If your Mac has slowed down over the years, it's probably time to give it some maintenance and care. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get better speed performance when it comes to your iMac or MacBook. Instead, we've put together a list of things you can try to speed up your Mac without having to replace it.
Close power-hungry programs
One of the easiest things you can do to improve the performance of your iMac or MacBook is to close any apps or programs you're not using. Your Mac may be devoting memory and CPU power to programs you are not actively using. This should free up space and workload from unwanted performance stealing programs.
There is also something called Activity Monitor that shows all the processes happening on your Mac. You can open Activity Monitor in System Preferences > Utilities or search and open it by pressing Command + Spacebar. Some apps and programs use more power and resources than others. Activity Monitor provides an overview of the usage levels of each program you currently have open, based on CPU, memory, energy, disk and network.
Select the CPU tab and you can see how much CPU power each app or program is using. Close the programs you are not using, especially if they use a lot of CPU power. Activity Monitor is a useful tool for checking the usage levels of your apps and programs.
Clean up your startup
Those annoying apps and programs that start every time you boot your system could be the culprits behind your slow speeds. Open System Preferences and click 'Users & Groups'. There, select the 'Login Items' tab to see which apps and programs start when you turn on your iMac or MacBook. Select the program you don't want to start at startup and click the minus sign at the bottom of the list to remove it.
iCloud sync
Syncing your files and photos with iCloud across multiple desktops and devices can also slow down your Mac. When using iCloud, try to avoid keeping large files and documents on your desktop for safekeeping. By saving only the documents and files you need, everything will be faster and you'll spend less time waiting for all your files to sync.
This includes syncing your photos to iCloud. If your Mac is too busy syncing all your photos to all your devices and vice versa, you can always turn off iCloud Photos on your device to keep your Mac from working too hard and slowing down its performance.
Free up storage space
It's no surprise that your Mac is so slow when you run out of storage space when your storage capacity is almost full. Photos, videos and music are the largest files that take up a lot of space.
Many people think that buying iCloud will be the solution for low storage space, but this is not the case. If you delete your files from your Mac after backing them up to iCloud, you delete them from all your devices. If you already have iCloud and it syncs across all your devices, there are probably a lot of files and documents on your Mac taking up storage space. For example, photos you took from your iPhone and synced to iCloud remain on your Mac and take up storage space.
It might be better to disable iCloud Photo Sync on your Mac. There are other services you can use to backup all your files and documents to the cloud so they can be deleted from your computer. Services like DropBox and Google Drive have the same ability to backup your files, like photos, to the cloud without having to save them to your Mac to make them accessible.
Your music downloads can also take up a lot of storage space on your Mac. You can save storage space by transferring your music to an external hard drive to free up space on your computer. You can also pay for streaming services like Apple Music, which has a feature that lets you move all your music to the cloud so you can delete it from your Mac and access it on all your devices. You also get the benefits of streaming Apple Music to listen to any song or artist without having to download any of the songs to your Mac if you have access to data or Wi-Fi.
Delete old and unused files, empty the container
A quick and easy way to free up storage space and speed up your Mac is to delete old and unused files and empty your Trash. It's a good idea to check your Mac every now and then for old and unused files and documents. Storing them locally when not in use will only take up storage space and slow down your Mac's performance.
Don't forget to delete items from the Downloads folder. Open Finder and go to the Downloads folder to delete items from your Trash. The Downloads folder is often overlooked and contains many documents and files that you may have forgotten.
Back up your old files and documents to an external hard drive and delete them from your Mac. If you no longer need them, you can always delete them from your computer. Don't forget to empty your trash after you delete it. Your deleted files and documents will still take up storage space in your Recycle Bin if you don't empty the Recycle Bin.
You can set your system preferences to empty your container regularly so you don't have to do this manually. Click the Apple logo in the menu bar, select About This Mac, click Storage, then click Manage. From there you can set your trash to be deleted automatically, which happens every 30 days.
Reduce or disable images
Apple computers can usually run MacOS without any problems, but sometimes they can work too hard to maintain performance. Limiting or disabling graphics can help speed up your Mac.
Some people prefer to disable their Dock to avoid slowdowns. To do this, click System Preferences, Dock and uncheck the following boxes:
- Magnification
- Animate the opening application
- Hide and show the dock automatically
You can also click 'Minimize windows using' and change the Genie effect to Scaler effect.
The last straw
If all else fails, the last thing you can try is to reset your entire Mac and cleanly reinstall the operating system. This should be considered a last resort as you will need to completely erase your entire startup drive. It will erase all files in your system and user folders that have built up over the years.
We recommend that you backup all your important files, documents, pictures, music, and anything else you might need after installing your operating system. Ultimately, if the worst comes to the worst and your Mac has no improvements, it might be time to find a replacement.
#KingstonIsWithYou
