Mac Slowing Down? Here’s How to Speed It Up

It’s not unusual for Macs to start slowing down as they get a little older, especially because they typically don’t have large hard drives. Fortunately, a slow Mac doesn’t usually need to be replaced. You don’t even need to upgrade the hardware — not that you would be able to anyway.

You can get your Mac running like new again with just a little housecleaning. Often, all it takes is removing unused files and apps from your Mac to give it the processing power it needs. Run your disk cleanup tool, update your OS, and edit your login items to further boost your Mac’s performance.

Clean Up Your SSD

Your Mac’s solid state drive (SSD) gets slower as it gets fuller, so clearing off some of the data will improve its performance. Go to Apple logo>About this Mac>Storage to see how much space you have left on your hard drive. You can go to Storage to optimize your drive space.

Move your photos, text messages, and files to iCloud and delete them from your drive — this option will still allow you to keep “optimized,” lower-resolution copies of your photos on your Mac.

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You can also optimize storage on your Mac by automatically deleting TV shows and movies after you’ve watched them. Reputable Mac cleaner software, like Cleaner One Pro for Mac, can help you identify downloads, large files, and apps that you don’t use anymore, so you can remove them from your SSD.

Repair Your Disk Permissions

Once you’ve removed all the apps you no longer use, it’s time to repair the disk permissions for those you kept. Disk permissions are the part of a software that tells MacOS how the different files in the software package can be used.

These permissions can expire and become corrupted over time, and repairing the disk permissions cleans them up, updates them as necessary, and shuffles them back into the right place. Use your Mac’s Disk Utility tool to repair disk permissions.

Edit Your Login Items

Login items are programs that launch on startup. They can really slow down your PC’s bootup process, and they can eat up resources and continue to slow down your PC as you try to use it because they’ll keep running in the background.

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Go to System Preferences>Users & Groups>Login Items to see a list of apps that launch on startup. Highlight any apps that don’t need to launch on startup and click on the minus symbol at the bottom of the dialogue box to remove them from the list.

Update Your OS

With new versions of the macOS available for free, there’s really no excuse not to keep your OS up to date. New versions of the macOS will not only include important security patches, but they’ll also improve your Mac’s performance. Go to System Preferences>Software Update to look for updates and set your Mac to install updates automatically.

Ditch Resource-Hungry Apps

Many apps use a lot of processing power, and others will take up resources by launching on startup and running in the background. Search for the Activity Monitor in Spotlight and then use it to see which apps are taking up the most memory in terms of the amount of memory and CPU they’re using. Close resource-hungry apps to give your Mac back its processing power.

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If some of your apps, like Google Chrome, consistently use more than their fair share of resources — Google Chrome, in particular, is prone to opening lots of processes — you may want to switch to using less-ravenous apps instead.

Tidy Your Desktop

MacOS treats each of your desktop icons like its own window, and this means that each of your desktop icons places a small demand on your Mac’s processing power. This might not be much individually, but it adds up.

You don’t have to purge your desktop entirely to counteract this effect. Instead, you can consolidate desktop icons into folders.

Is Mac running slow? It’s not uncommon for a Mac to slow down as it gets a little older and its SSD fills up. With a little TLC, though, you can bring your Mac back to its former glory, and stop scrolling longingly through the Apple Store.