      Doing a restart in the Safe Mode can clear a number of problems. This is done by holding down the Shift key at start up. This process can take up to ten minutes while the computer is doing its maintenance and cleans the cache. You may then restart normally.

·      It is also a good idea to occasionally run the Disk Utility app. If it reports some issues, then rerun it repeatedly as needed until the final report is ok.

I hope these suggestions are helpful as well.

1. EtreCheck is a diagnostic tool. Malwarebytes is a malware removal tool. Both can be handy. I wouldn't run Malwarebytes with real-time scanning.
2. No need. The system takes care of caches.
3. That's three questions. :) Onyx is best left to those who know what they are doing.

Agree with Learned colleague @dailabrain.

Should include to maintenance - Time Machine Backup and add for Insurance against Failed SSD / HD - two Tested Bootable Clones each to separate external Drives.

There are no "must have" maintenance utilities. macOS doesn't need any maintenance. None.

All of the software you mention are tools that can be used when needed. None of them should be used for recurring "maintenance."

The only active function that EtreCheck has is removing orphaned startup items and Adware. MalwareBytes should only be used for removing Adware. However, once you've removed the Adware that you installed, you should never need to use the Adware removal tools again. Adware doesn't get there by magic. You installed it. Don't install Adware. So, there is no recurring "maintenance" necessary.

OnyX has many tools that could be used in some very rare cases, but I have never needed those tools on any Mac I've owned. It does have the ability to easily enable some "hidden" preferences. The rest of the tools are normally never needed. Running them periodically will likely cause problems, not prevent them.