Everyone seems to love Sierra, but if your experience is like dragging your Mac through a swamp then it’s time to do something about it. Let’s fix slow macOS Sierra In this guide we’re going to highlight the most common problems that cause a slow Sierra and the solutions to help you speed up macOS.
These solutions can be performed by anyone, but we’ve ordered them from easiest to hardest. See how far up the Sierra speed solution ladder you can get.
How can the answer be improved? Apr 16, 2015 - Obviously, a clean startup helps speed up a Macbook that's running. I work for Trend Micro and the opinions expressed here are my own.
Step 1 - Eliminate desktop clutter Difficulty: Easy Are you someone that puts everything on their desktop? To load all those icons takes up system resources that could be used for better things. Delete what you don’t need and group what you do into folders to improve macOS Sierra performance. To quickly move files into folders:. Hold Control and click the items you want to group.
Right-click any of the selected files and choose 'New Folder with Selection' That was easy, wasn’t it? Now let’s use one of Sierra’s space saving features. Step 2 - Optimize storage Difficulty: Easy Another way to free up space is to use one of - the ability to automatically remove files that you don’t need. Optimized storage can remove old video files (like that movie you watched months ago) that you can always download from iTunes again. It can also remove old email attachments, which remain stored on the mail server should you need them again. Clearing out old videos and email attachments can save a lot of space on your Mac and improve overall Sierra performance. Please note that you need to use Apple’s Mail app to make use of the email attachment setting.
Also, having watched videos suddenly disappear may not be to everyone’s taste. However, if you want to turn these settings on, follow these steps:. Go to About This Mac. Click on the Storage tab and click on Manage. Select Optimize. Check 'Automatically remove watched iTunes movies and TV shows'.
Check 'Download only recent attachments' or to manually decide what gets downloaded, choose 'Don’t automatically download attachments' If you tried these options but prefer the old way you’ll need to navigate to iTunes Preferences Advanced to uncheck 'Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.' If you want Sierra to download all your attachments again go to Mail Preferences Accounts accountName Account Information. Click on the Download Attachments drop-down menu and select 'All.' That was a bit more work but still really easy, right?
Next up is a way to always speed up a slow Sierra. Step 3 - Remove background applications Difficulty: Easy Does your macOS slow down for no obvious reason? It could be that background apps are hogging your Mac’s memory.
Most systems have multiple unneeded apps that use system resources. Next time things are slow open Activity Monitor (found in Utilities) and click on the top of the Memory column to order the apps by those that are using the most memory. If you see an app that is using a good portion of memory (and you’re sure you’re not using it) select it and click the X at the top left to close the app. The next steps are a little bit more challenging but if you want a Sierra that performs well we recommend you keep going! Step 4 - Tone down visual effects Difficulty: Moderate Apple uses some fancy eye candy to make the Sierra UI (User Interface) a real treat for the eyes. But if Sierra is slow, it feels more like a trick than a treat. To give Sierra a speed boost you can turn off transparency and motion effects.
This is particularly effective if macOS 10.12 is running on older hardware. To turn off effects in Sierra follow these instructions:. Navigate to Settings Accessibility Display. Turn on 'Reduce Motion' and 'Reduce Transparency' You should now experience a snappier Sierra experience. In our next step we’re going to show you how to take out the trash. Afterall, a clean Sierra is a fast Sierra!
Step 5 - Clean up full Mac hard drive to speed up Sierra Difficulty: Moderate Macs use available storage space on hard drives for the smooth running of the OS. When there isn’t much free space and your drive is almost full, Sierra will start running slow. If you’ve seen the macOS 'Your disk is almost full' notification then you’vedefinitely got a problem that needs fixing. You can click the 'Manage' buttonon the notification, and it will take you to the Optimize Storage features. A better solution would be to use, which has a bunch of tools to clean up your drive.
