What To Do For Slow Mac

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If you have a brand new MacBook Air and it’s running slow, contact Apple Support directly or schedule a visit to Genius Bar. Table of Contents. Clean up Macbook Air Hard Drive. Close Background Applications. Optimize Startup Applications. After using your Mac for a couple of years, you may find that your Macbook or iMac takes longer to start up, or gets the annoying beachball frequently. Yes, your Mac is getting and running slowly. In order to have a better performance, no matter you play the games or use some working apps, some users choose to cost plenty of money to buy a new Mac. Fix your slow Mac once and for all Your browser is (likely) the biggest culprit. Almost any app can hog your Mac's processing power and memory, causing. Activity Monitor shows the apps slowing you down. Activity Monitor is built into MacOS and can be found in Applications. Back to the basics. 1 day ago  Mac Running Slow, Noisy Fan: accountsd High CPU Usage Last updated on October 2, 2020 By Stacey Butler Leave a Comment Some users have reported problems with their Macs running slowly after they updated to the newest version of macOS.

  1. Why Is My Mac So Slow
  2. What To Do For Low Magnesium

Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.

Why Is My Mac So Slow

* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.

Find out how much storage is available on your Mac

Choose Apple menu  > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.

Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.

Manage storage on your Mac

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The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.


Store in iCloud

Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:

  • Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
  • Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
  • Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.

Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.

Optimize Storage

Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.

  • Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
  • Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
  • Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.

Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.

Empty Trash Automatically

Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.

Reduce Clutter

Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.

You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.

What to do for slow mac desktop

Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.

Where to find the settings for each feature

The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.

  • If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings.
  • In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
  • In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
  • If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
    In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
  • In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.

Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”

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Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space

With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:

  • Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
  • Reminds you to delete used app installers
  • Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
  • Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed

How to free up storage space manually

Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:

  • Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
  • Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
  • Move files to an external storage device.
  • Compress files.
  • Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.

Learn more

  • The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
  • When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
  • If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.

What To Do For Low Magnesium

Support‎ > ‎Advice & Articles‎ > ‎

Slow Mac? What to Do and What Not to Do

If you feel that your Mac should have better performance or is too slow, and you see the spinning rainbow wheel a lot, this article will offer some pointers.

What NOT to Do
First and foremost, do not panic - the slow-down is not caused by a virus, and is almost certainly not due to any kind of malware. See Viruses, Malware and Adware on the Mac for more information. If a slow-down is the only issue you are experiencing, it is almost definitely not due to malware.
Secondly, if you are going to remove system files without being fully aware of what process they belong to, be sure you have a backup, as such a procedure may cause data loss.
In addition, do not download any software that says it will 'clean,' 'enhance,' or 'improve performance' on your Mac. Some programs are often scams, and will claim that your computer is infected (if the program also has an anti-virus function) or in 'critical condition' regardless of what is on your Mac (this statement is mostly referring to MacKeeper), and ask you to pay for the full version of their software. Other programs are simply dangerous and will delete system files that OS X relies on to run smoothly (or at all). Especially avoid cleaning programs with aggressive advertising tactics, like MacKeeper and CleanMyMac.
What to Do
This section will explain the software and hardware aspects of what may be impacting your Mac's performance. Before you do anything, be sure to back up all data. We recommend using Time Machine, which comes with your Mac, but there are third-party offerings as well. All you need is an external hard drive. Apple sells a wireless hard drive called a Time Capsule.
Software
One thing to try is to clear system caches. Click on Finder in your Dock, then from the menu bar at the top, select Go, and then Go to Folder. Type in: ~/Library/Caches. You can delete everything in this folder without repercussions. Repeat the same process for /Library/Caches (without the tilde). Although caches are there to help things run faster, they may become corrupt, so even if you do not notice an improvement right away, give it time.
There could be some third-party software you have installed that is creating a conflict. Such software, ironically, includes programs that claim to 'clean' or 'enhance performance' on your Mac. More details are in the 'What Not to Do' section above. There could also be other third party software aside from cleaning programs that is causing the slow-down.
Another built-in utility in OS X is Activity Monitor. One way to access it is to enter 'activity monitor' into a Spotlight search (press Command + space to access Spotlight). Take a look at the CPU and Memory tabs to see if there is a particular application or process that is eating up a lot of CPU or memory. Usually, the fans will run louder if there is a high CPU usage. NOTE: Prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you need to select one of the headers in Activity Monitor to organize the processes by that type. For example, select 'CPU' at the top to organize processes by CPU usage.
When the small arrow to the right of the header name is pointing up, processes are organized from least to greatest. Click on the header so the the arrow will point down, indicating that processes are organized from greatest to least.

