Mac computers by Apple are some of the best lines of systems in the whole industry. They are better than almost all the competitors products and are fast, reliable, secure. A lot of companies and professionals prefer and rely on them. Apple too, has been working hard to keep their goodwill strong. Even after all the glory their systems are no strangers to facing issues like slow performance, lags, freezing and what not. A lot of people don’t like to go ahead and take the initiative of troubleshooting the system which in turn wastes time and money.

Calling for support is an ideal choice and yes, Mac is more advanced than most other operating systems but that doesn’t mean that you cannot even try. So until you get the help that your computer needs, try to provide it yourself. In this article I am going to share with you 5 ways through which you can speed up your Mac and get back the lost performance. Have a look:

Speed up your Mac

1. Get rid of Effects and Transitions

If you are the kind of person who really likes the aesthetics of anything and everything you use, you probably would have enabled all the visual effects on your Mac. A lot of users also install transformation packs and launchers which replaces the default ones. Sure they look pretty and good but they come with a price. Not just the monetary one. All of these visual effects, transitions, etc. take in extra memory and processing power from the computer to execute and that in turns slows down the computer. You will have to manage the availability of limited resources that is, the configuration. To disable the system effects, follow these steps:

Click on the Apple icon present in the top left corner of the screen.
Select System Preferences
In here look for the Dock option and click on it.
In the Dock window you will need to unselect: Automatically hide and show the Dock and Animate opening applications.
If you have installed any kind of transformation packs or launchers then you will have to separately uninstall them.

2. Check Activity Monitor

activity monitor 1 — Image Source: apple

Activity Monitor is like the assistant of the macOS that informs the users about various details of the system and even of the background processes. Checking it whenever your system behaves abnormally is always a good idea. There are many heavy programs and processes that can take up a lot of room in the memory and a lot of other resources, more than enough to slow down the computer and even freeze it at times. There are different tabs to relay different kinds of information to the users. The resource usage per app and process can be seen in percentage which gives a more clear picture.

3. Update

Downloading and installing updates is one thing that is recommended by almost all the experts. The manufacturing companies gather data on bugs and other issues from users and reports from all around the world. They too have their own performance check which brings out many flaws. Installing the update will get many issues resolved. These updates contain bug fixes, security patches, new features and what not. Similarly drivers should also be updated. Old and incompatible drivers may result not only in a slow performance but also in a system that crashes and freezes.

Don’t forget about software updates. Especially if you are working with heavy and big apps the ones are used for video editing, image editing, movie making, etc. The updates become very crucial. If you have a new version of the application but older versions of the drivers then the new application won’t accept them and may not even utilize the attached devices. Even though you have a good graphics card installed, you may still find it unusable if the drivers are old.

4. Get rid of unused apps

There are many apps in the market and a lot of them are interesting to use. Our curiosity makes us download and try them. And a lot of them we either forget after a couple of uses or lose interest in them. Users generally don’t uninstall or delete the data that they download and so it keeps piling over and over. Not all but a lot of them may slow down your computer by operating the background and you won’t know about it unless and until you give a good look to the Activity Monitor. Also if they are not in the background eating up the memory, they are still in charge of a lot of data like cache which can fill up your storage unnecessarily. So getting rid of them is a good idea. You will be surprised to know how much space the cache can take. Even though it consists of small files but over the years it can convert into terabytes. So make sure to clean it up from time to time.

5. Upgrade hardware

Not everything but I would just point out two things here:

RAM
Hard Drive

RAM is the temporary storage where your computer keeps the data temporarily for frequent usage. It consists of data like programs, apps, cache, etc. So the bigger your RAM is, the more data it can hold. There are empty slots in a Mac so you can install more RAM sticks and increase the memory.

A lot of people use external hard drives and the older drives were HDD. SDD or the Solid State Drives are the new hard drives which are in use. They are faster, reliable and can do better in almost every aspect. So if you are facing a lag or a slow computer then maybe it is due to slow data transmission.