Faster, Smoother, Better: Elevate Your Mac’s Speed and Performance

A Mac is a powerful machine with high speed and effective performance. However, it has been slowing down for some time now; it may be time to provide care and maintenance. The good news is that you don’t need to use money to do that. A MacBook is easy to maintain as long as you know what you are doing. It is essential first to understand why your Mac is slow before you know the right solutions to apply. The following are reasons your Mac is slow and ways to speed up its speed and performance.

Why Your Mac is Slow

Your Mac could be slow because of an outdated operating system, or the hard disk could be full. However, if the Mac is new and slow, it could be because you run many background programs or apps. The slow speed could also be because of a malware infection. Your Mac is slow because of;

• Demanding visuals
• Malware infection
• Too many background activities
• Outdated OS
• Slow internet

How to Improve Your Mac’s Speed and Performance

Free Up Storage

Macs run slow if they don’t have enough storage capacity. Videos, music, and photos accumulate quickly and take up most space. Many may think buying iCloud may be the best solution to free up space. However, it is good to know that when you back up your files on iCloud and decide to delete them from the Mac, you will delete everything from all devices. 

That means the files could still eat up storage space even when you have iCloud synced to your machine. You can look for services like Google Drive and DropBox. They back up the files on the cloud without storing them on the Mac.

Close Background Programs and Apps

Another simple thing you can do to boost your Mac’s speed and performance is to close any app or program you are not using. Your machine may be using a lot of memory and power to cater to every program or app working directly or in the background. Once the Mac is overloaded with background programs and apps, a rainbow circle appears on the screen. What does the rainbow circle mean on Mac? The rainbow spinning wheel indicates that your Mac cannot handle all the tasks it has been given. An app could be unresponsive because of the heavy load and might freeze. 

So, try removing apps and programs you are not using. It will free up space and the burden of work from the unused programs, slowing down performance. Follow the prompts on your Mac to remove these background programs.

Delete Unused and Old Files and Empty the Bin

You can also free up storage space and increase your Mac’s performance by deleting all the unused and old files you might have. Empty the Bin, too. It is advisable to audit frequently to eliminate the files you no longer need or use. Keeping them in the machine takes up a lot of storage space and slows down the Mac. 

Remember to also delete files in the Downloads folder. If you don’t want to delete the files, consider backing them up to an external hard drive. Remember to empty the Bin once you delete them. If you don’t do so, the files in the Bin will still eat up storage space. You can set the system to automatically empty the Bin so you don’t have to do it manually.

Turn Off or Reduce Graphics

Your Mac’s OS can run without any problem but can sometimes work too hard to maintain optimal performance. So, you need to turn off or reduce graphics to improve its speed. You can turn off the Dock to allow the machine to perform well. If you want to turn off your Dock, click on System Preferences, then Dock. You can untick on Magnification, Automatically hide and show the clock, and animate the opening application.

iCloud Syncing

As mentioned, syncing your device with iCloud may not necessarily help speed it up if done on multiple devices. Therefore, when using iCloud, it is advisable to avoid keeping large files on the desktop. Only keep the necessary files to help speed up the device. That includes syncing pictures. Your Mac may get busy syncing the photos to all devices hence,, it is advisable to turn off iCloud Photos to improve your Mac’s speed and performance.

Wrapping Up

The first thing to do when your Mac slows down is to find the cause of the slow speed. It could be because there are too many background activities running. So, try the above solutions. Nevertheless, if all fails, you might need to reset the Mac and reinstall the OS, but let this be the last resort since you must clean up everything from the boot drive. If you have to, ensure you backup all your files, pictures, music, documents, and everything else useful on the Mac.