Day by day, bit by bit your Mac has got slower and slower. You don’t really notice because it has happened so gradually.
Until one day you have a chance to use another machine, that’s when you realize what your beloved Mac has become, as slow as an asthmatic ant carrying some heavy shopping.
Well all is not lost, while this list is unlikely to make you mac into a speed demon overnight, one of the following suggestions may just help.
Cluttered Desktop
Having too many files and folders on your desktop can slowdown your machine. Put these files into folders in your home directory and create aliases to them on the desktop.
Corrupt Preference Files
Preference files can easily become corrupt and can make programs act weird or run slowly. If your Mac is slow using a particular application you can try deleting its preference file and relaunching he app (applications create a new file when they are relaunched if they can’t find an existing one). It’s worth making a backup of the old file just i case you lose some settings that are hard to replicate.
Smart Playlists on iTunes
Smart playlists can make iTunes slower as they have to reload every time iTunes is launched. Disable live updating by going to File, Edit Smart Playlist and untick Live Updating.
Too Many Widgets on Dashboard
Each Widget on your Dashboard uses memory, again you can check the memory usage of your widgets by using the Activity Monitor. Remove any used or memory hogging widgets using the Dashboard control panel.
Caches, Log files and Temporary Items
It doesn’t hurt to regularly clear out built up Caches, Log files and Temporary Items an easy way to do this is to use an application like OnyX. If you prefer you can delete Caches manually, they can be found in Home/Library/Cache.
Wrong Firmware
Using the wrong Firmware can cause all sorts of problems, keeping your software up to date on a Mac is so easy there is really no excuse. Just click on Software Update in the Apple menu. You can also schedule your Mac to automatically check for updates, go to System Preferences and Software Update and tick Check for updates. You can change the frequency of the checks using the drop down menu.
Not Enough RAM
Software can only take you so far. Upgrading your RAM will probably give you the biggest speed increase out of any of these tips. You can use the Activity Monitor application (under Utilities in the Application folder) to check if your Mac would benefit from more RAM. Click on System Memory tab and have a look at the pie chart at the bottom. If the chart is largely red or orange you are running out of RAM. Also take a look at the Page Ins and Outs numbers, if these are continually increasing, its time to upgrade your RAM.
Permission Conflicts
Some issues with applications loading slowly or acting weird can be remedied by repairing permissions. All files in Mac Os X have a set of permissions, these determine which users or applications can have access to them. Sometimes permissions are incorrect and not what the operating system expects. To repair disk permissions you can use the Disk Utility app (in /Applications/Utilities). Select your startup disk and click th First Aid tab, then click the Repair Disk Permissions button.
Hard Disk Is Nearly Full
Your Mac automatically utilizes free space on your Hard drive as Virtual Memory to free up the RAM. Try to make sure you have 10% free space available for this task.
Lots of Login Items
Removing unwanted or little used programs from your login items. To change your login items go to System Preferences then Accounts and click the Login Items tab.
Unused System Preference Panes
Clearing out unused preference panes can help free up memory and disk space, check under Other in System Preferences to see what you can remove. You can either disable it in its menu or delete it entirely by removing it from ~/Library/PreferencePanes.
Unused Applications Left Running
All running applications use up your memory and CPU resources, quit applications if you are not going to use them for a while. Some programs have memory leakage issues which means they tend to consume more and more memory the longer they are running (again you can spot these in the Activity Monitor) it a a good idea to quit and relaunch these every so often.
Animated Wallpapers
Animated or slide show wallpaper can really impact the performance of your machine so its a good idea to turn this off.
Firefox Overloaded With Extensions
There are loads of awesome Firefox extensions so its easy to get carried away and add too many. Take a few moments to go through your Add-ons (open Firefox and go to tools then Add-ons) and uninstall any you no longer use.
Internet Settings
If you are finding your browser slow try clearing the cache and deleting your history. In Safari you do this by going to the main menu and clicking Reset Safari, tick Clear History and Empty the Cache then Reset. In Firefox go to Preferences, Privacy and click the Clear Now button.
