Is your beloved hunk of Cupertino silicon underperforming? Wish your Mac had a little more zip? Then you'll love these tips on squeezing the most performance out of your MacOS computer!
The Basics (Freshman Year Level Tasks)
Reboot
No seriously; to quote my favorite IT alter ego, "Have you tried turning it off and then no again?" You'd be surprised how many nagging temporary issues go away after you restart. And if you're under the impression closing your laptop lid and then reopening it *is* rebooting, no. Save all your work, then click that fruit-shaped logo in the upper-left, and then click "Restart"
After your computer starts again, log in and see if the computer is back to its old vim and vigor. If so, congrats! You can probably go about your merry way. If not (or if you want to learn some more tricks) keep reading.
Upgrade Your OS
Let's just get it out there: there are some users who cannot or should not upgrade to the latest version of MacOS. But chances are those users are VERY few and far between. If you hardware supports the latest MacOS, then unless you have a REALLY good reason not to, install the latest version!Not only will you be getting the latest features, but you'll also be applying as many security fixes as possible. The internet is a terrible place filled with savage thieves and crooks - don't make their job any easier by using an old OS with known security problems.
To check for updates, click the Apple logo in the task bar, then select "About This Mac" and click the Software Update button in the window that pops up.
Quit Unused Applications
If your system runs fine when you first start, but slows down as the day goes on, you may have fallen into the Windows-convert sinkhole. I shudder to think of how many end-users I have supported who thought clicking the X in the title bar worked like they thought. Alas, it only closes the active window while leaving the application running. You want a full-bore QUIT with Command+Q here. Die, application, DIE!
Open "System Preferences" application and select Users & Groups. Click on your user account in the left pane, and then click the Login Items tab on the right. To remove an application from auto-start, select it from the list and click the minus-sign button at the bottom of the page.
Tame Auto-Start Applications
What's better than quitting an unused application to free up resources? Making sure applications you don't regularly use are not starting automatically. Some applications like to set themselves to start every time you log in, often at the expense of performance for other applications. It's a good idea to prune your list of items that start at login to only those you need and to review the list periodically to look for any surprise additions.Open "System Preferences" application and select Users & Groups. Click on your user account in the left pane, and then click the Login Items tab on the right. To remove an application from auto-start, select it from the list and click the minus-sign button at the bottom of the page.
Uninstall Unused Applications
While you're thinking about which applications you actively use, consider uninstalling your unused applications. It will not only free up disk space, but will eliminate potential performance issues caused by the application AND will remove any (heaven forbit!) security risks introduced by the application.Getting Your Feet Wet (Sophomore Year Level Tasks)
Check Activity Monitor
The most common causes of poor performance is a computer that's not able to keep up with the demand of its currently running applications. Specifically, the CPU, memory, or disk are being stretched beyond their limits. It's not always obvious from the computer's GUI that this is happening, but MacOS's built-in tool Activity Monitor can shed some light on what's happening behind the scenes.
Open Finder and navigate to Applications > Utilities and launch "Activity Monitor" (or just press the Command and Space keys to open Spotlight Search and type in Activity Monitor)
The monitor presents current system load, separated into tabs across the top for various components (CPU, Memory, etc) You can click on each column header to sort by its values. What you are looking for is an application that is using an greedy portion of any system resources. Some applications are inherently resource intensive, so if you see something consuming a ton of CPU, memory, or any other component ( (¬_¬) I'm looking at you, Adobe) then you may have found your culprit. If you're actively using that application, then you're stuck with the performance hit. If not, consider quitting it to free up resources.
Pro Tip #1 - Web browsers use a surprising amount of memory, ESPECIALLY if you share my personal tech bad habit of having a billion tabs open at once. See how Chrome is hammering my CPU? Time to perform a little browser cleanup by closing my un-needed tabs. And while we're at it, it's a good idea to uninstall any browser plugins you don't REALLY NEED, for security's sake as well as performance.
Pro Tip #1 - Web browsers use a surprising amount of memory, ESPECIALLY if you share my personal tech bad habit of having a billion tabs open at once. See how Chrome is hammering my CPU? Time to perform a little browser cleanup by closing my un-needed tabs. And while we're at it, it's a good idea to uninstall any browser plugins you don't REALLY NEED, for security's sake as well as performance.
Pro Tip #2 - If you right click on the header bar, there are quite a few more columns that can be added for more information.
