Help, care, protection — usually these words come to our minds when we think of 911. MacKeeper is like 911, but only for Mac OS world. This all-in-one system utility will help your Mac become clean and fast, take care of important data, and protect your Mac from all kinds of threats including physical theft.

In this Mac-How I will reveal some tricks of how to easily give your Mac 911 care. For this we'll need only two things — a Mac and MacKeeper installed on it. So let the magic begin!

1. How to Secure your Mac against Online Threats and Theft

Did you know that right now your Mac is under the threat of getting infected? Even Mac OS developers recommend installing extra security software. That's why MacKeeper includes Antivirus that can perform a full virus scan of your system. And what makes MacKeeper's Antivirus special is that it protects your Mac from both Mac OS and Windows threats.

1. To open Antivirus, click its name on MacKeeper's navigation bar.
2. In the Scan section, click the Start Scan button.

3. Wait until the scan ends... And that's it! Luckily there are no viruses on this Mac!

You can also scan specific folders, for example Applications. To do this, click the Start Custom Scan button, select the Applications folder, and click Open.

But what to do if MacKeeper finds malware files? There are two ways to deal with them — either quarantine or delete.

1. Expand the virus list in the Status section.
2. By default, all files are selected. Click the Move to Quarantine button to quarantine them, or the Delete button to remove them.

As you see, everything's pretty easy here. Want to make it even easier? Then use the Schedule function to have your system scanned within specific time intervals. For example, let's tell Antivirus to scan the Applications folder every Friday at 7 p.m.:

1. Expand the Schedule section.
2. Click Add.

3. Select Applications and click Open.

1. Click the Manual button.
2. Select Weekly, Every Monday, at 7-00 PM.
3. Click OK.

So we have protected your Mac's system, but what about the Mac itself? What I'm talking about is physical loss or theft. Of course you should always keep an eye on your Mac while traveling with it, but to play safe you must enable MacKeeper's Anti-Theft service. It will track down your Mac in case it's lost or stolen, give you a detailed report on its whereabouts, and even use iSight to show you that bad guy who took your Mac away!
To enable Anti-Theft:

1. Open MacKeeper's Status page.
2. In the System Status section near the warning that Anti-Theft is not active click Install.

So what to do if your Mac is stolen? You'll find detailed instructions at the Anti-Theft page of the app, but let me explain these steps one by one.

1. From any other computer navigate to the My Account page of MacKeeper website, or go directly to http://account.zeobit.com/.
2. Under Services, click Anti-Theft.

3. Check whether Anti-Theft is activated; if not, click Change Status to make it active.

4. If you did not provide your phone number during registration, enter it in the Phone field.

5. Click the Computer was stolen button.

6. As soon as your Mac goes online, Anti-Theft will generate a report on its location and e-mail it to the customer support along with the thief snapshot — a feature for Macs with iSight webcams that will be automatically activated after you click Computer was stolen.
7. Then a customer support representative will call you, giving detailed guidelines on how to communicate with the police and get your Mac back.
8. Finally, in addition to the phone call you will receive an e-mail message with the up-to-date report and all instructions.

With MacKeeper's Anti-Theft you will be armed to the teeth against thieves!

2. How to Protect Your Important Data

If you share your Mac with someone else or frequently process important files, then you should be doubly cautious, as someone else can access these files, or you can accidentally remove them. MacKeeper will make you forget about these problems with its Data Control feature set.

Let's start with the Data Encryptor feature that makes your private files invisible on the hard drive. For this it uses complex encryption algorithms, but at the same time it's so easy to use. Let me show you how to hide and encrypt a personal folder with several clicks.

1. To start using Data Encryptor, create a password, enter it in the suggested field and click Setup. You will be using this password later each time you open the tool.

2. Drag a file/folder you would like to encrypt to the Data Encryptor's work area, select the encryption method — AES-128 or AES-256 (enter your Mac user password for encryption), and click OK.

3. Drag a file/folder you would like to encrypt to the Data Encryptor's work area, select the encryption method — AES-128 or AES-256 (enter your Mac user password for encryption), and click OK.

4. Click either the lock image or the Hide button to encrypt the file or folder. As a result, the image will instantly change to a closed lock. If you have added several files/folders, you can click the Hide All button to encrypt all of them at once.

5. To decrypt the file or folder, click either the lock image or the Unhide button. Once you do it, the image will change from the closed lock back to the open one, but you will have to enter your password to make the file or folder visible again.
6. To remove the file or folder from the list, select it and click the Remove button.

Now your top secret files are put safe away, and it's time to secure them against accidental deletion.

Sometimes our important files end up in the Trash, and in worst cases even outside it. One solution to this problem is to copy, copy and copy. Create copies everywhere you can — on your Mac, on your flash drive, on your external storage, even hard copies won't hurt. Another solution is faster and simpler — use MacKeeper's Backup tool. It will automatically create reserve copies anywhere you like and sync the changes with the original file on a specified schedule. Let's see how to do it.

1. Create a backup group. Drag the item you would like to back up to the Backup's work area, type in the backup group name, and click OK.

