6 tips to improve the performance of a slow Mac computer
Keep the hard drive with maximum free space
It may seem like a bit of a strange tip, but keeping your hard drive with a good amount of free space is important. When the RAM is full, the hard drive is used to store certain temporary data. Therefore, having a hard drive that is too full can be detrimental to the performance of your Mac.
Deleting all the files that we don’t need, moving content to external hard drives or uninstalling programs that we don’t usually need can be a great idea to save disk space.
Nor it is worth having some software like CleanMyMac X . Thanks to this software we can review all the files on our hard drive and remove without fear those that we do not use regularly, parts of programs that we do not need (such as, for example, languages that we do not know or do not use) or uninstall applications correctly, completely removing all its trace from the computer’s operating system.
Another good option is Gemini2 . This program analyzes the entire storage system of the Mac in search of duplicate files and greatly facilitates the task of eliminating them. Thanks to its way of working, it is able to locate repeated photos stored in different locations, duplicate songs, movies or videos that we have several times, etc, etc … Its use is simple and if we are not too careful when organizing our files it can help us recover several gigs of storage easily, with the performance improvement that this implies.
Uninstall apps correctly
It has always been said that uninstalling applications on a Mac is as simple as dragging its icon to the trash. This is only a half truth, since although they are uninstalled this way, we do not eliminate all their traces in the system.
Virtually any software that we use on our Mac stores files outside of the Applications folder (configuration files, cache and others). For this reason, when dragging the icon to the trash, we will not be eliminating all its trace from the system.
To achieve this in full we have two options:
- Go through the system folders for all the traces you have left behind.
- Opt for some uninstaller software.
Of course, the second most logical option is, since going through all the system folders by hand is sheer madness. If we opt for it, one of the best apps in this sense is CleanMyMac , an all-rounder to improve the performance of a Mac .
Review running processes
It is possible that on certain occasions we notice that our Mac works slower than it should. Normally this happens when an application has been running in the background and due to some error is consuming too many resources.
To check this we have to resort to the Activity Monitor (located in Applications – Utilities ). Thanks to this tool we can see the consumption of CPU, RAM and other information of all the processes that are running on our Mac.
Surely we will not be able to identify some of these processes by the name that appears (we can always rely on Google to find out what each one of them does by doing a search by name), but others will and if we see any that should not be running we can stop it directly from the Monitor so that it stops consuming the precious resources of the computer.
Remove apps from login
Some applications take the liberty of automatically adding themselves to the list of software to run when you log on to your computer. Sometimes we want this to happen, but most of the time this does not interest us in the least.
To see what apps we have at the start of our user account we must go to System Preferences – Users and groups , and then click on the Startup tab. If in this list we find an application that we are not really interested in running every time we log in with our user, we must remove it from the list. To do this we must start by checking the box next to it and then clicking on the minus button (-) that we find below. In this way, it will only run when we want it to and it will help us free up computer resources , and with it the general performance of the Mac.
Clear the cache of browsers, OS and other applications
This point is closely related to the first one we have discussed, since the cache takes up disk space and we do not always need it.
By cleaning the cache memory of browsers, applications or OS X itself, we will be recovering a very valuable disk space and surely we will not notice a drop in fluidity in the applications from which we eliminate the cache, since much of the information deleted will be of things that we no longer use or we do very occasionally, so they will need to be updated every time.
There are different ways to delete cache and each application or software requires its own (in browsers we find the option in the menus, although in the case of other apps and the operating system it is necessary to empty certain folders). Therefore, to do this in a very simple, fast and visual way, we turn, once again, to CleanMyMac , the software that we previously recommended.
Update your Mac hardware
That’s right, if our Mac is a few years old and we have been updating the operating system and the software that we use in our day to day life, perhaps the time has come to update the hardware .
In current Macs this is not always possible, since Apple has made sure that only they can do it, at least in a simple way, but in most of past generations they can. Increasing the capacity of the RAM memory or installing an SSD memory instead of the mechanical hard drive, can be a huge performance improvement at a very low price and also speed up the Mac to give it a couple of more years of useful life.
What other tips would you add?
Here are our tips for improving or maintaining the performance of a Mac computer and preventing it from slowing down over time. Surely you know others or you carry out a task that goes well for you.Would you tell us about it to improve this list?
