How to speed up MacBook — 15 quick tips

Remember the feeling of a brand-new Mac? A Mac without rainbow wheels. A Mac that didn’t cause headaches or frustration. Below, we’ll show you 15 ways you can shake off the dust from your system and make any Mac faster. All it takes is to disable a few things here and there.

All the steps we outline apply to Mac computers running macOS Sonoma. You can follow the same instructions to speed up older Macs; however, the steps may be different, especially those related to using the System Settings app. 

Here’s how to speed up your Mac

Sounds like your Mac? 

• Mac booting up slower
• Overheating computer
• Browser crashes
• Frequent “beach-balls”

These simple steps provided below won’t take much time but will greatly help to improve your Mac’s performance. If you do these activities regularly, you won’t have to worry about the need to speed up your Mac again. 

So, here are our proven ways to make your Mac run faster.

1. Free up RAM

If your Mac runs out of memory, it will naturally slow down. You now know how to check memory and free it up using Activity Monitor. But it’s a lot of work. Luckily, there is a way to do it automatically.

It’s easy to do with a free tool in CleanMyMac. It has a dedicated feature called Menu App that monitors Memory pressure on your Mac, among other things.

1. Get the free version of CleanMyMac here (a link to download).
2. Click a little iMac icon in the menu bar.
3. Under Memory, click Free Up.

You can also click the Memory tab and quit top consumers one by one there.

Alternatively, free up your RAM with Terminal

If you don’t want to use a third-party app, you can free RAM instantly with Terminal. You can apply this trick when your system is running out of available memory. In other words, when a particular app freezes up and desperately needs some fresh memory. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Terminal app via Launchpad.
2. Paste in the following command: sudo purge
3. Press Return.
4. You will be asked to enter your system password.

2. Find resource-hungry processes

Some apps are more power-hungry than others and can slow your Mac to a crawl. To see which apps are eating up your system resources, use Activity Monitor. You can open it from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder or use Spotlight to find it.

How to use Activity Monitor to speed up Mac

Activity Monitor details five different resources: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage. 

• If your Mac is running slowly, pay special attention to the CPU section. It shows how processes affect the CPU (processor) activity. When you’re running intensive apps, like video editors or games, they may use more of your CPU capacity. Those apps will be listed at the top of the list in the CPU tab. If some app is using a lot of CPU power, you can quit it: select the app or process and click the “X” in the left corner of the Activity Monitor. 
• The Memory tab shows how much memory each process or app is using. The Memory Pressure graph at the bottom of the window helps understand whether your Mac manages memory efficiently. If it’s green, you shouldn’t worry. But if it turns yellow or red, it means your Mac’s running out of free RAM — quit the apps that are on top of the list if you don’t need them running.
• It’s also important to check the Energy tab. The most battery-draining apps will be listed first — see if you need them running. Otherwise, quit those programs to prolong the time between charges.
• There are also system processes listed in the Activity Monitor. These usually have words like system, helper, assistant, and core in their names. To display them all, go to the View menu and select System Processes.

Important: Activity Monitor lists everything running in the background. To be on the safe side, quit only processes related to apps (e.g., Safari or Photoshop). Before quitting anything with hard-to-decipher names (like coreaudiod or the like), conduct a quick search of what the process is responsible for to avoid closing a vital system process.

3. Manage your startup items

It goes without saying that a clean startup helps speed up slow Mac. When your Mac launches faster, it takes less time to do anything. No waiting for Safari, Chrome, or Firefox to open — they open instantly. How do you get such speed? Well, when your Mac boots up, it runs a lot of unnecessary apps. But it’s quite easy to take control of it. Go to your System Settings > General and then click Login Items. Now, find a program you don’t immediately need when your Mac starts up and disable it.

There are also unseen apps called launch agents that may slow your Mac down. For example, your internet download speeds suddenly plummeted. How to speed up downloads on Mac? Delete background agents that cannibalize your internet speeds. They can be disabled from the Login Items pane as well — just make your way through the apps allowed in the background.

4. Restart your Mac now and then

Another quick tip that can help speed up your Mac is restarting it occasionally. It frees up RAM, installs any update that may be awaiting, and quits all apps and processes. On a Mac with Apple silicon, it also performs system checks and resets SMC and NVRAM. All of these optimize your Mac, thus making it faster. There are no rules here, but doing it once a week may become a good habit.

To restart your Mac, click Restart from the main Apple menu.

If you want to reset SMC and NVRAM on an Intel-based Mac and see if it speeds up your computer, check out this guide on how to do it.

