As much as Macs have a reputation for their long lifespans and high performance, as time goes by most will tend to slow down. Initially the difference in performance may not be all that noticeable, but eventually you may find that your apps take longer to open, your Mac boots up slower, or it seems to ‘lag’ a lot periodically.
While you may take those as signs that your Mac is getting too old, it is important to note that just because a Mac is slowing down does not mean that it needs to be replaced. In most cases if you can identify the reason why your Mac is running slow it should be possible to do something about it – effectively speeding it up again.
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To pull that off, you should first know the reasons why your Mac may be running slow:
• Insufficient drive space
If your hard drive is too full and has too little free space, your Mac will start to slow down dramatically. At an absolute minimum you should have at least 10 GB of free space at all times on your Mac — though more than that is recommended. Assuming your Mac has insufficient drive space, you may want to free up some space by cleaning out ‘junk files’, uninstalling unnecessary apps, emptying trash bins, and so on.
• Resource-hungry apps
Every app that is running is going to consume resources, both in terms of RAM and processing power. Some may even be running invisibly in the background, but will eat into your Mac’s resources nonetheless. While you could just close any apps that you aren’t using, the best thing to do is to launch the Activity Monitor so you can see a list of the processes that are running, and close any that aren’t needed and are taking up resources.
• Numerous Startup Items
Essentially ‘Startup Items’ are apps and processes that launch when you boot up your Mac, and could possibly make it boot up more slowly and may even be taking up resources. If you want to see a list of the Startup Items on your Mac go to ‘System Preferences’ then ‘Users & Groups’, and remove any that you don’t need.
• Not enough RAM
Older Macs in particular may not have enough RAM to support newer apps, and that can be troublesome. Fortunately that still doesn’t mean you have to replace your Mac, and instead you can opt to upgrade its RAM and install more. To do so you’ll have to purchase additional RAM and open up your Mac to install it — which may be tricky if you don’t know how.
• Visual effects
Another problem older Macs often face is that their performance is affected by some of OS X’s visual effects due to the resources that they can take up. As such if your Mac is slow you may want to disable any visual effects in the ‘Dock’ settings under ‘System Preferences’.
• Malware and viruses
Although Macs are far more resilient than PCs insofar as malware and viruses are concerned — they aren’t immune. It is always a good idea to periodically scan your Mac for viruses and malware, as if any are present they could significantly slow it down.
One easy way to start to speed up Mac is to enlist the help of Movavi Mac Cleaner. As you may surmise from its name, it will help you to clean any unnecessary junk files from your Mac’s hard drive, freeing up valuable space in the process and ensuring that isn’t causing your Mac to slow down.
Additionally Movavi Mac Cleaner has other helpful features that can help you to boost your Mac’s performance as well. With its help you can uninstall apps you don’t need, remove
unnecessary Startup Items, secure your Mac with an antivirus and firewall, optimise its memory, and more.
Suffice to say the features in Movavi Mac Cleaner are perfectly geared to help you ensure that your Mac is ship shape and performing under optimal conditions. Due to its intuitive nature it will just take you a few clicks to clean the junk from your Mac and use its other features to speed it up.
