One of the most annoying things while working on an important project or document is a slow-running laptop. You are on a tight deadline and your Mac is delaying your work even more. It is common for systems to slow down over time.
However, this needs to be fixed immediately, if you keep putting this issue aside for a later time you are going to waste more time, energy, and productivity. There are tons of reasons why your Mac may be slowing down. With time your Mac can also get tired from performing heavy tasks. It needs a boost to get back to its A-game. In this article, we will provide a few tips to help you fix a slow-running Mac.
What are you waiting for? Let’s jump into the article.
Hard Drive Overload
Lack of storage space can be one of the reasons behind your Mac slowing down. Irrespective of your Mac model, if your hard drive storage is reaching its capacity then it is time to take matters seriously and start to reform things. Luckily this issue can be resolved easily. You can clean up your hard drive and remove old files, tidy up the desktop, trash, and downloads folder. You can also optimize your storage with Apple’s built-in storage optimization feature.
Discover and kill the resource-consuming processes
Since you run many processes on your Mac there can be some that consume more resources of the processor. This limits the power that other processes use to help your Mac run smoothly. This could be one of the potential reasons behind the slowing down of your Mac.
You can check what is causing the slowdown of the CPU process by going to the Activity Monitor on your Mac. In the activity monitor, you will find a list of processes that are moving, and the process at the top of the list is the one that is consuming the energy. You can kill the process just by double-clicking on that item.
Limit the apps running in the background
Mac is powerful, it is fast, and can perform numerous heavy tasks easily but there is only so much it can handle. There is a limit to how much the system can handle all at once. One of the prominent reasons behind the slowing down of your system is running too many apps in the background simultaneously.
The easiest way to improve the speed of your Mac is by limiting the applications running in the background. If you are forgetful make sure to do a quick check of the dock and in case you find any apps running just quit them.
Clear Cache files
The system may store some files in temporary storage while carrying out tasks. This temporary storage is commonly known as the cache. The primary purpose of this storage is that it will speed up the process of web page loading.
Yes! When you save the cache related to a web page the next time you visit the page it will load faster. However, saving the cache longer than necessary can be an issue. It can slow down your system, the best way to deal with it is to clear the cache from time to time.
Declutter the desktop
A cluttered desktop not only affects your productivity but also has an impact on the speed of your Mac. Yes! You heard it right, a cluttered desktop can also be the reason behind the slowing down of your Mac. The best way to deal with it is you can clear the space by sorting the files.
If your Mac is using the Catalina or MacOS then all you have to do is click the user stacks on the pop-up window that appears when you double-click on the desktop. Follow the steps and your files will be sorted, however, remember it is better to delete the useless ones or move them to the appropriate locations.
Restart your Mac
No we are not bluffing, this is the next tip on the list. Well, instinctively this is the most common step that many take when they are facing issues with their laptop. If you are someone that operates your system without any breaks and opens multiple tabs then slowing down is bound to happen.
You have a habit of putting your system to sleep rather than shutting it down then which will cause the slowing down issues. The system may act up if it hasn’t been restarted for a long time. Just close all your tabs and restart your computer. This could be the most obvious thing that you could do when your system is slowing down. If this could do the trick it is great, if the system is still acting up use other tips.
Don’t install too many extensions
Extensions improve the functionality of the browser, however, they also have an impact on the speed/performance of the Mac. When your browser has a lot of extensions to support it will take a lot of power from the CPU processor to run smoothly.
When it takes the maximum power the other processes will naturally be affected, impacting the overall performance of the system. The solution is quite simple, all you need to do is remove the browser extensions that you don’t use frequently, this will reduce the load on your browser which will reduce the impact on your processor.
In a nutshell,
As you have made it to the end of the article, hope you will find these tips helpful in improving the speed of your Mac. These manual tips will help you in resolving the issue by yourself. However, if you see that these tips are not improving the performance of your Mac then it is better to take it to a professional to have a look at your Mac. From malware to cache, there can be many reasons behind the slowing down of your Mac. Combine the different tips provided above to manually resolve the speed issues of your Mac.
