This is the weirdest collection of functions in a single app that I've ever seen. The fact that it's distributed as a .pkg file that must be installed (with no clarity at all about what's being installed and where) makes thuds an absolute no-brainer MUST AVOID app.

This software is perfect. Sure, it has yet to evolve but it is quite stable, free (no ads) and despite the number of options it is very easy to use. Congratulations to the developers for this great work!

Thank you for all your reviews here, no matter its good or bad.
Magican is freeware and that may violate benefits of some paid apps, then causing some criticism. We do not local in English customer service, because she comes from Malysia. But that do not means we do nothings on making progress. So as we told in the first sentence, thank you for all your criticism reviews that helps Magican grew up more quickly.

First, I've tried slightly older version 1.1.4 than current 1.2.0 but haven't noticed any related changes in the changelog so it shouldn't be too much off.

It looks like a promising piece of software given some of its features that could be otherwise found in paid applications, but to me it feels too much like some sort of circus. I don't want the whole monitoring and weather stuff but couldn't find any simple way to get rid of it. And I don't actually understand why such things have to be in that sort of app. They could make separate applications so that only who really wants them would get them.
Then those ubiquitous "hints" briefly explaining all features...
Why it couldn't be kept simple? It's just too much of "all in one" to my liking.

What I'd like to see:
- simple and clean (minimalistic) UI purely focusing on the related functionality - at least as an option
- ability to switch of all those additional floating windows such as monitors/weather tools
- and I'd actually like to see a separate tiny app with just the Cleaner tool functionality, perhaps combined with the Software Uninstall part at maximum

In the last couple years a number of Mac utilities have emerged from developers who are relatively new to the platform. Long-time Mac users (I've been one for 20 years) rightly seem to greet these newcomers with a healthy dose of skepticism... especially the ones who are not familiar with what I'd call "proper Mac etiquette" (annoying marketing tactics, astroturfing [posting fake reviews], etc.) or for whom English is not their native language.

I've decided to try them out myself and see how they stack up against platform stalwarts like Cocktail and OnyX.

Magican is, in a word, good. It's far from perfect, but it's one of the more promising of these newer utilities to emerge.

Playing heavily in Magican's favor is the fact that it is, truly, free. It's not free for a limited time, or free if you want to use just a limited featureset... it's free-free. I can't even find a way to give them money if I wanted to, and the optional modules they provide via the Toolbox feature are also free. Perhaps there is a plan to charge for Magican down the road when it's more robust and polished, but at the moment it's completely free, like OnyX.

Magican's interface is both a strength and a weakness. Some UI elements are unconventional, like overlaying "helpful" text that points out features of the app, but that you must click an X to dismiss. I also couldn't understand why the app had seemingly become unresponsive to my clicks until I discovered the culprit was the weather status at the top of the window, which was prompting me to confirm my location as Austin TX, and prevented any other UI elements from being active until I did so. A conventional dialog box would be a better implementation for this. If you're like me, you also probably are wondering why the weather is even in a utility like this... not that it detracts from anything, it just seems a bit unrelated.

The Cleaner tools comprise the bulk of Magican's features. There's nothing groundbreaking here (duplicate remover, logs & cache cleaner, languages/binaries remover, etc.) but the implementation is surprisingly good. Want to search for duplicates in a specific folder? Just drag that folder over. Magican also very clearly shows file and folder sizes for every tool, like Logs & Caches, which is an improvement over Cocktail (which can do the same tasks, but doesn't display file sizes).

The Security tool is for monitoring trojans, apparently. Like 99.99% of Mac users (and hopefully 100% of seasoned Mac users), I've never encountered a trojan in the wild so this feature is more FUD to me than anything else, but there are plenty of people who just feel more comfortable knowing a utility is looking over their shoulder at every file that enteres their Mac... so assuming it works, I can see the value to some users (Magican and its daemon didn't consume very many system resources in my testing).

The Stats feature compiles data from Activity Monitor for the most part, but Magican sports a small, elegant floating window where you can quickly see what's going on (including, naturally, your local weather). This floating window is both useful and quite well presented. Unfortunately, it requires Magican to be running... it would be more useful as its own background process.

The Software feature includes "Updates", which is basically useless and scrapes what your Mac App Store app is showing (so it's not checking any non-MAS apps), and it can't download or install from Magican, it just loads up the Mac App Store app for you. I didn't thoroughly test the Uninstaller so I can't comment on how it compares to others like App Delete or iTrash (both of which cost money and are regarded as the best of their kind).

The ToolBox has three optional modules at present that you can download and install within the app; these are actually just separate apps (you can find them on MacUpdate). Two are document and file managers and at present seem to be quite lacking... I'm not sure I'd ever use either. The third reminds you to take periodic breaks from the computer (like MacBreakZ). Again, nothing new or groundbreaking, but not bad given that it's free.

With an improved interface and some bug fixes (if I click a sidebar item with my trackpad's button, it often just selects the item above whatever was selected at the time [bizarre], although if I tap the trackpad to click, it works fine), Magican could have a long future ahead of itself. OnyX is the best tool to compare it to since OnyX is also free, but OnyX is much more of a "Pro" tool... meaning power users will likely prefer its basic interface and expanded feature set, but newer users will feel more comfortable with Magican (I have set many casual Mac-using friends up with OnyX and explained it to them, only for them to declare to me months later that they never use it because they don't understand how it works, are overwhelmed by all the features and jargon, and are afraid of screwing something up).