Favicons in Safari or Firefox
You may see an improvement in your browsers performance by deleting your cached Favicons, for Safari just delete the files in /Library/Safari/Icons. If you use Firefox 3 read this useful tutorial on macosxhints.
Massive Mailboxes
If you have a massive mailbox with thousands of messages it’s going to take longer to load. Try to delete messages you no longer need and split larger mailboxes into folders.
If you have any tips for speeding up your Mac, please leave a comment below.
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My name is Christopher Lee and I'm co-founder of the questions & answers community
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Great post thanks Chris.
I’ve done a few on the list and my MacBook Pro is definitely running much faster. Using “Activity Monitor” I found lots of apps that I didn’t use running away in the background, but the worst thing slowing my machine down was Parallels, so from now on I will only fire it up with I have to run a windows app.
Great read. I have been a Mac user for ever. I know about all these items. It is just amazing sometimes how we forget things. You jugged my memory and went back and looked at my mail. I started to open mailboxes. I started to delete many old emails and mailboxes.
Thanks a lot for the reminder.
Lynn Ryan
disable ip6
This was a useful article and explained conditions on my Mac. Thanks.
So aren’t macs a scam basically……it runs “fast” in the commercial and in the apple stores because they are not actually using them. Once you start using it, it grinds to a halt…..
More incentive to get a pc……Windows doesnt grind to a halt because of too many icons and neither does ubuntu linux, any distro of debian, or other distribution of linux other than darwin…
i’m a fairly new mac user and i’ve been looking for a way to speed up my MBP. thanks so much for the tips!
the only difference that i’ve done is use MacJanitor instead of onyx. thanks again!
This is pretty lame. Seriously… remove icons from desktop, remove cached favicons??? The only things that MAY help are more RAM (if you have less than 3 or 4 gigs), more HD space (do MACs even come with less than 500GB hard drives? – that rules that one out), and apps running in the background. The last is true. All other suggestions can be proven to offer less of a perfomance increase than it is worth concerning yourself of. This article stinks of the banter Windows hacks claim will speed up their crapmachines.
Turn off Enable access for assistive devices makes a huge difference !
jmndos: I don’t think it has much to do with the OS. Being a Windows, Mac, and desktop Linux user, I see that the former two camps suffer the same flaw – the user. The machine just gets cluttered. Linux typically runs faster because it’s users are meticulously careful about what the install on it. Most Windows and Mac users aren’t aware, and more importantly, don’t care, what’s on their computer. That is, until it grinds to a halt.
A lot of my Linux/Mac co-workers have this strange idea that Windows is slower. But it’s typically because they’ve only used spyware, adware ridden non-defragged copies. They don’t know how to protect/clean Windows from those problems. And now we’re seeing the same problem transfer to Macs as they gain popularity. It’s just the user’s fault.
Mr Lame, the performance issue with the number of desktop icons is known and technical. Originally in OS X, Apple did not allow users to store icons on the desktop. But the users demanded that Apple bring back this ability. Then the users found out why Apple didn’t allow it originally: Too many desktop icons really does have a performance penalty. So Apple allows it, but most Mac gurus know that you want to keep the number of desktop icons down.
I know Macs and this article isn’t half as bad as some I’ve seen. Sure, there are a few odd things, like in the comments where someone is using MacJanitor. That was a good idea up until Leopard, when the cron scripts were superseded by launchd tasks…
“Lots of login items” is definitely legitimate as well. Logging in with the Shift key will show you the difference since it logs in without login items. On my system it makes a difference of 20 seconds or more (because I like my login items, I live with it).
@jmndos No, Macs are not a scam. They need to be taken care of like any other computer. However, with a Mac it is much easier to clean. I just had an issue with my permissions; I did not use Onyx, but instead I used disk utility which comes with every Mac and my issue was resolved.
To make a real difference, turn off the spotlight crap (especially its indexing process) and replace it with Quick Silver. The indexing process running in the background is pathetic when you look at the resources it consumes.