With just a couple clicks you can clear out the junk and free up a ton of storage space for smoother operations. Here’s how to easily remove hard drive junk:. Launch CleanMyMac X. Click on the Smart Scan tab. Let the app analyze your system and when it’s finished select Clean Can you believe how much free space you have now? Your Mac should be running much better after the first 5 steps but if Sierra is still slow it’s time to get serious. These next steps are a bit more difficult but you’ve made it this far.
Don’t stop now! Step 6 - Reset your SMC Difficulty: Hard 'Reset my what?' SMC stands for System Management Controller, and a reset can solve extreme levels of slowness as well as battery faults and some other hardware faults like problems with your fan. You should only take this step if everything else has failed to speed up Sierra. Start by closing all apps (force-quit with Command-Option-Escape if necessary) and shut down your system. SMC reset instructions for Mac notebook:.
With your Mac shut down, plug in the power cord. Press the power button while holding down Shift-Control-Option at the same time. Let go and start your Mac up like normal SMC reset instructions for Mac desktop:. Shutdown your Mac and unplug it. Plug it back in after 5 seconds. Wait 5 more seconds and then start your Mac as normal Be honest, you thought that would be much harder didn’t you? If you reset your SMC you can definitely reset your PRAM/VRAM.
That’s the next step! Step 7 - Reset PRAM/NVRAM Difficulty: Hard NVRAM stands for 'non-volatile random-access memory.' 'P' used to stand for Parameter in older Macs where it is called PRAM. Resetting NVRAM is generally recommended when your Mac is behaving strangely. Things like your Mac starting with the wrong disk, screen resolution issues, or wonky battery charge reporting. If you’re not sure if you need it, there’s no harm in giving it a try just in case.
Follow these instructions to perform a PRAM/NVRAM reset:. Turn your Mac on from a shutdown state. When the startup chimes press Command+Option+P+R at the same time. Hold them until your Mac restarts and you hear the startup sound again. Let go of the keys You’ve done it again. There are only two more steps left. Don’t stop now!
Step 8 - Speed Up Sierra’s Startup Difficulty: Hard If starting up macOS Sierra is taking too long it might be because you have too many startup items. Some apps you’ll want starting with Sierra, but others would be better off waiting till you open them. You could use Step 3 to keep manually closing down these apps but that sounds like a waste of time to us.
Remember the feeling of a brand new Mac? A Mac without rainbow wheels. A Mac that didn’t cause headaches or frustration. Everything was just perfect! However, with all apps, documents, photos, and a full iTunes library, your Mac starts to act as if it’s hiking 20 miles uphill in the snow. We’ll show you 15 ways to speed up Mac. Here’s How to Speed Up Your Mac These simple steps won't take much time, but will greatly help to improve your Mac's performance.
If you do these activities regularly, you won't have to worry about the need to speed up your Mac again. Find resource-hungry processes Some apps are more power hungry than others and can slow your Mac to a crawl. To see which apps are eating up your system resources, use Activity Monitor. You can open it from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it. Activity Monitor details five different resources: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage. If your Mac is running slowly, pay special attention to the CPU section.
It shows how processes affect CPU (processor) activity. Click a column name, such as% CPU, to list all programs by the amount of CPU they’re using. If you see that some app is using a lot of CPU power, you can close it from here by choosing the app with the mouse and clicking the X in the left-hand corner of the Activity Monitor. Manage your startup items It goes without saying that a clean startup helps speed up slow Mac.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125491500/294011479.png)
When your Mac launches faster, it takes less time to do anything. No waiting for Safari, Chrome or Firefox to launch — they open instantly. How do you get such speed? Well, when your Mac boots up, it runs a lot of unnecessary apps. But it’s quite easy to take control of it. Go to your System Preferences Users & Groups and then click on your username.
Now click on Login Items and select a program you don’t immediately need when your Mac starts up, and click the “-” button below. Turn off visual effects A great tip to help you when you wonder how to speed up your Mac is to turn off visual effects.
