If you Mac is running slowly, there are a number of potential causes and subsequent solutions. It is likely down to a number of issues, which we’ll look over in this article.
If you’ve had your Mac for more than a couple of years, you might be tempted to splash out on the latest model. Luckily, though, the chance are you don’t need to part with your cash just yet. Here are some quick fixes that you can do in under an hour to get your Mac running smoothly again.
Make sure you have enough free space
Your first port of call should be to check your startup disk and see if there is enough free space. As well as ruining the performance of your Mac, a lack of disk space can also cause your applications to crash. You Mac needs to be able to read and write what are known as swap files between your RAM and startup disk, and having some space free at all times will help with this. The Disk Utility doesn’t include a defrag option, and for good reason; macOS prevents files from becoming fragmented. However, for this to work correctly, you need around 10% of your disk space free. You drive will contain lots of files that you probably don’t need. A good place to start would be to sort files by size and delete as appropriate. Clicking the Apple logo at the top left of your screen and selecting ‘About This Mac’ will give you a good idea of how much space you have left. If you have a large number of files that you don’t want to delete, consider moving some to an external hard drive, or if you want to access them frequently, to iCloud or another cloud storage service.
Close/delete unnecessary apps
Many applications stay running in the background on your Mac, draining your system even when you’re not using them. Luckily, you can speed up your Mac and extend its battery life by closing apps that you don’t need open. Using Activity Monitor, a utility included with all Macs that is somewhat similar to Windows’ Task Manager, you can understand what’s happening in the background. You can find Activity Monitor by going to Finder>Go>Utilities, and selecting Activity Monitor. You’ll be able to find the apps that are using the most CPU percentage, memory, energy and disk space, and can close them accordingly. Likewise, any apps that you no longer us should be permanently removed. Software like CleanMyMac X can identify which apps are taking up the most hard disk space and when they were last used, and can delete them for you.
Empty your trash/clear your downloads
This might sound obvious, but you should be emptying your Trash and clearing your Downloads regularly. You can turn on the Empty Trash Automatically feature by clicking the Apple logo in the menu bar and then clicking About this Mac>Storage>Manage>Turn on Empty Trash Automatically. This will automatically empty your Trash every 30 days, and has the potential to free up a lot of space.
