Redwood City, California – October 23, 2018 - Avast, the global leader in digital security products, announced the latest releases of Avast Cleanup for PCs and Avast Cleanup for Macs, the maintenance and performance optimization products that help make computers run like new. The tool helps PC users to get rid easily of digital ‘zombie’ software that users no longer need, and Mac users can optimize their photo storage to save space and improve system performance.

Avast Cleanup for PC: Quarantine and removal of unused apps

Whether new or old, many PCs and laptops usually have software installed that users don’t need or never knew existed in the first place. These applications waste space and can impact overall performance, system reliability and battery life. The improved ‘Software Cleanup’ feature, part of Avast Cleanup for PC, hunts down those app ‘zombies’: Avast Cleanup for PC detects adware, trial software versions, toolbars and other pre-installed junkware, and now also identifies programs users haven't run for a long time.

Avast Cleanup for PC lists all installed software and provides a rating for each program, which is based on blacklists/whitelists, heuristic algorithms, Avast's recommendation engine and also cloud-based user ratings. This helps users decide which software to remove and which software to keep on their PC. If there is doubt about a certain program, users can use the quarantine feature to put apps in a safe zone where they won’t consume resources – and then get rid of them when they are sure they no longer need them.

In some cases, users don’t want to uninstall an app they need regularly but do wish to stop it from draining resources when it’s not in use. Avast’s patented ‘Sleep Mode’ temporarily freezes all background activity of an application, such as services, scheduled tasks or startup items when it’s not in use. When the user subsequently launches it, Avast Cleanup for PC turns the app back on automatically. This saves resources and can improve performance especially when the user has many programs installed.

Avast Cleanup for Mac: Cleansing a cluttered photo library

People today often take multiple photos of one scene or object with the intent to filter out the best shots later. It’s easy to forget to do this so Avast Cleanup for Mac comes with a new Photo Cleaner feature that identifies low quality or redundant photos and offers them to the user who then can choose to delete them.

Photo Cleaner finds duplicate photos that are either (nearly) identical or very similar, and  low quality photos such as those with very low resolution, those that are blurry, too dark or oversaturated which it recommends the user to remove if they so wish, freeing up memory.

Avast Cleanup for PC is available with an annual subscription of  $49.99 and Avast Cleanup for Mac at $59.99. System requirements: Windows 7, 8 and 10 and a Pentium IV or Athlon 64 class CPU with 256 MB of RAM. Mac: macOS 10.9 (Maverick) or later with at least 500 MB of disk space. An Internet connection is also required for automatic security updates.