Macs perform excellently when they are new. However, they start to run slower over time and need timely maintenance. If your Mac is running slow, there are some quick tips that you can follow to improve its performance and make it more productive. Let’s elaborate on some of the easy ways to speed up your Mac at no additional costs.
Clean up Your System Files
You need to declutter your Mac regularly to keep it clean so that you have enough disk space. Removing unnecessary files, junk data, and temporary trash will help clean the disk space. Ensure to clean up your storage drive every month or two to continue experiencing the high performance.
Remove Temporary Junk
Deleting junk, including DNS Cache, will flush out the IP addresses, along with other DNS records that your system is holding for quite a long time.
It is recommended to clear dns cache mac creates on a regular basis to prevent DNS spoofing, keeping your search behavior private, or if you are having trouble browsing websites.
Kill Resource-Hungry Processes
Listen to your gut instinct, and if you feel that your Mac is slower than usual and gets hot strangely, a resource-hungry app might be the culprit. In this case, you need to identify the processes that are consuming a lot of system resources and then disable or remove them from your system.
Manage Start-up Apps
If your Mac is taking longer to boot up, you need to disable some startup programs. The startup programs activate automatically each time you power on your Mac. These programs consume system resources and deviate its performance to a greater extent.
Sort Out iCloud Syncs
You might be suffering slowdowns because of iCloud that you use to sync files across multiple screens. If iCloud syncs in the background are responsible for the cause, the quick tip is that you should avoid storing large volume documents on the desktop.
Move Photos to External Disk
With the advent of smartphones, we all are becoming used to capture images of our day-to-day activities. If you have a look at your data and storage, you will realize that your photos occupy most of the disk space. Clean your Mac by moving these photos and other multimedia to external storage media.
Empty Trash Bin & Downloads
Emptying the trash is the most common and proven way to clean up the storage space. While working on a Mac, we download many apps, some of which become outdated or unnecessary over time.
When you empty your Mac’s trash bin, do not forget to remove unwanted programs from the downloads folder.
Update macOS and Programs
Software updates usually depend on the version of macOS running on your system. You need to update your macOS and the apps regularly, whether your Mac is a refurbished system or first-hand. Keep track of the recent updates available so that your system stays healthy and up-to-date at all times.
Reset SMC and PRAM Frequently
Resetting the PRAM (Parameter Random Access Memory) and SMC (System Management Controller) will solve a majority of issues with your Mac system. Even if you’re experiencing overheating issues, sluggish boot-ups, or Bluetooth connection problems, resetting the PRAM and SMC will fix them all.
Empty Safari Cache
Safari, the Apple browser, gets bunged with data and needs a cleanup. Emptying Safari cache regularly will give you a better web browsing experience. As the sites store your personal data and user behavior, it’s important that you clear your Safari cache and cookies frequently.
Perform First-Aid Check
On installing an app, you might have noticed other tools that come as part of the download. The permissions that tell macOS what users can do with the app get changed over time, resulting in Mac crashing, lagging, and freezing. You need to reinstall old programs to get rid of such issues.
Turn Off Visual Elements
Though visual effects make your system and apps look pretty, they make it slower. You need to turn off some of the visualization features to improve the performance of your system. Disabling the visual effect will not only elevate your system’s performance but make it start effortlessly.
Delete Browser Add-ons
Browsers are simply complicated, and they make your Mac even more complex when overloaded with extensions and add-ons. The browser add-ons sometimes lead to slow speed and interrupt your browsing experience significantly.
Re-index Spotlight
If you’ve updated your Mac recently, you might be facing slow performance, which happens due to Spotlight reindexing.
Though reindexing takes a few hours, it gets stuck sometimes, causing system delays and privacy concerns. On successful indexing, your system will start performing normally.
Run Maintenance Scripts
Last but not least, run maintenance scripts to boost your Mac system. Though Mac itself runs the maintenance scripts on a regular basis, you can force run them on facing performance issues. This is one of the most helpful yet less known methods to speed up Mac’s performance.