Sure, they look pretty, but who cares if your Mac is running slowly? Turning off some of the features can greatly speed up iMac or MacBook. Here’s how to speed up a Mac by turning off some visual effects:.
Click System Preferences Dock. Untick the following boxes: Animate opening applications, Automatically hide and show the Dock. Click on Minimize windows using and change Genie effect to Scale effect. Repair disk permissions When you install an app on your Mac, the piece of software arrives as a package of files, including permissions that tell OS which users can do what things with specific files.
These permissions are file settings that affect the ability to read, write, or execute (open and run) the file. Over time, these permissions can get changed, and software that uses the file might not work correctly. It results in your Mac lagging. A quick and easy fix is to repair disk permissions.
Follow these steps to repair disk permissions:. Open Disk Utility (Applications Utilities). Choose your startup disk. Click the First Aid tab. Click Repair Disk Permissions to repair any inconsistent permissions. Note that beginning from OS X EI Capitan, there is no need to repair disk permissions. System file permissions are automatically protected, so it’s no longer necessary to verify or repair permissions with Disk Utility.
But if your Mac runs OS X Yosemite or earlier, repairing disk permissions can help speed up old Mac. Reindex Spotlight If you recently updated your OS, you would be aware of the slowness that occurs when Spotlight is indexing. This only takes a few hours and then your Mac will be fine. But sometimes the indexing gets stuck, and you need to speed up a Mac.
To solve this problem, you need to reindex Spotlight by going to System Preferences Spotlight and clicking on the “Privacy” tab. Now drag your hard drive from Finder into the Privacy List. Once added, remove it by clicking the “-” sign. The indexing will start again, but hopefully, after a few hours, it will finish properly and boost your Mac speed. Manage syncing photos to iCloud You may be surprised by how much of your Mac’s storage is taken up by photos. And syncing them to iCloud may take plenty of time, and as a result, slow down your Mac. You may think that deleting photos from your Mac may resolve the problem.
But, unfortunately, that’s not how iCloud Photo Library works. When you remove photos from your computer, they are also deleted from all your devices. So how to speed up your Mac and don’t lose your photos? One of the possible solutions might be turning off iCloud Photo Library on your Mac. If you still want to back up your photos in the cloud, you may use another device, such as Dropbox or Google Drive. That’s up to you!
But note that taking control over syncing your photos to the iCloud may speed up your Mac. Empty the caches Cache files are temporary data used to speed up the processes. For example, a web browser will cache web pages to download a website faster when you revisit it.
Sounds great, right? Actually, it is, but there is always “but.” Over time, these cache files take much storage on your Mac, and instead of speeding things up, they slow your computer down.
So how to speed up MacBook by emptying the caches? There are two ways: you can clean them up manually (step-by-step) or you can remove them in a second with a cleaning utility. If you want to clear cache automatically, do the following:. Launch CleanMyMac X. Choose System Junk.
Click Scan and then Clean. However, if you decide to clean cache files manually, check out his guide on “.” 8. Uninstall applications Another proven way to speed up MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac is to uninstall the application you don’t need anymore. So how to remove unwanted apps on your Mac?
You may be surprised to find out that simply dragging them to a Trash bin is not enough. It leaves gigabytes of junk behind. Dragging documents and movies to Trash works fine but apps should be uninstalled completely. Check out a step-by-step guide on “.” It describes the manual way and the easy way. Clean up Mac’s hard drive If you want the most bang for your buck, cleaning your hard drive is by far the best and easiest way to speed up MacBook or iMac. Go through your hard drive and clean out everything that is slowing it down.
But what is slowing down my Mac? What to look for? Caches, logs, apps, widgets, hidden trash, large and old files. Of course, you can clean up your Mac manually.
