When you own a Mac, there is usually little concern for system maintenance as the hardware performance of Apple computers is very high in most usage scenarios. Unfortunately, even a perfect machine as it can be a Mac requires maintenance both to make it last longer and to be able to use it without risking errors, problems or slowdowns. The cause of reduced performance can derive from poorly designed external programs or with some bugs, from the excess of junk files or too many programs in automatic start.
Basically, even Macs can become slow and even if this never happened, it is still worth reading this article to prevent any possible problem and optimize the system to make it go as fast as the first time.
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The MacOS operating system requires significantly less attention than any version of Windows, in fact the tricks that we will recommend are much simpler and more immediate to use than the many programs and tools available for Windows and dedicated to cleaning and performance optimization.
As far as possible, therefore, MacOS and the devices where it is present (iMac and MacBook) require a milder level of attention, but this does not mean we have to limit ourselves to watching our system slowly slow down! By carefully following all the steps below, you will solve the slowdown problems and optimize the MacOS operating system to perform its tasks at maximum speed.
1) Restart every week
First of all, we will restart the Mac if it hasn't been done for a long time and generally at least once a week. Often this alone can resolve any errors and slowdowns and will allow the operating system to close unnecessary apps and correctly install updates, which can also bring benefits in terms of performance.
2) Close open applications
From the dock at the bottom, the black dots at the bottom below the various icons indicate the applications still running even if we had previously closed them with the X in the upper left of the window.
Right-click on the icon of the still active program and click Exit to close the program.
3) Organize the auto-start items
The list in Login elements shows all the programs that start together with the system and therefore can lengthen the initial loading time; it is found in the Users and groups menu in the System Preferences .
In addition to the login items you can check the / Library / StartupItems folder (to be searched in the Finder). In this folder you have to look for the applications no longer present on the computer and remove them.
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4) Avoid restoring windows and applications from previous sessions
One of the most useful features in MacOS is to review open applications and windows the last time you used the Mac.
This feature takes significant resources depending on the number of windows that have been opened and slows down the startup time of the computer.
You can disable this function in System Preferences -> General and by unchecking the item Close windows when you exit an app .
5) Uninstall unnecessary applications
We open the Finder and go to the Applications folder, so we can uninstall the programs that we don't use and that are not necessary; to uninstall, simply drag them to the Trash in the bottom bar.
To make sure that the uninstallation does not leave traces it is worth using the AppCleaner program that keeps the system clean from unnecessary files.
Just drag the apps that we no longer want to keep on the Mac into the AppCleaner interface and it will continue to uninstall and clean any residues on the disk, so as to effectively perform a complete uninstall.
6) Uninstall unnecessary languages
On a Mac a lot of disk space is occupied by system translations.
If you use the Italian language, it is better to remove all the other languages (except English) with the Monolingual program, very easy to use and install on the Mac.
Once installed on your Mac, simply start it and choose, among the superfluous languages present, those that we do not want to be present on our Mac anymore.
To uninstall and clean up, simply click Remove ; the space recovered can be very substantial, given the numerous language packages that Mac brings with each installation.
7) Disk cleaning
Once you uninstall the programs that are no longer needed on your system, it is worth checking the larger files that take up disk space and removing them with the right program. One of the best programs that we can use for disk cleaning on Mac is CCleaner for Mac, the Apple counterpart of the famous cleaning application also present on Windows.
We can download it for free from here -> CCleaner for Mac .
Let's install it on our Mac and take advantage of the various windows available to delete the browsing traces of the installed browsers, the data of the superfluous apps, free up disk space, block the automatic starts and any other setting already seen also in the counterpart for Windows.
8) Onyx: program to optimize Mac performance
OnyX is a program to optimize a Mac computer and to prevent future problems; we can download it for each version of OS X and MacOS from this site .
OnyX has many basic commands, but it is also an advanced tool to be used with caution if you are not very experienced.
With this program we can cure the Mac by clicking on the various menus, each with its own items: Maintenance, Cleaning, Utilities, Automation and much more. The cleaning process is automatic and can be configured to delete old and useless files from the cache, the internet and other programs.
If that's not enough, the to-do list for how to speed up your Mac and avoid slowdowns even if old .
