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Is your Mac too lazy? Learn how to boost its performance

Kurtis Avatar By: Kurtis | Last updated February 18, 2020

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Your Mac could be running slow for various reasons. Although the fact that your computer might be too outdated could be a potential cause, there’s no need to panic at the first sign of trouble and start worrying how you’re going to afford a new one. Try everything else before you settle with that decision.

Your Mac might be too lazy because of its hard drive, which could be simply too full to operate as smoothly as in the beginning, there could be apps that you didn’t close and are running in the background since who knows when or you might just have to update your operating system or do a general cleaning.

We’ll try to give you some tips that might do the trick for your Mac. We’ll first start with the things you can do without investing any more money:

  • Do a cleaning. As we’ve already mentioned, one of the reasons for all the lagging could be the apps installed on your computer. They initially come with all kinds of permissions that let your operating system know who is allowed to do what and with which files. Those permissions can change over time and this could slow your Mac. Use the Disk Utility app that is built in your Mac, to repair all those disk permissions.
  • Another area that deserves a thorough decluttering is your Mac’s hard drive. Do an inventory of all the files and apps you’ve installed on it and get rid of whatever is useless and you don’t need anymore (old apps that you’re no longer using and so on)
  • Close all the apps that you’re not using. Check to see which apps start automatically when you turn on your Mac and close the ones you’re not using. Don’t leave anything unnecessary running in the background. Also, try not to run too many of them at the same time. You should pay attention especially to those programs that drain a lot of resources. You can find how much they are eating up by accessing your Activity Monitor (in the Utilities folder). Usually, your Mac runs slower when certain apps affect your processor (CPU) activity. In the Activity Monitor you can see all the apps and what percentage of the CPU is being used by each of them.
  • Empty the caches. Although caches are useful for when you’re visiting/revisiting a certain website, because they help you access it faster, they do leave a mark on your Mac’s performance over time. These caches will take up a lot of your storage and they will eventually slow down your computer. You can empty the cache or the so called ‘system junk’ manually or automatically, by running a cleaning app such as CleanMyMac3. You should also empty the Safari cache, too
  • Keep your OS X up to date. Apple constantly releases free updates and you should keep up with them because they usually bring improvements

When you’ve crossed off your list all the above mentioned steps and you are still having problems with your Mac’s speed, maybe it’s time to think about some ‘tuning’: replace your hard drive with an SSD and maybe install more RAM (memory).

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