Tips to fix Mac slowdowns | How to speed up a slow Mac computer

It doesn't matter whether you are at Mac or Windows or at any other OS, but, a computer , sooner or later, starts running slow. The situation goes persistent with the passage of time, specially when we load our machines almost full. Sorry to users of other OS because here we are discussing the situation for Mac only. One can try the following fixes to speed up slow Mac machine.

Try Restarting Mac

The first and the most effective step you can try is restarting your Mac. It cures mac slowdowns by quitting processes and applications running in the background. When we restart Mac machine, the RAM gets freed and refreshed to serve only the usefull applications.

Is your Internet connection OK?

Almost for everything we do at our machine, we need internet. Right from surfing the Web to checking email and writing applications—requires Internet connection. Many of us believe that a slow internet means a slow Mac. This is not correct. If you are struggling with internet speed then it doesn't mean that your Mac is slow. Improving your net connection can fix the issue.

Check Network preferences: If you see spinning beach ball in Safari, you can't say whether pages are taking longer time to load or whether your net connection is actually broken. So, need to go to Apple menu > System Preferences, and choose Network. Click Assist me and follow the instructions there after.

Free up Mac disk space

As I mentioned earlier, we keep storing our every digital stuff in Mac. A time comes when hard drive feels short of free space. This is one of the most prominent causes of sluggish Mac.


Use built-in disk usage: Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Usage . It's important to mention here that one should have at least 10 GB of free space available in drive. The limit is optimum if we maintain about 10 percent of the drive size as free space. If the free space in your Mac is below this level then you should clear some additional space.



Search for large files: Use Spotlight to locate large files that you may no longer need. In the Finder, press Command-F, click the plus (+) sign, click the Kind pop-up menu, and select Other. Select File size from the resulting list, and then click OK. Set up the criterion to read File Size and delete the files that you don't need.


Delete cache and log files: Ordinarily, cache files help your Mac run faster and the Log files keep track of past events on your Mac. For most of the users these are none of any importance and can be deleted without any adverse consequences.

The most safe and and quick way to delete these unnecessary files is to use Mac cleaning app like Stellar Speed Up Mac. The application can be applied to delete all sort of unnecessary data (duplicate files, large files, cache , leftovers, system junks), either from entire drive or from a single volume.

Check CPU usage

The task can be assigned to activity monitor to see % of CPU being consumed. Launch Activity Monitor and select My Processes from the pop-up menu at the top of the window. Next, click the % CPU column to sort by that criterion.
If an app consistently remains at top of the list of the % CPU usage, that app may be considered to quit.

Check memory usage

An OS performs with the combination of physical and virtual memory. Virtual memory is the space in Mac drive which is used temporarily. Physical memory is the RAM installed in Mac machine. Its important to note here that physical memory is faster than the virtual so, more your Mac depends on virtual memory, the slower it will perform. The swapfiles are created in virtual memory that keep increasing in size over time and can contribute to Mac slowdowns by consuming disk space. You don't need to worry or delete these files because they get cleared when system restarts.

Spend money

Money is the ultimate cure for stubborn slowdowns.



Add RAM: If your Mac doesn’t have adequate memory installed then you must go for upgrades. Its a common practice among us that we just care about upgrading OS and leave the other requirements as such. Adding RAM is the quickest and most perfect fix for slow Mac. If one can't afford or wants an alternative, then optimizing Mac is best solution for him.


Get a bigger hard drive: A larger capacity hard drive could add more speed to your snailing Mac. Shifting from an HDD to an SSD drive will be a smarter move and can help to speed up Mac applications too.


We have tested and verified the tips mentioned above believe the ideas would help you to get rid of snailing Mac performance.