When do macs start slowing down

Go to the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your screen and select "System Preferences," then choose "Users and Groups. You may have to go into the settings of individual apps and disable the auto-launch with restart function. Your cache consists of temporary files gathered from the sites you visit. It lets you browse the internet faster, but those files can pile up and slow down your Mac as a whole. Solution: Clear out your cache. Don't worry if you've never done this before: It can be quickly and easily accomplished when you know where to go.

For info on how to do it, check out our article, " How to clear the cache on your Mac computer to make it run more efficiently.

There are a ton of reasons your Mac might slow down. And whether you believe in planned obsolescence or not, the fact is that computers don't last forever. Eventually you will have to replace parts on your old Mac, and even the computer itself.

If the above options don't work for you, it's a good idea to get a professional to look it over especially if your Mac is still within the AppleCare warranty , and it may even be time to consider buying a new computer. Either way, backing up your Mac is a good place to start.

For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.

Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. That, of course, can cause your Mac to run slowly. Anything else should be put in a folder or folders. This will open the View Options window for your desktop only.

When you use browsers and other programs, various files are put into temporary storage areas known as caches. These caches do things like speeding up web page loading when you return to websites. Apps may also create log files to help with troubleshooting. That can lead to a slow-running Mac. To be on the safe side, you should first back up your Mac.

You can read more about this in our guide to clearing caches on your Mac. Your web browser might be another factor that slows down your Mac. Common culprits in this situation include having too many extensions installed. Extensions can be useful in many ways, but they can also slow your Mac down.

Removing them can help, and you can do it manually or automatically. Check the list of available extensions and delete the unnecessary ones by selecting them and clicking Uninstall. You can also update extensions by clicking on the Updates icon in the left-hand sidebar in the App Store.

If you want to know which Chrome extensions are making your Mac run slowly, take a look in the Chrome task manager. If you have a ton of tabs open in your web browser, it can easily slow down your Mac. The more you have open, the harder your Mac needs to work. These browser tabs can eat up memory before you know it. Open the Activity Monitor. You may also find that some of the web addresses in Activity Monitor are actually extensions, rather than open web pages. If so, follow the previous advice about uninstalling or disabling them.

This opens Chrome's own task manager, where you can see how much resources are being used by each tab. Look through the list to see if any are using a lot of RAM or processing time. Macs are generally secure, but they can get viruses and other malware. Common sources are malicious websites, file sharing apps, and booby-trapped email attachments. They might, for example, use your Mac to send out junk emails to millions of people.

One way to reduce the chance of a malware infection is to limit what apps can be installed on your Mac. By allowing apps to only be installed from the Mac App Store, you can improve your chances of staying virus-free. As well as being more cautious with file downloads, you should clear caches and run antivirus software to keep your Mac free of malware.

For more information, read our guide to checking for malware on your Mac. Alternatively, give MacKeeper a try. As well as optimization and privacy tools, it offers excellent antivirus scanning and removal. Select them and click the minus symbol. This only accounts for some of the processes that run at startup. There are also likely to be some that run in the background as well.

Dealing with those is a slightly different process, though. Read our guide to changing startup items to learn more. Eventually, they will all break down and stop working. With some components, you might get decades of life out of them.

But with others, five years is the average lifespan. Better late than never. You may transfer your photo library to Google Drive or DropBox, or move it to separate storage.

How to do it:. Browser tabs are probably the most resource-intensive processes on your Mac: if they are open, they are continuously running and consuming RAM and CPU resources. Many IT consultants recommend having no more than 9 open tabs at a time.

Unused apps are the biggest space-wasters. All of us download applications that seem helpful and exciting at first but turn to clutter up our disk instead of being used frequently. Mind the fact that if you delete the apps, the chances are that some leftover files will remain on your Mac. Its Uninstaller module shows how many apps you have and gathers all leftovers in one tab — so you can quickly delete them. Not many people know this, but every desktop icon is, in fact, a little active window that your macOS has to render and process.

If there are myriads of icons, no wonder your Mac is slow. To make your Mac run faster, organize files on your desktop into separate folders. Right-click on your desktop and select Use Stacks. Then, you can move them to another location. Never hesitate to send to Trash things you rarely use, like apps you had downloaded months ago. In other words, if your browser is slow, your Mac will be slow too. Even the fastest machine can be dragged down by hundreds of opened tabs and extensions.

Hidden add-ons, plug-ins, and extensions often come disguised as free software. You download something and the next moment see weird search bars, pop-ups, and torrents of advertisements on your screen. And lastly, such tools may stealthily collect your data. All your user files and applications may over time become a heavy burden for your macOS.

This is tied to your user account. It simply contains too many caches, cross-links, user logs — more than your Mac can chew. Though it sounds a bit radical, you can activate a new user profile. It is absolutely safe and is a bit like starting a new life. You will have to copy all the needed app files such as Preferences to the new user. As a result, your Mac may become much snappier. To transfer your important files from one account to another, you need to drop them into the Shared folder which is found on your hard drive.

Animations and rich graphics are extremely resource-hungry. We are not suggesting you should switch your Mac back to style simplicity. But in the case of a slow Mac, the less is sometimes more. Click "Minimize windows into application icon" and change Genie effect to Scale. The scale is a much simpler zoom and less taxing on memory. SMC stands for System Management Controller and manages a whole range of low-level functions of your Mac: fans, lights, power, system volume, and other parameters.

Quite often SMC preferences get broken and your Mac gets slow. Now, click System Report. Choose Controller in the hardware section — if your Mac has a chip, there should be Apple T2 Security Chip on the right. This memory is like fuel for all your apps. But that is a time-consuming operation that will chip a few bucks off your wallet. Luckily, there is a shortcut. You can perform this operation if your system urgently needs a fresh memory. This is often the case with media converters and video editors that consume all the RAM they can get.

When you carry out tasks on your computer, the system puts some files into temporary storage. Known as cache, this storage helps speed up web page loading and other app functions.

To prevent your Mac from running slowly, you must clear your caches from time to time. Your Mac uses random access memory RAM to store temporary information in contrast to the hard drive, which is used for long-term storage.

This is ideal if your Mac is accessible for upgrades. A cluttered desktop can also cause a Mac to be slow. Following these steps will instantly sort out the desktop files. Delete the useless ones and move the others to a more appropriate location. Some malware strains are designed to deliberately slow down Macs. In other cases, they indirectly slow down your system as they steal resources and disrupt processes.

You can catch malware from malicious websites, email attachments, and file-sharing apps. Hackers are inventive, so no matter how careful you are, you could still inadvertently provide them with access to your Mac. Troubleshooting your lagging Mac can be as simple as restarting it or as complex as determining if it's infected with malware.

In any case, you know you need to do everything you can to get it running smoothly again. After all, you bought the expensive machine because you expected it to provide optimal performance. The steps we listed will keep you from having to hand your Mac over to an Apple Genius Bar. But some issues can be too complex for a non-techie. Combining security software and expert human support, Clario can provide the digital healthcare services you need. We offer a free trial, so you can download the app and give it a run, no strings attached.

Senior content manager at Clario, cybersecurity and house music enthusiast. Malware Threats. Data Protection. Digital Wellness. Hi there! We use cookies to give you the best online experience. For details, see our Cookie Policy.