5. Remove cache and other system junk

One type of system junk that may significantly slow down your Mac is cache files — temporary data used to speed up processes. For example, a web browser will cache web pages to download a website faster when you revisit it. Sounds great, right? Actually, it is, but there is always a “but.” Over time, these cache files take much storage on your Mac, and instead of speeding things up, they slow your computer down.

So, how to speed up MacBook by emptying the caches? There are two ways: you can clean them up manually (step by step), or you can remove them in a second with a Mac cleaner app CleanMyMac.

If you want to clear the cache and other junk automatically, do the following:

1. Open CleanMyMac (download the app for free here).
2. Choose Cleanup.
3. Click Scan and then Clean.

That’s it! However, if you decide to clean cache files manually, it is also possible. For example, you can open a new Finder window and press Command+Shift+G. Paste /Library/Caches followed by Return and delete system cache files from there. Repeat for ~/Library/Caches to remove user cache.

Note, though, that if you decide to do it, double-check what you send to the Trash and delete only files inside the folders.

Be ready that the process is time-consuming, and you will not delete all types of cache from these locations. There are also browser cache and app cache you might want to remove as well.

For more tips, check out this guide on how to clear cache on a Mac.

6. Close browser tabs

Another proven way to speed up MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac is to close unneeded browser tabs. You may be surprised that open tabs consume a lot of resources. So, if you feel that your Mac is more sluggish than usual, consider closing unnecessary ones. If you need to return to them later, bookmark such tabs or add them to a reading list. Most browsers have the Bookmarks menu in the menu bar from where you can do it.

7. Update your Mac (OS and hardware)

Typically, Macs take care of themselves. Having the latest software from Apple makes speeding up your Mac simple. To check your version of the operating system, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and then About This Mac. Make sure you have the latest macOS/OS X installed (or the latest you can install since not all Macs upgrade to macOS Sonoma).

Here’s how to update macOS version:

1. Open System Settings > General > Software Update.
2. If a new version is available, click Update Now and follow the on-screen instructions to install it. 

While you wait for the new macOS version to download, use this time to enable automatic updates. This way, you won’t have to check for any upgrades and install them manually. Here’s how to do it:

1. In System Settings > General > Software Updates, click the i next to macOS updates and Security Responses.
2. Enable all options — now, your Mac will automatically install macOS updates and updates to apps downloaded from the App Store.

Also, make sure you update all apps. Here are different ways to do it: 

1. Open App Store and click Updates from the sidebar. Click Update All or Update next to every app.
   

   

    
2. Open an app and click its name > Check for Updates from the menu bar. 
   
   

   

3. Go to the developer’s website and download a new version of the app.

Just like with macOS, you can enable automatic updates for third-party apps. Usually, you can find this option in app settings.

Tip: Consider installing updates when you do not need your Mac. For example, on the weekend or in the evening. By doing so, you will avoid disruptions of your working process or entertainment and make updates smooth and painless.

8. Reindex Spotlight

If you recently updated your OS, you would be aware of the slowness that occurs when Spotlight is indexing. This only takes a few hours, and then your Mac will be fine. But sometimes, the indexing gets stuck, and you need to speed up a Mac. To solve this problem, you need to reindex Spotlight by going to System Settings > Spotlight and clicking Search Privacy at the bottom of the window.

Now drag your hard drive from Finder into the Privacy List. Once added, remove it by clicking the “-” sign. The indexing will start again, but hopefully, after a few hours, it will finish properly and boost your Mac speed.

9. Manage iCloud syncing

iCloud syncing, if you have it enabled, causes your Mac to slow down. You rarely notice it because it happens in the background.

Let’s check your iCloud settings:

• Open System Settings > Apple Account.
• Click iCloud.

If you click See All, you will see what is synced with iCloud. If you turn off some apps in this pane, they will stop syncing with iCloud. iCloud Drive and Photos are prime suspects worth a closer look. Are there too many large documents on your Mac? If so, iCloud will hog up resources trying to sync all that massive data. To ensure that it does not waste valuable system resources, choose only those apps and types of documents you need synced and disable the rest of them. We recommend syncing only essential files.

Now, click Drive and look at that option that says “Optimize Mac Storage.” This setting tells your Mac to stop offloading your files to the cloud and store the iCloud Drive contents locally on your drive. Its main purpose is to free up space. But the price is constant background sync. So, another way to make MacBook faster is to disable that setting.

10. Run maintenance tasks

If nothing so far has helped, consider running some additional maintenance tasks. In fact, maintaining your Mac properly can help prevent the drop in its performance, so if you’ve never done that before, it’s time to start doing it now. 

