Is Mac running slow? Speed up Mac with these easy fixes: Mac’s are fantastic machines designed for pure productivity. We can’t imagine a slow running mac. It is like a sports car with an old engine. Many people feel Mac won’t slow down. It is a myth and they will go slow down over time.
Mac’s are solidly build machines designed for the long run. If your Mac is running slow, then we have fantastic tips to boost the Mac performance again like a new one. What are you waiting for? Jump into the article and unleash the hidden Mac performance.
Is Mac running slow? Speed up Mac with these easy fixes
1. Upgrade macOS regularly
Latest OS updates keep your system protected as well as bug-free. For older Mac’s the new software updates is a boon to fix the bugs which are causing slow performance issues. They release patches for performance bugs which are causing the slowdown, lags and other issues.
These patches increase the speed of your Mac by doing optimization of process and processor. Also, you will be able to experience new features as well which are added in the updates.
2. Uninstall Antivirus
Thanks to the system integrity protection (SIP) which is actively blocking the malware and virus attacks on Mac. This is the reason why Mac’s are not easily prone to attacks and they never let damage your important data.
Due to the tight protection Apple to your data, you don’t need any Antivirus application on Mac. Antivirus apps consume more RAM due to they actively search for vulnerabilities. Due to the continuous running in the background, they strive for data and as well as consumes system resources. If your Mac is slowing down then uninstall the antivirus running in the background to make your system free. Yes, you can trust Apple Gatekeeper for your Mac protection and security.
3. Kill unwanted background processes
Every Mac comes with a limited GB of RAM. Some old Mac’s are running on 4GB of RAM and the latest ones are coming with 8GB and more depending on the model. If you are using many programs it will automatically slowdowns the performance of your Mac.
You can use the Activity Monitor to check which app is consuming the memory at most. Upon your interest in using the resource-hungry app, you can remove it from Mac to improve performance.
4. Remove unwanted Desktop stuff
It is a great feeling when you have decluttered unwanted stuff from your Mac. It is like simplifying your life and making minimalistic feel on the screen you regularly watch. The less cluttered screen is more attractive and it saves the loading time of the Mac when it boots up.
When you have less desktop clutter, you can easily use the RAM on other things. When you open a desktop icon the macOS needs to render it separately, means it consumes system resources in the background.
5. Free up Hard Disk space
A fully occupied hard drive is a nightmare for both data saving and as well as it hogs the performance. In many ways, a fully loaded hard drive creates a lot of problems in overall Mac performance.
Empty the hard disk space by deleting unwanted files and folders. Also, apps consume some hard disk space ranging from few MB’s to GB’s. Uninstall the unwanted apps which are consuming a lot of space on your Mac hard drive.
Move multimedia files like movies, music which usually consumes a lot of space than the regular files and documents. Maintain an external hard drive for these kinds of stuff and give some free space to your Mac hard disk and check the performance difference.
6. Turn Off Visual Effects
Fancy looking visual effects like animations, themes, and wallpapers look good but they will eat up most of your Mac system resource. If you want performance more than the looks then minimize the usage of visual effect on Mac. Change the Dock settings in System Preferences to reduce the visual effect on Mac.
- Go to System Preferences > Dock.
- Uncheck the following items: Animate opening applications, Automatically hide and show the Dock.
- Click on Minimize windows using and change Genie effect to Scale effect.
7. Keep Your Apps Up to Date
App developers regularly push the latest updates of their apps. These updates will have bug, improvement, and performance fixes. If your system is performing sluggish, then update all the apps installed from the App Store to check the difference. Outdated apps cause problems by incompatibility issues with the latest macOS update. When the OS changes, then the apps also needs to change to communicate with each other.
Updates always improve performance and security. If the previous update has bugs, then updating to the latest version will solve the problem.
8. Remove startup Items
Too much of startup items can cause slow down of your Mac. The increase in the number of startup items during the boot time will take more time to load the system and ultimately you can experience the sluggish performance. To boot Mac faster, uncheck the list of unwanted apps which starting with Mac startup.
- Open System Preferences > Users & Groups and select your account name on the left sidebar.
- Click Login Items.
- Select the items you no longer wish to load at startup.
- Disable by clicking on the (–) minus button.
9. Remove Browser Add-ons
The modern browsers support additional features in the form of extensions. These little extensions will add additional features to the browser which are not available by default. We all know Chrome is a resource-hungry browser. If you are using Chrome with plenty of extensions then you definitely feel the slowest performance from the Mac. Don’t worry, you can solve this issue by removing unwanted extensions.
10. Delete unwanted Widgets
Widgets in the notification panel consume some amount of system resource which can be used to improve the overall performance. You can uninstall the widgets by following the below procedure.
- Open the Notification Center by clicking the button at the top-right corner of the screen.
- Go to the Today tab.
- Click Edit at the bottom of the Notification Center.
- Click the red delete button to remove any widgets that are unnecessary.
Conclusion
These are the best tips to free up your Mac from the limited performance. Each step will improve the performance and you will see a noticeable improvement when you complete all the steps.
If you are still facing the issue even after applying all steps then do a complete reinstallation of macOS. Or you can reset Mac to restore it to the factory settings. Make sure to have a complete backup before going to reset or install the Mac.