I was partway through writing a detailed review about the intricacies of the AVG TuneUp software when I realized I was writing the same thing over and over again, which is a very good thing in this case because this product does exactly what it says it is going to do in every regard. The download and set-up process was straightforward, and once set-up, will prompt you to scan your computer (or phone) for the first time. From here everything is nicely divided into several categories for cleaning up your computer. The software will detect junk files, browser cache, cookies, etc. and let you choose what to delete and what to keep. You can sleep programs operating in the background, which can speed boot time, and you can set the software to automatically update your programs for you. Among all of this, one of the nicest things about this is how all of this is consolidated into one clean interface, allowing you to maintain much of your software from one environment. All of this holds equally true and then some for the mobile companion app that is included with the TuneUp software. While I found that the desktop version cleaned up some space and helped manage some resource heavy applications that I didn’t realize were running, in the end, I found that it didn’t make that much of a difference for my boot-up time, storage space, or overall system speed. On the mobile side however, things were far more effective. The mobile app helps you compress photos to save space, hibernate battery draining apps, set a customer power-saving profile, delete hidden cache, and more. In fact, by deleting hidden cache and compressing some photos, my phone’s storage increased by almost 50% with just a few clicks. So to sum it all up, it works great! I really have no complaints, and if you need a simple and effective solution for cleaning up desktop or phone space, and removing resource hogging applications, you can’t go wrong here! Yes, it may not be the most effective if you have a newer computer or phone, but the older the product the more likely you will be to see a noticeable difference in your device’s day-to-day functionality.

Found broken links; excess and duplicate files; duplicate photos, documents, videos; registry entries, etc.,. I ran the maintenance tools two days in a row. There is an auto-run feature, but I prefer to know whats happening to my system. It ran an intense disk repair, even on my SSD boot disk. Freed up a few hundred GB of disk space as well as cleaned lost registry entries. Downloaded files that were just hanging around were marked for deletion. I then said okay and they were gone. But, not entirerly. If you find something not working just right, you have the option of restoring it just like un-delete. COOL. My big test was running my Architectural ACAD program. It seemed to run smoothly, so far no problems. At times I see some lag from everyday things like spell check and web page loading. I suppose its looking for malicious software as I also use AVG Secure Browser. One good feature: fix and delete broken shortcuts. Sometimes you delete a program and forget to remove the shortcuts. Tracking cookies are also dealt a quick sweep off my system. As is the browsing history and downloaded orphaned files. System junk, gone. You can see the screen shots from day two's maintenance run.

AVG TuneUP is a utility software designed to clean up your computer, which, over time, will accumulate tons of junk files, registry mis-matches, dead shortcuts, and well, basically just a bunch of "sludge" that sits in the background slowing your computer down. This aims to help clean it up, and in theory, speed up your computer. I decided to try it on a Windows laptop that I had updated from Windows 8 to Windows 10, since updating usually leaves scattered files and junk behind on a system. I downloaded the installation which took quite a while to install once it downloaded. Eventually though, it began to run. The first time you run it, it wants to do a scan, which will look for any issues you may have in your registry files, shortcuts, junk files, clutter in your browsers, cookies in the browsers, and history of where you've visited, etc. The scan started going down the list, but then a bug showed itself - the screen just closed. It didn't minimize... it literally just closed. Then, the icon for the program disappeared from my desktop, and it didn't even show up under my "all programs" area - it was as though it literally uninstalled itself right in the middle of a scan. About two minutes later, suddenly, it re-appeared, icon, scan screen and all, and has finished it's scan (??). I have ZERO idea what could cause a program to literally disappear yet still be running, and then re-appear again. But, it was there and still working. It found issues in every category. You need only to tell it to continue after the results are displayed, and it "fixes" each one. You can then see a dashboard screen which allows you more control over things like just speeding up the machine, freeing up space, fixing problems, etc. It fixed my issues, but then, bug number 2 - it showed that it had started another scan again. I went into the scan screen and it just showed a small, spinning, icon which I could not pause or stop. This continued for over an hour and nothing I did would stop it. Closing the computer and restarting it had the same results, as did rebooting the laptop entirely. Now - did it work in terms of speeding up the laptop? I think it did to some degree. I noticed a few things being a bit speedier when I used them. The registry cleaner part did not seem to do any damage - all was well on that front. I'm just not sure with the bugs as they are if I could recommend it, though. Programs "disappearing" mid-use, re-appearing, and starting parts of their applications on their own and never ending, concern me. Again, it's maybe a glitch, or maybe something that can be fixed with updates, so I won't say "don't buy it" as it did seem to improve the laptop. But I do caution that you might experience bugs a long the way.

