Once you buy a Mac, you may think of it as a monster machine that will run like an Olympic champion and will perform millions of tasks per second. While this might be true for the first months of its operation, incorrect data management, the use of fancy visuals, and piling outdated programs and apps can cause severe pressure on your Mac’s productivity.
So, once you see that your Mac is letting you down in terms of speed and performance, it’s probably high time to give it a boost. Here is a brief guide for DIY Mac speed boosts that every concerned user can apply.
Reasons for Slow Mac Operation
Now, again, a couple of words about barriers to Mac’s lightning-fast work. They are most often as follows:
- Performance-draining background processes (that you might even not know about). Such processes run illicitly (as the name “background” suggests) and undermine your device’s CPU capacity. Viruses can also launch cumbersome background processes to drain your Mac, so be sure to check the register of processes for buggy, crashed, or suspicious processes.
- Visual effects of many websites and programs you use (even branded iOS apps) place a severe burden on your hardware and slow down many critical processes.
- Outdated programs are running hard on the OS because they may contain bugs and inefficiencies. The provider no longer supports them, so anything can happen (including a security breach). It’s better to uninstall or update such apps to keep your Mac up and running.
Steps to Boost Your Mac’s Performance
Now that we know the common reasons for Mac slowdowns, it’s time to proceed to practical solutions. Here is a list of steps that every user can take without turning to professionals.
Big Cleanup
We download too many files a day and quickly forget about them once they’re used. Once you remove some files, some crucial system space will be freed for better and quicker operation, and you’re sure to see sizeable improvements in the speed of your Mac’s running. But be sure to schedule cleanups regularly, at least once in six months, as redundant data and junk files have a habit of piling up quickly. So, a big cleanup won’t solve the performance problems forever.
Disable Energy-Consuming Processes
Some processes are too demanding, slowing down your CPU and causing irritating slowdowns. To identify these processes, you can visit the Utilities section or double-check the Activity Monitor. There, you will find the most energy-consuming processes by the CPU% they occupy. Double-check whether you need all of them and kills the processes that have become redundant.
Improve Startup Settings
If you feel that your Mac is loading for ages, it’s time to optimize the startup settings. This can be done in the System Preferences menu, where you can manage users and groups. If there are several Mac users, make sure to customize preferences only for your account. Delete icons that you don’t want to launch at startup, and your startup speed with quickly improve. Another location to check is the Library; it has LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents – lists of programs launching automatically at startup. Manage settings here to ensure that only the programs you need are activated; such changes will also give your gadget a productivity boost.
Update the System
System updates are needed to ensure that your apps are of the latest version and that there are no unused programs there. Check the unused apps in the Applications menu, where you can see the last date of each app’s opening. Be true to yourself – if you last opened the app more than a year ago, do you really need it?
Invest in RAM Upgrade
In a nutshell, RAM is the short-term memory of your Mac, and depending on its health and capacity, your daily performance will also vary. To improve it, you’ll need to conduct some memory upgrades so that the resulting volume of RAM is 4GB minimum.