But how do you maintain your Mac? Some tasks include reindexing Spotlight, repairing disk permissions, and removing Time Machine snapshots. On macOS versions older than Sonoma, it may also include running maintenance scripts. You can do all of them manually, but it would be time-consuming. For example, to initiate maintenance scripts, you’ll have to use Terminal. You’ll also need to run other Terminal commands to thin out Time Machine snapshots. 

Luckily, there is an easier way — CleanMyMac we’ve mentioned above. It can do all of the tasks mentioned above as well as flush DNS cache, speed up Mail app, and remove background processes and login items. All of this will give your Mac a much-needed boost.

Here’s how to use it: 

1. Open CleanMyMac once again.
2. Click Performance > Scan > View All Tasks.
3. Select tasks you want to run — you can read what each of them does, along with usage recommendations, when you click the i icon next to them.
4. Click Run. 

After running maintenance tasks, do not forget to check Login Items and Background Items to remove unnecessary startup processes.

11. Check your hardware

If you’ve followed the steps above, and your Mac is still slow, it may be that it’s failing. To prevent minor issues from escalating into major ones, consider checking your MacBook’s hardware health. The best way to do it is to contact an Apple-certified repair center. As an alternative, you can upgrade your RAM and run Apple Diagnostics. We’ll show you how to do it later in the article.

12. Turn off visual effects

A great tip to help you when you wonder how to speed up your Mac is to turn off visual effects. Sure, they look pretty, but who cares if your Mac is running slowly? Turning off some of the features can greatly speed up iMac or MacBook.

Here’s how to speed up a Mac by turning off some visual effects:

1. Click System Settings > Desktop & Dock.
2. Disable the following options: “Animate opening applications,” “Automatically hide and show the Dock.”
3. Next to the “Minimize windows using” option, change the Genie effect to the Scale effect.

13. Upgrade your RAM

RAM stands for Random Access Memory, and it is a temporary memory that the CPU uses to hold important information system processes need to run. In case of high RAM usage, your Mac may slow down, so upgrading your RAM may be a great speed-up option.

The normal amount in 2023 is anything above 8 GB of RAM. An extra 8 GB RAM card will cost you around $30.

The more RAM your Mac has at its disposal, the more windows or tabs you can have open without slowing the system down. With more RAM, the operating system isn’t making calls to virtual memory, which uses the hard drive and slows down the system considerably. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to upgrade your Mac’s RAM.

14. Check your internet connection

Sometimes, when your internet connection is slow, you may think that it is your Mac that is sluggish, especially when you watch videos, play video games, or do anything else online or work with apps that require being connected to the network.

So, to rule it out, run a quick speed test by using this or other tool freely available online. If your internet connection is slower than usual, try moving your Mac closer to your router, restarting your equipment, or contacting your provider. For more tips on how to fix issues with slow internet, check out this handy guide.

15. Run Apple Diagnostics

If you think that your Mac may need a speed-up because of a hardware issue, you may easily test it with Apple Diagnostics. It is also known as an Apple Hardware Test that helps determine which hardware components are not working properly. 

The process is different for Mac computers with different processors. 

Apple silicon

1. Start up your Mac.
2. Continue to press and hold the power button as your Mac turns on.
3. Release the power button when the startup options window appears.
4. Press Command-D to run the Diagnostics.
5. Apple Diagnostics will run automatically. 

Intel processor

1. Start up your Mac and press and hold the D key while it turns on.
2. Release the key when the progress bar appears or when you’re asked to select a language.

When the process is complete, it will show a list of the problems encountered, and it will be presented as a list of reference codes. You can find the entire list of Apple Diagnostics reference codes in this article from Apple Support.

There are a few things more annoying than a slow Mac. Luckily, there are numerous tips to help you out, and hopefully, one of the solutions listed here worked well for you. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more tips and tricks.

Frequently asked questions

Is it possible that Mac is slow because it is infected with malware? 

The short answer is yes. Mac may become sluggish because of malware. It is due to the fact that malicious apps consume significant resources of your system, thus slowing it down. So, one way to speed up your Mac is to check it for malware and remove any threat that you may have found.

What are some less obvious reasons why MacBook becomes slow? 

If you have a lot of browser tabs open, a cluttered desktop, and never quit unused apps, all of these may slow down your Mac. Just like anything else running quietly in the background, all of these consume valuable resources and may make your MacBook more sluggish.

Will resetting SMC and PRAM/NVRAM speed up my Mac? 

Not always. Even though it may fix some hardware issues, it does not necessarily speed up your Mac. But if you know how to reset them, you can do it and see if it helps.