Software To Analyze And Speed Up My Mac

Aug 23, 2016  Finder won’t load the All My Files view anymore. Free Up Disk Space. RELATED: 10 Ways To Free Up Disk Space on Your Mac Hard Drive. As on any computer, freeing up disk space can also speed things up if you have a very small amount of disk space. To check, click the Apple menu, select “About This Mac,” and look under the “Storage” heading.

Nobody likes the spinning pinwheel, the rainbow wheel or the Beach Ball of Death. Whatever you call it, you know it’s not a good sign.

  1. Mar 19, 2020  A quick scan took only 30 seconds and the app found 4.16 GB files ready for safe cleanup. One particular section we like about CleanMyMac is the “Maintenance” module, which is packed with 7 useful utilities that help fix various common Mac issues, such as speed up Mail, verify startup disk, repair disk permissions, flush DNS cache, etc.
  2. Analyze computer hardware free download - Computer Hardware, Computer Hardware, List Computer Hardware Information Software, and many more programs.

Luckily there are simple steps you can take to speed up old reliable, regardless of his age — and most are built right into your Mac.

1. Clear Your Hard Drive

Your device needs breathing room to function properly. Go to About this Mac > More Info > Storage to see how many GB are free and to access a color-coded picture of the files using the most space. (A free utility like Disk Inventory X is a second option.) Find out if photos, audio, movies or apps are your main culprit, then decide where to go from there.

If photos are a problem, consider transferring old images to a USB or external hard drive, or burning them to a disk. Another helpful tip? Visit your iPhoto’s trash. Just because you deleted a few pics from iPhoto doesn’t mean they’re gone. The application has its own bin that needs to be emptied; you might find 500 pictures just waiting to be purged from your hard drive.

Finally, under About this Mac > Overview, you’ll find a Software Update button. It never hurts to double check that you’re up to date.

2. Monitor Your Activity

Don’t get frustrated the next time your fan powers up and that pesky beach ball starts spinning. There’s a quick way to diagnose the problem using Apple’s Activity Monitor. Find it under Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.

If you’re unsure how to understand the Activity Monitor, read this walkthrough from Apple. In short, each application and background process needed to run your computer uses a percentage of your computer’s CPU (central processing unit). You can also see how much memory each application requires.

Click “% CPU” once or twice to organize the list in descending order. If something is running above 90%, it’s a recognizable program and it doesn’t say “root” under the user column, close it down immediately by clicking Quit Process.

Consider adding the Activity Monitor icon to your dock. Click and hold, then select “Show CPU Usage” under Dock Icon. Now you can monitor your activity at all times.

One more check: Click the Disk Usage tab at the bottom of the Activity Monitor. If Space Free (the neon green color) is getting too narrow in the pie chart, you should probably clear even more photos and videos off your hard drive.

3. Reduce and Restart

For a quicker power up, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items. See which boxes are checked; these are the applications that boot up every time you start up. If you don’t need them to do so, uncheck them.

Once you’re booted up, take a look at your desktop. If it’s filled with hundreds of icons, you’ve got some explaining to do. Stop saving things to your desktop. At the very least, organize your files into folders. But for best results, clean it up completely.

For any new Mac users out there, be sure to properly close programs. Simply exiting an application or browser does not stop it from running in the background. It basically just minimizes the program. (You can tell if an application is still running by the glowing marker beneath it in your dock.) If it’s a complicated program like Photoshop, you can bet it’s slowing you down. Visit the item on your dock, click and hold, then select quit.

4. Get Rid of the Extras

When it comes to language files, Apple is more than generous. Sure, it’s tempting to keep all those interesting files on your computer “just in case,” but Hrvatski, Svenska, Magyar and Suomi are taking up too much space. Chances are one is enough for you. Download the free app Monolingual to get rid of these unused files.

The “genie effect” is a signature Apple move that applies when you minimize windows, for example. But it’s an unnecessary one. Get rid of animations like these and your windows will open and minimize much faster. Go to System Preferences > Dock and change the “Minimize windows using” selection from Genie effect to Scale effect. Then uncheck the “Animate opening applications” box. This window is where you can turn the magnification of your dock on and off, as well.

Have you successfully sped up your Mac by eliminating waste and improving productivity? Share your advice and tips in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Travis Isaacs

Every time my MacBook Pro is run, I typically find myself doing the same things over and over again, all to get the speed to a point that I am satisfied with.

So, I figured it would be a good idea to write a checklist on how to speed up a MacBook Pro, and that’s what I’m going to show you in this article — a quick list that covers dozens of things you can do when it comes to improving your MacBook Pro’s performance.

There’s one thing I want to state before you embark on your journey: there is no single tactic that magically works. For example, upgrading to SSD or adding extra RAM would help if you are using an old 2009 MacBook; if you are using a shiny new MacBook Pro with limited storage, you may find cleaning up the drive most useful.

If you can do everything on this list (very unlikely though :-)), that’s great. If you want to skip some, that’s okay too. After all, the goal is to speed up your MacBook Pro by making the most of your time and investment. But in general, it’s close to impossible that you’ll be able to do all these things.