I don’t like how this turned into a “get a PC” thread so quickly. The majority of the items listed are things to consider. It was never said in the entry that they are going to have some sort of life-changing effect. @jmndos – The only people that would see this as incentive to get a PC are the ones that don’t know any better. Just like every other computer on the market, a long amount of use is slowly going to make the machine lag a little as time goes on. Being a former PC user for approximately 10 to 12 years of my life, I can say that I’ve seen more PC’s become slower than I have Macs. PC users are accustomed to having thousands upon thousands of icons on their desktop and shoved into folders because there is no real alternative way of organizing anything (unless of course you use one of those faux Dock applications that are almost always worthless).
Something that should be considered here also is defragging. There are freely available tools for the Mac that will defrag your system the same way you would a PC. I’ve done this and it can assist performance as well. To be honest, I would probably put defragmenting ahead of a lot of the aforementioned steps.
If you’re an avid Mac user, you learn the majority of these anyway and they’re embedded into your workflow without any sort of forethought. The entire OS X interface lends itself to ease of use and offers a toolset to better organize your data. If you just stick to good practice off the bat, you won’t have to worry about any of this really. Like people said before me, a lot of these don’t make a world of difference. I’ve had my 2004 Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8ghz for about 2 to 3 years and have no never had a slow down. Upgrading to a new Intel machine will just make it all the better.
For the processor intensive mac laptop user, it also helps a lot to get one of those laptop cooler stands with the fan underneath. I have the 30 dollar belkin white one, and I’ve experienced a noticeable bump in speed if you can keep your enclosure/cpu temperature under 180 degrees. Once the heat rises to about 185 degrees, the cpu clock speed slows down a bunch to prevent your mac from melting itself.
That screenshot of the desktop looks all too familiar
Thanks for the tips. I laughed when I read this because I’m actually guilty of a few of these.
–Terrace Crawford
http://www.terracecrawford.com
http://www.twitter.com/terracecrawford
Oh no.
No.
No, you didn’t just suggest “Repair Permissions” did you? Do you understand how unix permissions work?
Please go and read this: “Seriously, ‘Repair Permissions’ Is Voodoo” – http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions_voodoo and then update your article accordingly.
my abacus and post-it notes are fast, and never suffer from adware, too many desktop items, etc – forget ubun2, windoes, and applepie, beads-on-a-board + notepad and pencil do it all, faster. oooh PC is better , oooh mac is better, oooh linix is better – GAFL u L7’s
Very useful post, Chris, with some good practical advice. Question from a novice–Would having an external drive connected to my iMac and turned on cause any sluggishness?
Nice post Chris i have been working with macs for the past 20 years and most of these thinks are exactly the same things that i have been hearing during the entire 20 years. There are however 3 others i would add, firstly fonts don’t have every font you own always active this will considerably increase the time it takes to do anything. Secondly i macs don’t come with an uninstall option and i’m pretty sure that people that add applications , run them for a few days and bit them before moving on to the next must have aps that last all of a week, will be leaving a trail of devastation in their path as its pretty difficult to remove every last trace of an application , including preference and settings just my deleting. the third and final showness are network, networking whether its wired, wireless or blue tooth will have an overhead.
@Mr. Lame
I have a mac and it only has and 80Gb HDD (Don’t assumptions make you look silly – rules that argument out)…
Keep on writing dude, well done!
RT
http://www.privacy.pro.tc
@MrLame
The article isn’t just talking about removing icons from the desktop, that won’t make a difference. I used to have a “desktop clutter” folder that would routinely get above 2 GB with assorted movie, pictures files and what not. I kept that folder on my desktop to keep it uncluttered, however when I moved the folder to my documents folder and kept just an alias on the desktop my performance insider Finder improved.
Before dismissing something as useless, maybe you should read the entire point and understand what it is saying.
