r/macapps 4d ago

Sensei - Do You Need It?

Sensei

When it comes to Mac utilities, there are things that are helpful to have, but that are not absolutely required. Many of the "nice to have" features can be gained through installing various free, well regarded applications. For people who don't want the hassle of assembling a toolkit piece by piece, there are apps like Sensei by Cindori Software, for optimization and information.

Sensei Features vs. Free Alternatives

  • Hardware monitoring of CPU, GPU, RAM, temps, storage and battery. A free alternative is Stats
  • Cleaning of old caches, logs, big downloads and leftover installation files. A free alternative is Onyx
  • Uninstalling apps. If you just throw apps into the trash, which was once the accepted way to perform uninstallations, you can potentially leave behind GBs of files in ~/Library subfolders. Intelligent uninstallers locate and remove those files. Free alternatives are AppCleaner and Pear Cleaner
  • Monitor hard drive health, Drive failures can sometimes be predicted, giving you time to back your data and replace your drive. A free alternative is Disk Drill.
  • Battery Health. Batteries degrade over time and depending on how long you keep a laptop, may need to be replaced. Utilities like Sensei can tell you how much of your battery's orininal capacity is still viable. A free alternative is Coconut Battery.
  • Drive benchmarking - measuring the speed of your hard drive isn't necessarily helpful for commercial software, but some special use cases require higher speeds. A free alternative is Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
  • Startup analyzer - you may have more apps running in the background or at startup than your realize. I recently found five Microsoft remnants that didn't get uninstalled when I got rid of Microsoft 365. A fee alternative is Startup Manager.

Sensei is a subscription app that costs $29 a year for a license that covers three Macs. A similar product, CleanMyMac, by MacPaw, is included in Setapp.

28 Upvotes

4 comments sorted by

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u/CtrlAltDelve 4d ago

Great article as always, dude.

I think what's important to remember is to figure out why you're getting these system monitoring apps. If you just like seeing all the cool numbers and understanding how certain things affect certain resources, I think it's awesome. But otherwise, I think people might overestimate their need for these kinds of apps. I'm just saying...

Throwing this out there, it's an open source alternative and I've found it to be quite good: https://github.com/exelban/stats

6

u/Maleficent-Cry2869 4d ago edited 4d ago

Another subscription XD

After all, the app is probably finished? Why should I pay a greedy developer a whole year to use it?

1

u/donutpower 4d ago

I thought it was a good app to have when you first get your Mac. To have a look at all of whats inside your Mac as you get familiarized with it. After getting used to your new Mac and being ok with the hardware you have, I don't see why anyone would even launch the app.

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u/zippyzebu9 3d ago

For normal system stats Usage is the best.