The Checklist to Speed up MacBook Pro

Check off items as you go along. Not all of these may apply to your Mac.

Software To Analyze And Speed Up My Mac Computer

Basic (require little time or money)

  • Have you restarted your Mac lately? Doing so on a regular basis helps clear system caches and shuts down applications, which often results in better performance.
  • Slow startup? Check out these six simple guides. Most likely you’ll need to manage Login Items, remove some apps & services automatically launch on startup.
  • Have you cleaned up your hard drive? It’s the best yet easiest way to speed up a Mac with an almost full hard drive. You can save time by using a tool like CleanMyMac.
Software To Analyze And Speed Up My Mac
  • Have you really quit unneeded applications or services? Hint: clicking the red “X” button sometimes does not quit an application — it just closes the window. Right click and select “Quit”.
  • Is “System Storage” (or “Other Storage”) taking too much disk space? macOS greyed out the section so you won’t be able to analyze further. However, you can use CleanMyMac (via Space Lens feature) to figure out detailed info and consider deleting some of the unnecessary system files.
  • Does your MacBook lag all of a sudden? Open “Activity Monitor” to figure out the culprit (resource-hungry application or process) — and kill it. Check out this Apple article for more.
  • Have you closed unneeded tabs and windows on Safari, Chrome or Firefox? This helps lighten your web browsers, thus making Internet surfing smooth.
  • Have you disabled FileVault? Doing so usually resolves slow boot issues. Note: we do not recommend disable it if you think data encryption is more important than performance.
  • Have you turned off visual effects? You may be impressed by the Magnification and Genie Effect, but the entertainment is a tradeoff for performance. Go to “System Preferences” -> “Dock” to change.
  • Are you used to saving files and folders directly to Desktop? If so, clear off the desktop clutters as it could result in your MacBook Pro running sluggishly.
  • Have you uninstalled third-party applications you don’t really use? You can quickly identify and remove them by CCleaner for Mac (via the Uninstaller feature).
  • Have you emptied Trash on your MacBook Pro? It could help you free up much valuable disk space as well as ease your hard drive a little bit.
  • Have you cleaned up web browser cookies, caches, histories, and plugins? Over time these files may take up gigabytes (GBs) and slow down your Mac. You can do so manually or by using CleanMyMac for efficiency.
  • Have you removed duplicate files on your Mac? These days it’s easy for us to save multiple copies of those precious media items (photos, movies, songs, etc). Getting rid of them may release good amount of precious storage. You can use Gemini 2 to quickly locate and delete these duplicates.
  • Have you removed unneeded Widgets from Dashboard? Those widgets can take up quite a bit of system memory (RAM). Learn how to do from this article.
  • Have you disabled unneeded notifications? Constant notifications tax your system performance — plus, they are big distractions. This Apple support article shows how to turn them off.
  • Have you removed unused system preference panes? They can take up some valuable system resources, and make it harder for you to find those you often use.
  • Have you changed “New Finder windows” setting from “All My Files” to a specific folder? The new folder can be “Desktop” or “Documents”. This trick can speed up the generation of a new Finder window. Learn how to do here.
  • Have you performed software updates for all Mac applications installed? An update tends to help you stay away from the application freezing issues.
  • Have you tested your wireless network? Sometimes your Wi-Fi is the bottleneck rather than your MacBook. Read this MacWorld article and learn how to speed up Wi-Fi on your Mac.

Advanced (require some time, money or technical skills)

  • Is your MacBook Pro running the latest macOS version? Not only does a new version tends to be faster, it’s usually more secure and reliable. To date, the latest macOS version is 10.15 Catalina. Here are a few things you need to check before updating.
  • Have you waited till Spotlight finish indexing? After a system upgrade, Spotlight indexing can take 24-48 hours. If you use your MacBook Pro during the time, it tends to be slow on everything.
  • Do you regularly verify and repair disk permissions with Disk Utility (see how)? This ensures your Mac hard disk error-free and run dynamically. (Note: this option is only available on OS X Yosemite or earlier. There’s NO need to do so if your MacBook has updated to El Capitan or macOS Sierra.)
  • Have you fixed corrupted preferences files? A broken preference file can cause an application to run abnormally — e.g. unable to open, application crash/freezing.
  • Have you reset SMC and/or NVRAM? This would help speed up your MacBook Pro’s overall performance, especially when there’s hardware (battery, keyboard, etc.) issues keep showing up.

Software To Analyze And Speed Up My Mac Free

  • Have you tried to add extra memory (RAM)? This will help you run larger apps (e.g. video/photo editing) more smoothly, though it greatly depends on your Mac model, learn more from this article Best RAM for MacBook Pro we recently posted.
  • Are you using an old MacBook Pro, have you replaced your MacBook’s hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD)? An SSD is much faster and more durable than a traditional HDD. You can learn more from our best SSD upgrade roundup.

Software To Analyze And Speed Up My Mac Download

Let us know if you find this list helpful, or you have another awesome tip to add. Leave a comment below.