9 Easy Ways to Make Your Mac Run Faster

A slow computer can be frustrating and affect your productivity, so how can you fix it? This guide lists 9 easy ways to make your Mac run faster.

When you first got your Mac, it was a powerhouse of a machine that could run anything and everything! Now that you’ve had it for a few years, it struggles to open up a single browser tab.

You get the color wheel of death whenever you try to open up your apps. When your apps do decide to work, they’re slow at best. Guess it’s time to chuck your computer and get a new one.

Don’t be so sure about that. There are ways for you to make your Mac run faster without trashing it or taking it to a repair shop. Check out this guide to learn more.

1. Reduce Your Startup Programs

If you have a million programs set to start when you turn on your computer, it’s going to take a while for it to finish booting. To see a list of your startup programs, head over to your system preferences and click on “Users and Groups” followed by “Login Items”.

Scroll down the list of startup programs mac and get rid of the ones that don’t need to be opened when you turn on your computer. Trust us when we say that there will be more than you think.

2. See if Your Computer Needs to Update

It feels like that little message reminding you that your computer needs to update always comes at the most inopportune time. Still, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. These updates are there to fix any small bugs that may be bogging your computer down.

Most of the time your computer will tell you about these updates but if you want to check for them yourself, go to the app store from the Apple drop-down menu. From there, your computer will let you know if there’s an update available.

3. Restart Your Computer

Turning your computer off and turning it back on again is one of the classic ways to speed up a Mac. Like people, computers get tired after they’ve been working for a hot minute.

Taking the time to restart your computer might give it the energy it needs to start working as it should once again.

4. Close Any Open Tabs and Apps That You’re Not Using

Keeping one or two tabs open at one time is fine but when there’s ten or more, your computer will start to struggle. Try to get into the habit of closing your tabs after you’re done using them.

The same goes for your apps. Apps can use up a ton of memory depending on which ones you have open. Close all the unneeded ones and you’ll see a noticeable difference.

5. Clean Up Your Desktop

Are you the type of person who saves every little thing to their desktop? If so, try to get out of that habit or at least begin deleting files after you don’t need them any longer.

The reason being is that the Mac treats every file on your desktop as its own window. This can take up tons of memory and slow down your computer.

Depending on how messy your desktop is, it might take you a while to sort through everything but the small speed boost you get will make the work more than worth it.

6. Check the Activity Monitor

Think you’ve closed all your unwanted apps and programs? You would be wrong. There are tons of programs that sneakily hide and run in the background and eat up memory.

Unless you look at your activity monitor every now and again, you’d never catch them. To run a check, open up your spotlight search and type in “Activity Monitor”.

A screen will pop up that will out all of those hidden programs. Scroll through the list and close all the ones that you don’t need.

7. Clean Your Hard Drive

If none of the methods we’ve talked about so far have helped you, there might be a bunch of old files slowing your Mac down. Depending on how many files that is, you’re in for a night of fun. There are programs you can download that will help make the process faster.

If cleaning out the old files didn’t work, the problem might be your computer’s language settings.

A lot of Macs come installed with several languages that you’ll never use. All they do is take up hard drive space and make your computer run slow. You can download a program to clean that out for you too.

8. Disable a Few Visual Effects

The Mac has a ton of visual effects that are super cool but not necessary. In fact, if you’re using an older Mac, this could be what’s making it run slow.

Change your dock from the Genie effect to the Scale effect. Less goes into the Scale effect so it won’t put as much of a strain on your device. You can do this in your system preferences.

9. Clear Your Browser Cache

Is your computer only slow when you’re trying to browse through the web? Most of the time when this happens, it means you need to clear out your browser cache.

Clearing out the cache is different for every single web browser but 9 times out of 10, you’ll do it by going to your search history.

Make Your Mac Run Faster Using These Tips

Is your Mac moving at the speed of a turtle? Don’t throw your computer in the garbage or head to a repair company until you try out some of these methods to make your Mac run faster.

Sometimes all it takes is closing a few programs or restarting your computer to have it running like new again.

Looking for more ways to boost your computer power? Check out our blog daily for even more Mac tips and tricks.