How to Speed Up Your Mac Safely and Effectively?

Do you remember the time when you first used your Mac? How swiftly it ran programs? How error-free was it? Sadly now, all you can think about is, how to make my Mac work faster? Macs are designed to work quickly and seamlessly, and this is probably the reason why you wanted to own one. However, they are still machines and they have their own weaknesses. Over time, they will become laggy. Fortunately, you can forget about buying a new Mac because there are ways on how to speed up Mac.

What’s Slowing Down Your Mac?

Before we give you tips to help you speed up your Mac, we think it best that you know why Macs slow down so you can prevent it from doing so. There are several things that can slow down a Mac. One of the most common reasons concerns your machine’s disk running full. Over the years, you may have accumulated thousands of different types of files, small and large files that when combined occupy too much storage space, from documents to photos down to program files and logs.

Another reason might be an outdated operating system. If you have an old version of the MacOS and you’re running relatively new programs, there may be some compatibility issues that hinder your computer to work efficiently. Furthermore, there may be too many apps running, at the same time, in the background without you knowing, especially if you have the habit of not shutting down your Mac completely. It’s also possible that there are a number of apps that run automatically when you start your Mac, slowing down in the process.

Now that you have an idea on why Macs slow, check these tips and tricks to help you run your Mac at a faster pace:

Monitor Activities

When your Mac slows down, take the time to find resource-hungry programs that are running. Luckily, Mac has a built-in tool, the Activity Monitor, which you can check to monitor your Mac’s five main resources – the CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network.

To launch the Activity Monitor, simply open it from the Utilities folder, which can be found in the Applications folder. You can also use the Spotlight to search for the tool.

If your Mac is running slower than usual, you need to pay close attention to the CPU. You will see the programs and processes that use the majority of the CPU’s power. Some of these processes can and needs to be stopped, while there are programs that need to run for your Mac to run effectively, so always be careful when choosing which programs you need to abort. An additional tip, to close an app, just select the name of the app and then click X at the left-hand corner of the Activity Monitor dialogue box.

By the way, you can also use third-party tools like Mac repair app. These tools or software are designed to check, routinely or manually, your Mac for apps, programs, and processes that slows down your unit. It provides recommendations and solutions to your problems.

Manage Startup Items

There are apps or programs on your Mac that are set to automatically run upon startup. Regardless whether you, consciously, agreed to run them or not. The bottom line is that you need to clean up your Mac’s startup queue, mainly because your Mac might take too much time and energy to run all of the apps right after boot up, so when you launch another set of programs they eventually add stress to your unit. To manage your startup items, follow these steps:

• Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups.
• Click on your Username.
• Click on Login Items.
• Select a program that you don’t need to run on startup and then click on [-].
• Repeat the last step for other programs.

Turn Off Visual Effects

Another way to boost your Mac’s speed is to turn off the visual effects. If you’re Mac is already running slow the truth is you can’t fully enjoy the effects, anyway. Worse, they contribute to your Mac’s slow-down. To turn off the visual effects, follow these steps:

• Go to System Preferences > Dock.
• Un-tick Minimize windows into application icon, Animate opening applications, and Automatically hide and show the Dock.
• Leave Show indicators for open applications
• Next, click on Minimize windows using: then choose Scale effect.

Clean Up Your Hard Drive

There could be tons of unnecessary and obsolete files occupying your Mac’s hard drive. When your computer’s memory is running low, it starts to slow down because there is not enough room needed to run certain programs and open files.

To clean up your hard drive, simply go to the specific folders and delete unnecessary files like documents, photos, video, and audio files. You also need to check the caches, logs, and widgets you no longer use and need.

After you’re done deleting files, you make sure to empty the Trash. Deleted files go to the Trash folder, so essentially, they are still within your Mac unit’s drive, thus the need to completely get rid of it.

Uninstall Unnecessary Applications

Another proven and tested method to improve your Mac’s speed is to uninstall any app or program that you don’t use and need. However, uninstalling apps is not as easy as moving a file to the Trash. If you attempt to do just that, gigabytes-worth of junk files will be left behind, resulting to slowing down of your Mac.

To completely remove a program from your Mac, you need to get rid of all the files associated with it. These files are located in different folders inside the Applications folder. Below is a list of files that you need to remove and where they can be found:

• Binary and dock icons – /Applications/
• Application support files – ~/Library/Application
• Support caches – /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches
• Plugins – ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/
• Library – ~/Library/
• App preferences – ~/Library/Preferences/
• Crashes – ~/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/
• App saved states – ~/Library/Saved Application State/

Once you’re inside these folders, select the files or folders dedicated to the program or the app that you wish to uninstall. Unfortunately, even if you do this, there are still files that are left behind, which can only be deleted with the help of a Mac-cleaning tool.

Keep Your Mac Updated

To keep Mac users happy, Apple sees to it that they develop updates that improve Mac’s performance and fix certain bugs and errors. As much as possible, always update your Mac whenever an update is available. To check if you have the latest OS version for your device, simply click on the Apple icon at the top left corner of your screen, then click on About This Mac. Click on Software Update to check if an update is available.

Install And Run A Mac Cleaner

While the mac tips and tricks above can definitely help your Mac run faster, some of them take a lot of your precious time, which you may not have in the first place. If you want to speed up your Mac in the quickest and safest way possible, a Mac cleaner tool like Outbyte macAries is your best option. These cleaning tools are built to assess every aspect of your Mac to investigate which programs, processes, and files are affecting your unit’s performance. Furthermore, a Mac-cleaning tool can help you get rid of any junk files left by programs you uninstalled.