If there is a troublesome application, and it repeatedly hogs resources, you may consider uninstalling it.
Using the same 'Go to Folder' function of Finder, look at ~/Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchAgents (again, without the tilde), and /Library/LaunchDaemons. Here you will find several .plist files. Files in these folders mean that the program they are associated with is running some sort of process in the background, in which case they are using up system resources even when the program is not running. If you see any .plist files that belong to third party programs you know that you have installed, try removing those programs by going to the Applications folder, dragging their icon to the trash, and emptying the trash. It is easy to identify which program the file belongs to, because the file name begins with 'com,' followed by the company name, followed by the app name, followed the the file extension, 'plist.'
NOTE: When removing such files, restart your computer after emptying the trash.
First and foremost, check to see how much RAM your computer has installed. To do this, go to  > About This Mac. Look at the line titled 'Memory.' Also look at the line titled 'Version' to figure out which version of OS X you are running. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) requires 512MB of RAM. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) requires 1GB of RAM. OS X 10.7 (Lion) and later require 2GB of RAM. Note that if you have the bare minimum required for your operating system, your Mac's performance will probably be less than stellar, and you should consider getting more RAM. The requirements mentioned above are the amount of RAM that the operating system needs for its processes. To run anything on top of that, you are almost definitely going to need more RAM. Two widely-recommended Mac RAM vendors are Crucial and OWC. If you need to know the exact memory specifications for your Mac, try Crucial's System Scanner.
Also, the problem could be your hard drive. It is always a good idea to have at least 10% free space on your hard drive, as anything less will likely impact performance. For example, if your hard drive is 250GB, you should plan on having 25GB free. If you have enough free space, you might also try repairing the disk. This is done with Disk Utility, an application included with OS X. However, you cannot run Disk Utility straight from your startup disk for this purpose, as it will not let you repair the disk you are currently using. To repair your startup disk, boot to a different partition or drive. The most effective way to do this would be to select the Recovery partition and run Disk Utility from there (OS X Lion and later), or to insert either the gray Mac OS X install disk the came with your Mac, or a retail Mac OS X installer disk (Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier; may be a flash drive for MacBook Air users). To do this, restart your Mac ( > Restart). After the screen goes dark, hold down the 'option' key while the Mac is booting back up. A screen which shows all bootable drives should then be displayed. OS X Lion and later users should see 'Recovery HD' as a choice. Mac OS X Snow Leopard and earlier users, upon inserting the install disk, should see the disk as an option (it may take a minute for the disk to be read). Boot to the appropriate drive. Once booted, select 'Utilities' from the menu bar at the top, and choose Disk Utility (if you booted to the Recovery HD, you can select Disk Utility from the main menu as well). From the sidebar on the left in Disk Utility, select your main hard drive (NOT 'Macintosh HD,' that's just the partition on the hard drive - the drive itself should be above this in the list). Then press Repair Disk, which is near the lower right of the window. If the disk cannot be repaired, your hard drive may be failing, so back up whatever data possible and look into having it replaced.
You might also consider upgrading to an SSD (solid state drive), if your Mac came with a traditional HDD (hard drive). Upgrading to an SSD means faster loading and faster bootup times, whereas upgrading the RAM means your computer can handle more at once.

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Everyone who has a Mac should read this article. My Mac Mini is now running perfect after numerous problems.