@jmndos: he wasn’t talking about icons (shortcuts) on your desktop, but files. tell you what, boot debian, and spend the rest of the afternoon copying videos/* (or whatever – large, downloaded files are what count here) to your desktop. let nautilus create the previews. now open firefox w/ gmail and 10+ more tabs. use the machine for a few hours, then report back on your performance.
to get around this desktop problem, i have a folder on my desktop called Catch. every day or two, I throw everything on my desktop into that folder unless i have a good reason to keep it on my desktop. at the end of the week, i sort Catch and mostly delete everything in it, but file away the things I want to keep like ps brushes, etc. this works well on all OSs.
i’ve had to spend a lot of time working on machines w/o a lot of ram (sub gigabyte levels) and using this technique has made my life a lot easier.
But i thought macs where perfect?
Nice article, both keeping my Desktop icon-free (slims down the UI’s processes) and stopping Spotlight have worked wonders on my machines.
Although I must agree with Mike, repairing permissions does nothing for system speed.
http://www.interrupt19.com/2009/02/26/repairing-permissions-what-it-is-what
Nice tips there. I think the main one is the Dashboard though..
Not only remove unused Dashboard Widgets, but remove the Dashboard all together! It’s a completely un-necessary tool and it definitely saves big on the memory.
But, “Mac, it just works”, no?
To the one on top of me- I thought so too…
Thanks for the post good one!
If your macbook more than 1 1/2 years old buy a new hard drive. Your machine will be faster than it ever was.
Permission Conflicts and repairing them are only for the Max OS, not other programs on you Mac
Very nice tips. I also work with Macs and would point out some other details: first, Caches are also located in Macintosh HD/Library/Caches and can also be deleted. Simply select all the files in that folder and move to trash. However, any applications approved for launch by double-clicking a file may have to be reapproved (related to the com.apple.LaunchServices.csstore file), and in Tiger, any fonts in Fontbook that have been temporarily disabled by the user will become re-enabled.
As well, undiagnosed filesystem errors or corruption can also cause slowness. Use Disk Utility to verify Macintosh HD and if necessary boot to the install disk to repair it, or optionally enter single-user mode by holding [CMD+S] at boot and run a filesystem check by typing “/sbin/fsck -fy”. If the result is anything other than ‘the volume appears to be OK”, repeat the fsck command until it comes clean. There are more advanced ways of running fsck but I won’t go into them here. Type “reboot” to get out when you’re done.
Also, I would partly disagree with “Mike”, permissions repairs are not voodoo, but it must be remembered that permissions repairs will work ONLY on Apple’s software, it will not resolve any issues with 3rd party programs. Many times I have seen issues resolved with a simple permissions repair (such as applications failing to launch or spinning color wheels generated by starting a task) but only when an issue presents itself as permissions-related after careful troubleshooting and isolation. Only a novice would run permissions repairs frequently or as a knee-jerk troubleshooting step.
Thanks again for a well put-together post.
Seriously I lose all respect for any article that mentions “repair permissions” as a preventative maintenance technique.
It’s not.
I was reluctant to get more RAM for my 1gb macbook, but… Running PC games on VMs was getting ridiculously slow, looks like Im springing. That plus a 90% full HD (not including a full external) can start to tax a machine.
Here is something I found useful for getting back some of the speed you initially when you bought the computer: reinstall osx from time machine. I had a huge slowdown problem a couple of months back and this solved it completely. I did a couple of these things too.
this is hilarious!
As an avid PC user, I find that my comp slows down without some degree of “cleanup”, but I thought the Mac users were immune to this sort of thing.
Wow, and I thought “fanboys” was a state of mind!
Apparently, we all deal with the same sort of issues.
Safari can become very slow, and could freeze few seconds if you have lots of cookies.
This append because each time you consult a web page Safari write all cookies on disk (it’s not yet using a sqlite database). I had around 4000 cookies and my cookies file was around 7MB. I use a laptop so the hard drive is not really fast and when the disk was just a little busy (when I have mail.app also launched) Safari was spinning. I used http://www.ditchnet.org/cocoacookies/ to suppress arond 3500 cookies, the cookies file is now smaller that a 1MB and safari is really faster.