But finding and removing all these things takes time. And you have to know where to look. The good news is that there is an easy solution to the problem. App has everything you need to finish the 3-hour task of hard drive cleanup in under 5 minutes. Even more, it will clean up the junk you didn’t even know about and speed up Mac. Update your Mac (OS and hardware) Typically, Macs take care of themselves. Having the latest software from Apple makes speeding up your Mac simple.
To check your version of the operating system, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and then About This Mac. Make sure you have the latest macOS/OS X installed (or the latest you can install since not all Macs upgrade to macOS Mojave) As for the hardware upgrade, as you’ve probably guessed, it is costly. But if your OS is the latest possible version and you’ve cleaned up the hard drive, and you still have troubles with speed, this could be your solution.
Keep in mind that upgrading some hardware is not possible for certain Macs. Upgrading to the latest OS and upgrading your hardware will typically solve a bunch of slowness issues. Restart your Mac If your Mac is acting sluggish or some programs are failing to run, try to restart your computer. When you restart your Mac, it closes all running programs and offers to save any files you’re working on. Once you choose to save the file, your Mac will boot up again.
The result is a refreshed Mac that should perform better. To restart your Mac, do the following:.
Click the Apple menu button in the top-left corner of your screen. Click Restart. Click the Restart button in the pop-up menu to confirm. If you need to reboot your Mac but want to reopen apps automatically after rebooting, check the Reopen windows when logging back in box in the pop-up menu. Reset SMC & PRAM Sometimes your Mac will act strange for no apparent reason — it sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly, the battery doesn’t charge properly, the keyboard backlight behaves incorrectly, and your Mac performs slowly. If these issues are not solved by restarting your computer, you’ll need to reset SMC (system management controller) and PRAM (parameter RAM). Resetting the SMC How to speed up MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook First of all, you need to determine whether your Mac’s battery is removable.
That’s because the process of resetting the SMC for computers that have a non-removable battery is quite different. If the battery is non-removable:. Shut down your Mac. Press Shift+Control+Option on your keyboard and press the power button at the same time. Hold the keys and a power button for 10 seconds. Release all keys. Press the power button to turn on your Mac.
If the battery is removable:. Shut down your Mac. Remove the battery. Press the power button and hold it for 5 seconds. Press the power button again to turn on your computer. How to speed up iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro.
Shut down your computer. Unplug a power cord and wait 15 seconds. Plug the power cord in. Wait 5 seconds and press the power button.
Resetting the PRAM. Shut down your Mac. Press the power button. Press the Command+Option+P+R keys at the same time. Hold the keys until your Mac restarts. Release the keys. Resetting SMC and PRAM may seem to be difficult, but it can really help with Mac speedup.
Replace your HDD with SSD You can breathe new life into your Mac by replacing its traditional hard drive with a solid-state drive. Adding an SSD will make your computer boot faster, copy files in the blink of an eye and make the system really fast when multitasking. A word of caution: it’s recommended that you consult a professional before attempting any hardware upgrades yourself because the process is quite challenging.
And don’t forget to make a complete backup of your data before replacing your HDD with SSD, so that you’ll be able to restore all important files if something goes wrong. Add more RAM How to speed up my Mac? How to get it run faster?
In fact, upgrading RAM is usually a great solution for improving your Mac’s performance. The more RAM your Mac has at its disposal, the more windows or tabs you can have open without slowing the system down. With more RAM, the operating system isn’t making calls to virtual memory which uses the hard drive and slows down the system considerably.
Here’s a comprehensive guide on “.” 15. Use CleanMyMac X If you don’t feel like spending the next several hours trying to get your Mac in shape manually, there is a great solution.
Download and let it do the job for you. It’s a powerful utility for speeding up Mac. It knows which files are useless, where they are, and how to remove them completely.
CleanMyMac is incredibly easy to use: all the tools we’ve talked about, and even more, are right there, ready to launch in a few clicks. No wasted time, just a faster Mac. Now, speed up your Mac, take a deep breath, do a Mac speed test and come to thank us. These might also interest you:.