2. The backup group is added to the list in the work area of Backup where you can continue its setup. You can expand the group to view its contents and preview them using the Quick Look button. You can also select:

• The number of reserve copies to create — from 1 to 100
• The mode of backup — manual or within specific time intervals
• Backup destination — your Mac, flash drive or external hard drive (a feature missed by other similar backup tools)

3. When ready, click Backup Now, and that's it!

And now let's schedule our backup to take place daily at 3 p.m.:

1. In your backup group click the Manual button.
2. Select Daily, Every 1 day, at 3-00 PM.
3. Click OK.

“But what if I forget to back up my files and lose them?” you may be already thinking. Relax — MacKeeper's Undelete tool will race to rescue your files even if they are out of the Trash. However, you'll have to hurry up here, until your files are not completely overwritten by newer files. To recover deleted files:

1. Open Undelete.
2. Select the volume from which the lost files were deleted, and click Start Scan. MacKeeper will perform a complete scan of the volume to locate your lost files.

3. When the scan is finished, the list of files that can be recovered appears. To locate your files, either select the file type — Images, Documents, Music/Sound, Video, or Archives - or use the Filter field.

4. When you find your lost file, you can click the Quick Look button or press the spacebar on your keyboard to preview it.

5. Once you have made up your mind, click Recover, select where to save the recovered file, and wait until MacKeeper carefully restores your files byte by byte. But be aware that the recovery destination must be different from the scanned volume and have enough free space. It can even be your flash drive or external hard drive — exactly this makes Undelete stand out among other file recovery tools.

3. How to Clean up Your Mac Quickly and Easily

50% of Mac problems are caused by a cluttered hard drive. With MacKeeper's Cleaning toolbox you can easily find out which files or apps take most space on your Mac and effortlessly remove them.

The Fast Cleanup tool will show you four types of junk files — cache files, log files, language packs, and useless parts of apps — and enable you to remove all of them or some of them.

When you click Fast Cleanup on the navigation bar, the four drive clean-up utilities will look like this: By default all four utilities are enabled, meaning that all of them will be included in the scan. However, you can disable those you do not need using the On/Off sliders. When you are ready with the settings, click Start Scan. A progress bar that appears will indicate how many junk files Fast Cleanup has found on your Mac so far. When the scan is over, you can view the found files by clicking the View Result button near each cleaner. To clean all the stuff Fast Cleanup has found, click Remove All. Hard drive clutter is caused not only by junk files but also by useless apps. Most of us do not use at least 30% of apps installed on our Macs. However, even if you drag these apps to the Trash, their add-ons — widgets, preference panes, and plug-ins — will remain on your hard drive. Unlike the Trash, MacKeeper's Wise Uninstaller will completely remove your applications together with their components which you can view separately for each app. By default, Wise Uninstaller is opened as the Column view. You can switch to the List view if you want by clicking the corresponding button, but we recommend the Column view, as it clearly shows all your apps, widgets, preference panes and plugins. When you click one of these four categories, you will see all items it contains. If an item has a small arrow next to it, this means that you can expand it to view its components. Click an item to preview it. You can also view the item info using the Quick Look button and search for specific apps or their components using the Filter field. Click the Reveal in Finder button to show the item in Finder. Click the checkbox to the left of the item you want to delete to select it for removal. All of its components will be automatically selected. Click Remove to delete the item with its components.

4. How to Optimize Your Mac's Performance

MacKeeper's Optimization toolset is aimed at making your Mac faster and saving your time. For example, if you suffer from slow login speed, you can boost it by disabling the apps that launch once you log in to the system. Just open the Login Items tool, select the unneeded apps and click Remove.

Another cool feature here is Update Tracker — with it you can get updates for all your apps in one place.

When you open Update Tracker, you will see the list of all apps installed on your Mac. In the app list, out of date apps are marked with red, while those that are up to date are marked with green.

To update an app, select it in the list and click Update. To update all apps, click Update All. A progress bar will appear, indicating the update progress and showing the name of the app currently being updated and the number of the apps waiting to be updated. The apps that will be updated next are marked with gray in the list. To refresh the app list, click Rescan. To interrupt the updating process, click the Stop All button. To preview the apps, use the Quick Look button. To search for specific apps, use the Filter field. If you have some crucial apps which you would like to always be updated in the first place, click the star icons next to these apps in the list, and they will be added to the Favorite list. To view the favorite apps, click the Favorite tab in the filter above the app list. To update all apps in the Favorite list, click Update All. To remove the apps from the Favorite list, click the star icons again.

5. How to Get Expert Technical Assistance

It's nice to have a tech expert around, always ready to answer any technical question of yours. But what if you don't have one among your friends? MacKeeper offers a more reliable alternative called Geek on Demand. It's your remote personal assistant that can call you any time you want, connect to your computer and solve any issue you have. Let's see how it works.

You have to log in to MacKeeper with your ZeoBIT account to use Geek on Demand. When you are logged in, the Geek on Demand page looks like this:

The Your demands activity list contains all demands you ever created, with name, description, status, call back time, and creation date. Under the list you can find a description of how Geek on Demand works.

To create a demand:

1. Click New demand.
2. Enter a short but descriptive title in the Title field.
3. Type your problem or question of interest in the Description field.
4. If you did not provide your phone number during the registration, you will have to enter it in the Phone field.
5. Enter the date you want the expert to call you back on in the Call me on fields.
6. Enter the time you want the expert to call you back at in the Time fields.
7. When ready, click Save. If you change your mind, click Cancel.

8. The demand will be added to the Your demands activity list with the Pending status. As soon as the expert calls you and resolves the issue, the status will change to Resolved. Please note that Geek on Demand can process only one issue at a time.

Summary

I've been successfully using these five tricks for quite long time and my Mac is feeling great as it gets the best 911 care with MacKeeper. Try them on your Mac and see for yourself!