15 Tips You Have To Learn For Slow Mac To Come Around

When we talk about performance level, Mac is generally reliable. But everything has exceptions. If your Mac is outmoded or overloaded, then maybe it works not so smoothly. If you feel your Mac is getting slower and slower, check out these 15 Tips, and maybe one of them could help you.

1. Check if the problem could be solved with one click

CleanMyMac 3 is a multi-in-one application that you can use to clean and accelerate your Mac. With this application, you can perform the actions such as removing useless files, cleaning system caches, and deleting large applications and files etc. So most often you find yourself Mac becomes slow, the first step we could do is to consider if it should be addressed by installing CleanMyMac 3, and see if its cleaning function can solve the problem of velocity response of the device.

1. Spot the initiator of evil

If you don’t want to use CleanMyMac, while you feel like testing your hands-on skills, so open the system Activity Monitor, which is the task manager of Mac, showing all currently running applications and processes and the resources they are using.

When you open the application, click on the CPU tag to sort the processes that occupy a lot of CPU processing capacity. If you find an application consuming CPU, double-click it and exit the application. Perhaps you can also consider uninstalling the application or looking for a lightweight alternative.

Exit an application that consumes a large number of resources should provide a short break for your slow Mac.

3. Reduce transparency and animation effects

Some handoff animation and transparency settings may slow down the speed of outdated Macs that use integrated Intel GPU. Reducing these effects could help improve performance of Mac.

Approach: enter System Preferences – Auxiliary Function – Display – Reduce Transparency or Decrease Dynamic Effect.

4. Disable FileVault Disk Encryption

If the system you are using is OSX Yosemite or higher versions, FileVault disk encryption is open by default. This is a great feature that encrypts your entire drive, and even if your Mac is stolen, the data won’t be stolen by anyone else. No one can change your Mac password or access to your files. But the process of encryption also takes up a lot of resources. If this function is enabled, the Mac’s startup or login process speed may be affected. If you have a problem like this, open the System Preferences, go to Security and Privacy, and then click to close FireVault.

4. Disable login items

Some users may try various small applications and utilities to help them better use the Mac. However, you may forget that these applications start and run in the background. It’s also a good idea to block automatic start of large applications; otherwise they slow down the startup process and affect your subsequent tasks.

Approach: enter the System Preferences – Users and Groups, enter your current account and select the login item, then select the applications that you don’t want to start on startup.

6. Disable Spotlight Index

The Spotlight search may reorganize your entire file system. If so, some users of outdated Mac may suffer from a headache, because they might not have many resources for the tasks they want to accomplish.

There is a way to disable the Spotlight index by using terminal instructions. Open the terminal and paste the following command:

sudo launchctl unload -w

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Then enter your password.

To re-enable Spotlight index, please enter the following command in the terminal:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

7. Disable Photo Index

The macOS Sierra Photo App has facial recognition feature. It’s worth mentioning that all facial recognition processes happen on the device. This is a great feature, but its indexing activities in the background can also have an impact on Mac performance.

Firstly, enter the photo application and exit. But this may not stop the background scanning process. So open the Activity Monitor and search for “photo” related processes, then exit, which is a step that should be noted.

8. Release space

Getting rid of large files, especially when your startup disk is full, is surely a great help. If your device is running macOS Sierra, click the Apple icon, select About My Mac, and then select “manage” from the storage space Tab, which will open up Sierra’s new storage management tool. Users can view in different ways using the sidebar, thus you can get some space. Try to remove applications and files that take up a lot of space.

If your device is not running the macOS Sierra system, use Disk Inventory X to find and delete large files.

9. Reset SMC

Resetting SMC is a solution to many systems related problems. This may help you organize your startup applications and processes and help you achieve performance improvements.

Approach:

1. close MacBook
2. Connect the MacBook to power supply, and make sure that it is charging

• Press and hold Shift + Control + Option and press on the power button at the same time, after a while loose the keys and Mac will gain a normal start, and SMC will be reset.

10. Uninstall Flash

I believe many of you are aware of the problem of Flash, and Chrome and Safari have already blocked it by default. But you may have installed Flash which could run in the background, and it starts every time you visit a web page that automatically broadcasts Flash video. Use the AppCleaner to find out and delete all the contents associated with Flash installation.

11. Keep an eye on kernel-task

If you enter into the Activity Monitor, you’ll find that “kernel tasks” take up most of the Mac’s process, and you may have an issue that we can’t actually exit these processes. That’s because these processes are basically related to the operating system.

So try the Tips we’ve mentioned above, such as restart your Mac and restart the SMC, uninstall Flash (this seems to have solved the problems of some users), and try to recall if you have recently installed some unreliable third-party soft-wares, for example, a printer driver application, then you can try to remove these things, to see if it solves the problem.

12. Use Safari

If you are using Chrome as your default browser, consider switching to Safari. Safari is a great modern browser, more importantly, it has less resource consumption than Chrome.

13. Install SSD

If you’re using an old, non-Retina MacBook, you’re probably using an ordinary hard drive, there is one thing you could do, replace your hard drive with SSD. The process is not so difficult, and if you don’t believe in yourself, go outside and ask the professionals for a replacement.

14. Reset, reinstall

Formatting your entire disk and reinstalling the macOS can also solve most of the problems.

15. Or you can buy a new one

The final approach is to “Let it GO”. If your Mac is really outmoded, there seems no way to pick up speed except to buy a new one.