How to Speed Up your Mac
Although Macs are considered far more stable and efficient than other computers, with time even they can start experiencing slowdowns, freezes and other hiccups. There are various tweaks and tips that could help users speed up their Mac computers and bring them closer to the performance they once had.
- Locate resource-intensive processes
One potential cause that could explain why your Mac is suddenly working at a snail's pace is resource-hungry apps taking up a significant portion of the computer's output. To identify such applications, you can use the handy Activity Monitor, a built-in macOS tool. To reach it, you can either use Spotlight to search for Activity Monitor directly or launch it from the 'Utilities' subfolder inside the Applications folder.
Inside the Activity Monitor window, users can navigate through several options displaying the currently active processes according to their CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network usage. For Macs that run slow, pay special attention to the CPU and Memory sections. Note the applications that take the highest percentage and consider shutting them down.
- Clean up the startup items
If your Mac device is taking longer to boot than before considerably, it might be struggling to load all of the applications included in its startup items. To check what programs are set to open automatically whenever the system starts currently, go to 'System Preferences' and click on 'Users & Groups.' Now, click on your User name. Select the 'Login Items' section and inspect the list of applications. Choose any that you don't need at the very moment the system starts particularly and remove them by clicking the minus ('-') button below.
- Disable visual effects
While having visual effects turned on could indeed be pleasant to look at, you might wish to disable at least some elements to boost the speed of your Mac. To do so, start by going to 'System Preferences' and opening 'Dock & Menu Bar.' We recommend unchecking the following options:
- Animate opening applications
- Hide and show the Dock automatically
In addition, change the 'Minimise windows using' setting from 'Genie' to 'Scale' from the drop-down menu.
- Delete browser add-ons
Browser add-ons also could affect the speed of your Mac system. It is not that uncommon for users to download and install add-on upon add-on while forgetting to clean any that are no longer relevant. Removing unnecessary add-ons and extensions, ones that may no longer be compatible with the current version of your browser, especially, could have lead to noticeably faster browser responses. Also, if you do not have a vast amount of available memory, consider limiting the number of tabs that you have open at any given moment. To delete extension from three of the most popular browser, follow the instructions outlined below:
For Chrome: Click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner. Select 'More tools' and then 'Extensions.'
For Safari: Go to the top Menu and select 'Safari extensions.'
For Firefox: Click the hamburger icon in the top right and then choose 'Add-ons.'