“Every now and then, my Macs begin to feel a little sluggish. There are many potential reasons why: I tend to run 8-10 applications all the time – and sometimes push 15 or more. This alone will bog down any Mac,” Ed Eubanks Jr. writes for Low End Mac.
Eubanks writes, “At other times, I realize that it’s been weeks since I restarted the computer, and a simple restart will solve a lot of these woes. When those don’t speed things up, I’ve found a number of things I can do to encourage my Macs back to their youthful snappiness. Here are a few tips I’ve found for restoring my Macs to full speed without spending a penny.”
1. Clean out Startup Items
2. Turn off Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing if You Don’t Use Them
3. Clean Out ‘Other’ System Preferences
4. Check Out What ‘Build’ Your Software Is
5. Clean Out Unnecessary Code
6. Get Rid of Languages and Translations You Won’t Use
7. Cool Off
8. Evaluate Your Widgets
9. Keep an Eye on Activity Monitor
10. Clean Off Your Hard Driv
11. Run OnyX
Full article, with explanations of each point, here.
MacDailyNews Note: OnyX is a multifunction utility (maintenance, optimization, and personalization). It allows you to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure certain hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and many Apple’s applications, to delete cache, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, to see the detailed info of your configuration, to preview the different logs and CrashReporter reports, to check the Preferences files and more. We use OnyX (with the “Xrings 02” icon, FYI). More info and download link (free) here.