Awesome article, very helpful!
Great write up. I had my pics going through a slideshow on my desktop. Took that off and things really sped up. Thanks!
Mac is far better than PC.
A good read:
http://www.techunits.com/content/list_all/97/mac_osx
I think it’s really funny that you show a picture of Mac Mini RAM in your article.
It’s the only desktop mac that the ram isn’t officially a user upgradable part. Your warranty will be voided (applecare or otherwise) if you personally do a RAM install or swap the hard disk on a Mini and not have it done by an apple authorized service center.
But as far as the article goes:
“Some good points, some bad points, but it all works out….I’m just a little freaked out….” ~ Talking Heads
hehe macs are only a perfect marketing hype product.
rounded edges and a high price doesn’t make a good product.
a fool and there money…
i think that’s “a fool and their money”
Funny how PC boys translate this article into ‘Macs are crap’…
No they’re not.
Try them, you’ll find out soon enough they’re value for money
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9131558&taxonomyId=89&pageNumber=1
They all look good. But one of the main reasons has got to be updating to the latest system and app software that you just cant resist!!
But you keep forgetting that old G4 just cant cope with the new bloated non native apps and OS X’s your feeedin it!
If you took a G4 and had older apps and system software (still OSX by the way) you would be speedin along nice.
An the fact is most system and app updates probably dont get there fancy new features used!
The Apps get fatter to slow you down on purpose otherwise we’d never my new Macs.
Sad but true of all PC’s.
Daryn St. Pierre de la Fondue Barghlamonde III Esq. says, “PC users are accustomed to having thousands upon thousands of icons on their desktop and shoved into folders because there is NO REAL ALTERNATIVE WAY of organizing anything (unless of course you use one of those faux Dock applications that are almost always worthless).”
Ok, if you need more than a file tree to stay organized, you can pretty much call yourself functionally disorganized. This is like saying a kitchen has no means of staying organized because it is limited to drawers and cabinets, and doesn’t have a magic twirling robot that is designed for idiots to find the egg beater.
Which is really what Apple markets toward: the minority of users who will pay extra for the luxury of idiot-proof technology and a pretty design. What you end up getting is needless complexity. If you’re already organized, you don’t need an extra program to clean up after you. It’s very simple.
Oh yeah, and the RAM thing. Just go ahead and upgrade. Hah!
Thanks Chris. This is really helpful. Just what I’ve been looking for.
Thanks for the article Chris- I did actually just disconnect the ad ons on firefox a few days ago- I’ll check the recommended program Onyx you have here.
Do a few other suggestions and let’s see what happens.
Thanks
>^:^<
Are you sure that un-checking “Live updating” on iTunes smart playlists will provide much of a benefit? I’ve seen other sites that mention this, but none lists any actual testing that proves it. I can certainly follow the logic on this one, but wonder how much CPU each smart playlist query can really consume?
If you’re right – I’d love a script to toggle the live update setting on all smart playlists so that they only update when I care.
Great post…could relate to PCs as well – and I wondered if the slowness on my Dell as due to Vista///poor microsoft, always getting a bum rap
Seriously, why is it always a PC/Mac debate?
Whether you buy a Mercedes, a Toyota, or a Ford, maintenance is a part of owning the vehicle. Same with a computer, regardless of the OS. So, why don’t you win guys go read about defraging your hard drive instead of telling us how you never fix your car and get great mileage with 4 flat tires and never changed the oil.
Safari/Firefox prefs can take care of how much you cache.
Consider what you really need. Don’t treat your machine like you would shop at the dollar store and consider the source of the software or download that you pull down off the web.
Poorly created software CAN create security loopholes when it is installed by changing important file permissions and Disk Utility CAN restore file permissions to default values.
Finally, and this follows the above, take as many applications to the cloud as you can (that’s a cross platform initiative). If there is a choice between software as a service and a widget like client app, go for the cloud service. Let the cloud do the computing for you and keep your own footprint light.