What can you do when your Mac is no longer running like it once used to, when you first purchased it? As a matter of fact, you have several options. One would be to do nothing at all and watch as your performance decreases, while your frustration increases – but that’s not really viable, is it? Your second option for a faster Mac would be investing in specialized software that can solve the issue for you. And last, but certainly not least, you could take the following basic steps, in order to ensure that everything will run smoothly on your machine once more.
Yes, everybody suffers from this ‘disorder’, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable. If you’re complaining about clutter, then how about you start de-cluttering where it’s most easily noticeable? On your desktop. If you have more than a dozen icons on your desktop, that’s where you need to start working for a faster Mac. It won’t take you more than ten minutes to remove unnecessary icons and stash the rest of them away into neatly organized photos. Did you know that cleaning out your desktop can improve performance to such an extent that it will cut your computer’s booting time in half?
2. Whittle down the start-up programs for a faster Mac
Most Mac users never bother asking themselves what start-up programs do – and that’s a shame, since, in a nutshell, these program always run in the background, once they’ve been opened at startup. It doesn’t matter if you’re using them or not. They’re always there, hogging up precious computing power and other resources. As such, for a faster Mac, head on down to System Preferences > System > Users & Groups > Login Items and check the programs you want and need to run at startup. And don’t worry – unchecking the others doesn’t mean you’re deleting them, but simply removing them from your Mac’s initial line-up.
3. Free up disk space
Having more free disk space available is a good rule of thumb, both for Mac users, as well as for PC users. In general, it pays off to have at least 35 to 40 per cent of disk space available at all times, especially if your Mac is partitioned. The OS X partition is especially important in this sense. It’s far easier to let a program take care of Mac hard-disk cleanup for you, but you can also do it manually, if you’re so inclined.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin
You’d think all computer users and owners know they have to do this from time to time, wouldn’t you? Well, then, when’s the last time you did it? Ideally, you should empty the Recycle Bin on your Mac every other couple of days, since this frees up hard disk space. And in case you didn’t know, there’s a keyboard shortcut that will save you some time in ‘taking out the trash’. Simply hold down Command + Shift + Delete, then click Ok in the window that pops up. Similarly, remember to empty the iPhoto Trash, too, in order to get rid of duplicate photos.
5. Delete the browser’s cache
Did you know that absolutely all browsers create caches, in which some of the information you access remains available offline? This happens because it speeds up loading times – however, if you don’t regularly empty said cache, it can go all the way up to 20GB, slowing up your entire Mac system. Emptying the cache of a browser for a faster Mac is not at all complicated, whether you use Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or any other software. Simply Google search for the instructions, or find them intuitively, in the program’s interface.