In testing out this software, I tried it on Mac, Android and PC as there is no iOS app. I’ll review it based on OS I tried it on. Mac: There are three options available for MacOS, “clean clutter”, “find duplicates”, and “find photos”. The clean clutter feature is pretty straight forward, you click it and it quickly finds files taking up storage on your device. I was able to free up about 10GB of files pretty easily and it did its job there. For the find duplicates feature, I can see this being useful if you have all your files stored on your device. If you store your files in cloud storage, this might be an issue. The problem I ran into is, I store a lot of files in OneDrive. As OneDrive tries to keep copies of files in the cloud until used, the AVG TuneUp software will have to download the pictures in order to scan them. If you have a 128 or 256GB Mac and lots of photos in the cloud this cloud be an issue as it will fill up your hard drive. As a result, I didn’t use the find duplicates and find photos features too much as it took too long to try to download all my photos. The clean clutter feature works well though. Android: In short, pretty useful! The most straightforward use is the quick clean feature which will clean all your cache and other files you might have forgotten about. It is a great one stop shop to clean up files on your device especially if you have limited storage space such as a 64GB device. Memory clear is as expected and same as how other apps do it so nothing special there. I did end up liking the media tab as. It will help clear up similar photos, bad photos, sensitive photos and old photos. Also, it can optimize photos to allow you to choose the compression and resolution of the files on your device. For some people this will never go used as they want full quality, but if you have a small screen you might not need full resolution, especially if your photos are backed up to the cloud. PC: The best version is the PC version. The main features here are “maintenance”, “speed up”, “free up space”, and “fix problems”. Maintenance is as described, there is a great registry cleaner and broken links cleaner here in addition to the usual cache, cookies and history cleaners. It has an automatic maintenance mode you can use as well. Speed up is somewhat useful and mostly shows you in a graphical view what background tasks are taking up space and allows you to “snooze” them. This is nothing you can’t already do in the performance tab of the OS but it is nice to look at and easy to use. Free up space is very much as described and it was able to find me 8.3GB and recommended 10 additional GB. Fix problems is more of a hard drive scanner. Again, this is nothing you can’t already do in the OS but it is a one stop shop. I was a little annoyed by the ads on the bottom of the app recommending other AVG apps to the user. This is pictured in one of my screen shots. It is not too intrusive but a little annoying. Summary: Overall, the software is good and a useful cross platform app. It is easy to use and does a good job without too many options to confuse the user. I recommend, especially if you can get it at a good price.

I have used a few software products over the years that purported to improve performance of a computer by “cleaning up” junk files and freeing up space by ridding the machine of files not needed, such as duplicates and temporaries. Some of these programs were free, some were obtained through purchasing the product as a CD-ROM and the most recent ones were a subscription downloaded from the company’s web site and usable for a specific length of time. The AVG TuneUp Premium product is the latter, a one-year subscription that can be installed on up to five different pieces of hardware. We are currently using it on an Apple MacBook Pro and a couple other laptops, both running Windows 10. The download was obtained using a product key and after creating a user account on AVG’s web site. The one issue I had with installation was on the MacBook. When I opened the installation file that downloaded, it wanted to take me to the Mac App Store rather than AVG’s web site for the download. I had to do a bit of fiddling to overcome this, but it didn’t take long. Installation on the Windows machines went smooth. The AVG TuneUp application was formerly called AVG Performance PRO. This is the first experience I have had with an AVG product although I have been aware of the company’s presence in the marketplace for quite awhile and from what I can tell they are a respected provider of a variety of software utilities. I have seen reviews from professionals for software such as this and they have all sorts of statistics about how performance was enhanced on a variety of machines and to what extent. As an “Everyday Joe” when it comes to stuff like this, I don’t have the expertise to put together a technically designed test like they do. I also don’t possess the tools to measure the minute differences in speed on the computer when doing local tasks such as spreadsheet calculations or other parameters that utilize the local resources on the individual machine where it is not interacting over the internet. About all I can comment on is installation of the software and the user interface and how efficiently the program goes about the tasks I have asked it to perform. Besides finding the app relatively easy to install, getting it set up and working took a minimal amount of time and I did not have to utilize any internet searches or any of AVG’s support to be able to use TuneUp. The user interface is extremely easy to use and navigate and the software will not delete anything from your computer without first asking for your authorization to do so. Things are designed so as to not be intimidating for the non-technical user. I felt at ease and “in control” of what was being executed by the TuneUp software. The design of the product was more Apple-like in execution than Windows-like and that can only be a good thing in my mind since even after decades of use, the Windows-based experience can still cause angst for me. Scans happened in a matter of seconds and minutes and were of such short duration that I was never tempted to walk away from the machine even with the initial scan which usually takes longer than subsequent ones. AVG TuneUp will help you keep your computer clean and running smooth and do it so effortlessly and seamlessly that you will hardly be inconvenienced when using it. I’m not sure what more we can ask of a workhorse, utilitarian piece of software that really should be a part of our day-to-day computer experience.