Pro Tip #3 - Use with caution, as the Command-Q from within the application's interface is a safer option. But if you feel brave and want to kill a particularly resource-greedy application from within Activity Monitor, click on it in the list to highlight it then click the X button in the tool bar.
Free Up Disk Space
While rarely a direct cause of a performance issue, having an overly-stuff hard drive can have a slight impact on system responsiveness, especially if you have a spinning platter hard drive or a hybrid drive (aka: not SSD) - this is especially noticeable during search operations, which your operating system may be doing "behind your back" in order to index files.If you've got a ton of unused files and data on your hard drive, consider making a backup and then removing it from your primary hard drive. And while we're on the subject of backups - you are backing up your computer, right? RIIIIIIIGHT?
Swimming Laps (Junior Year Level Tasks)
Tweak Finder's New Windows Setting
Finder's default settings show an aggressively large list of files for all new windows, which would call upon the index mentioned above often resulting in a noticeable lag. Pretty much the first change I make on every MacOS system I use is to set the New Finder Windows Show in Preferences to something less insane (usually my user's home directory.)
Open Finder's preferences by clicking Finder in the taskbar and the Preferences (or by hitting the Command key & comma at the same time) and open the General tab. Under the New Finder Windows Show... section, select your desired directory from the list (or select Other...) for more folder options.
Tweak Finder's Search Setting
In Finder Preferences, select the Advanced tab and check the "When Performing A Search" setting. If this is set to "Search This Mac" then any search operation in Finder will crawl ALL the computer's files. While this is thorough, it's also a resource hog. Consider changing this setting to "Search The Current Folder."Reset SMC
An Apple computer's SMC contains a variety of low-level tasks and settings for the hardware. If your computer is behaving in weird ways, resetting the SMC to factory defaults can often cure phantom problems. For more information on the SMC, see this Apple Support article (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295)
To reset the SMC on a laptop with non-removable battery:
- Power off the computer
- Press the Shift, Control, Option keys & the Power button simultaneously
- Hold down these keys for 10 seconds
- Release all of the keys
- Power on the computer
To Reset SMC On Non-laptop Computers
- Power off the computer
- Unplug the power cord
- Wait 15 seconds
- Plug the power cord back in
- Wait 10 seconds
- Turn on your computer
Reset NVRAM
Needing to reset the NVRAM is less common, but may be needed if your computer experiences odd behavior during boot such as taking a long time to determine which hard drive to boot from, etc.
For more information on NVRAM, see this Apple Support article (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063)
To Reset NVRAM
- Shut down your computer
- Turn on your computer & immediately press these four keys together:
- Option
- Command
- P
- R
- You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart.
On Mac computers that play a startup sound, you can release the keys after the second startup sound. On Mac computers that have the Apple T2 chip, you can release the keys after the Apple logo appears and disappears for the second time.
Using The High-Dive (Senior Year Level Tasks)
Run Disk First Aid
Every file in MacOS has permissions applied to it which controls how users, services, and applications are allowed to use the file. Occasionally these permissions may become corrupt resulting in an application performing poorly if not crashing outright. To repair these permissions, open Disk Utility, select your disk, and click the "First Aid" button. Repeat this process for any additional disks you may have, then reboot.Clean Out Cached Files
Your computer tries its hardest to get you information as fast as possible by creating caches which can sometimes grow quite large, and this may have an adverse impact on performance.Note: deleting the cache files may mean that any corresponding application will attempt to recreate the cache again, resulting in a longer load/open time the next time you run the application.
To delete your user account's cache files, open Finder and select Go > Go to Folder, then type in ~/Library/Caches and press Enter. Open each folder within the Caches directory and delete its contents. Note: It’s not recommended to remove the folders themselves, but only the files within.
Next, we will delete System caches. Repeat the process above, but using the path /Library/Caches (notice the lack of a ~ tilde sign this time.)
After you are done, empty your trash and reboot.
Seek Professional Help
If you are still having issues, all hope is not lost. There are a variety of additional steps you can take, but they all vary based upon what your root cause is.
If you're feeling super adventurous, there are many additional tools (Onyx, TinkerTool, Cocktail, Secrets, MacPilot, CCleaner, etc) that can be used to clean and/or tweak other MacOS settings, but some can also *seriously* screw up your system if used incorrectly.
Your best bet is to seek professional help, either by visiting your closest Apple Store Genius Bar, finding a trusted local repair shop (look for one certified by Apple to diagnose and repair Apple hardware if at all possible) or to roll the dice with any of the glut of applications that promise a performance miracle for a small (or in some cases not-so-small) fee.
