Notepad++If you’ve had your Mac for a few years, chances are it doesn’t perform the same way it did when you just bought it. Macs require upkeep to stay in perfect condition. So it’s time to perform a bit of maintenance to make your Mac more productive. Here are some tips on how you can boost its performance without replacing any of its hardware.

Close Resource-Hungry Processes and Apps

Some apps may require more system resources and may slow down the system, especially when they are running in the background. You can find those resource-hungry apps and processes using Activity Monitor.  It shows data about CPU, Energy, Memory, network, and Disk usage. You should pay special attention to the CPU tab and find apps that use a lot of processing power and close them.

Do a Quick Malware Scan

Although macOS is a secure system, the claim that Macs don’t get viruses is not actually true. Macs can be infected with malware and adware that can slower down their performance. So you should install a good antivirus program or cleaning app that will perform a regular scan of your system and remove adware and viruses.

Reduce Login Items

login items macIf you have too many apps that launch as the system is loading, it takes some time for your Mac to boot up. If you disable some of these login items, you can speed up the boot process and potentially free up system resources and speed up your entire system. You can see a list of apps that launch on start if you click the Apple icon and choose System Preferences. Then choose Users & Groups and click Login Items. If you notice some apps you don’t actually need, you should select them and click the minus button to remove them.

Clear Browsers’ Caches

Everything you use on your computer leaves cache files that consume space on your Mac’s hard drive. Cache files in browsers store temporary data that are used to speed up the processes. But over time, they may take too much storage, and as a result, they reduce the overall performance. You may notice it when you surf the web, so you should clear your browsers’ caches regularly.

Uninstall Apps You Don’t Use

Apps consume a lot of space in your system’s memory. It’s better to delete the apps and games you no longer use to free some memory. This way, you’ll increase performance, especially, if your drive is almost full. Open Finder, then click the Go menu and choose Applications from the drop-down menu. Find unwanted apps, right-click on them, move them to trash and empty it.

Declutter the Desktop

The desktop is a convenient place to store the most important files that you use frequently. But if you have too many icons there, it can probably slow down your system because each icon takes up RAM space. If you organize your desktop and reduce the number of icons, you can give your Mac some performance boost. You should delete the items you don’t use and combine similar items into folders.

Clean up the Hard Drive

If you’re running out of disk space, you will definitely encounter performance issues. So cleaning everything up is the easiest way to enhance the performance of your Mac. You should go through the hard drive and look for old files that you don’t use, and that slow down your system – logs, large and old files, caches, widgets, apps, and duplicate data. Delete all unnecessary files. You can copy some valuable files that you don’t use often and store them on an external drive.