This is probably the reason why there is not a defrag option in Disk Utility.īut for these safeguards to work, you need at least ten percent of your disk drive empty.
This brings up the thorny issue of defragmenting a Mac.ĭefragging a Mac is unnecessary because macOS has its own built-in safeguards that prevent files from becoming fragmented in the first place.
The Mac needs to be able to write and read its swap files and contiguous free space helps. Part of your Mac’s performance depends on empty drive space.
Take note of the apps that are using the most power – they might require a software update which would make them work more efficiently. If you see that one app in particular is gobbling up a lot of CPU power then you can close it from here by selecting the app with the mouse and clicking on the x in the menu bar at the top of the Activity Monitor. You can also use this to see what Memory, Disk and Network different processes are using. Now, back in Activity Monitor, click on the CPU button and the “%CPU” column to list all programs by the amount of CPU they are using. (Or press Command-space bar and start to type ‘activity’ and press enter to open it from there).Īctivity Monitor shows all the processes on your Mac (some of which you can’t, or shouldn’t, close) so go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and click View > Windowed Processes before you do anything. If you want to see which apps are using up your system resources, open the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Some apps are more power hungry than others, and sometimes apps have issues that cause them to grab more than their fair share of your system resources. In here you’ll see a list of all open applications, simply highlight the one you think is playing up and click the Force Quite button. To do this, click on the Apple logo in the top left corner then select the Force Quit option. Should you not get any options at all or just a spinning beach ball, you can use the Apple menu to shut the unresponsive app down.
If when you Right-click on the icon in the Dock you see the Force Quit option against it you likely have identified the culprit because a problem with that app is probably slowing down your whole system. Right-click (or Ctrl-click) on their icon in the Dock and choose Quit, or if you are using the App Switcher, select a program and press Command-Q to quit it. There are a few ways you can shut down these apps. Programs that are running will have a dot underneath them (if you can’t see this dot, open System Preferences and click Dock and ensure there is a tick next to ‘Show indicator lights for open applications’.)Īlternatively you can press Command + Tab to bring up the App Switcher and tab through to see which apps are open. If you haven’t shut your Mac down recently your Mac may be devoting memory and CPU space to a program you haven’t used since last week, instead of to the apps you want.Ī quick way to see which apps are running is to glance at the Dock at the bottom of the screen. It might sound obvious, but the best place to start is to close down any programs that are running unused in the background.
We’ll also look at how to find out if a particular app is gobbling up all the processing power and how to shut it. We’ll cover why you need to have around 10% of your Mac’s total storage free to keep it running well and how you can free up that space if need be. How to make a Mac run fasterīelow we will run through the various checks you should make to find out why your Mac is running slow and speed it up. But luckily you don’t have to fork out for a replacement computer to enjoy speed increases: in this article we gather some simple tips to enhance the performance of your current device. If you’ve had your Mac for a few years you may be looking longingly at the Apple website wishing you could justify the expense of buying a new one.