It’s annoying to run a series of tasks on a slow Mac.

Besides consuming your time, a slow Mac may even put you on edge with your employer or clients.

If you are experiencing this problem on your Mac device, then it’s time to put it to an end.

You need a few simple tips and hacks to speed that Mac that’s literally killing you with slow speeds.

Let us delve in deeper.

Close Unnecessary Applications

This is one place to start as you try to find out why your Mac is slow.

Programs running in the background take up a portion of your memory and CPU space.

Simply go through them and close those programs that are not of use at the moment.

You can navigate to “System Preferences” then click on Dock and ensure the “Show indicator lights for open applications” are active.

Alternatively, press the Cmd + Tab to access the Switcher.

To quit a running application, right-click on the app in the Dock and click “Quit”.

For Switcher, choose the program and press Cmd-Q.

Also, read about How to Receive & Send Faxes on Mac

Delete your Mac Cache

Mac retains small files called caches on the hard drive to re-use them for faster performance.

As they pile, they will take up unnecessary drive space.

First, check the size occupied by your caches.

To do so, hit the Command + Shift + G to open the “Go To Folder” then type the path ~/Library/Caches/.

You can use the cleanmymac tool to get rid of Mac caches with ease and speed.

It is a nice tool that can help you clean up any junk that could be slowing down your Mac.

Identify Intensive Apps on Activity Monitor

Knowing which apps are taking a huge share of your system resources is key to getting to the root cause of your hassle.

Some apps take more memory, CPU, disk, and network space than others do.

To identify these apps, navigate to the “Utilities” folder and then select the Activity Monitor.

You will see all the running processes on your Mac.

Click View on the menu bar and select “Windowed Processes”.

Now go back to the Activity Monitor and hit the “CPU” tab.

You should see the percentage of CPU space allocated to each program in the list.

Find the apps that are excessively draining your CPU space and click the X button beside them to close.

If you don’t know How to Copy and Paste on a Mac then read this article.

Empty the Trash Can and delete Downloads

Your Mac Trash could be holding lots of unnecessary files you deleted earlier.

To empty the Trash can, just right click on Trash and select “Empty Trash”. You can choose to automate the process of emptying your Trash after a given period.

If you are using the latest version of MacOS, just hit the Apple logo and select “About this Mac”.

Scroll down and choose “Storage” then “Manage” and enable the “Turn on Empty Trash Automatically”.

Know the Remaining Disk Space

Check that you have at least no less than 10% of hard disk space on your Mac.

To check the remaining space, open the Apple menu, and choose “About This Mac”.

Select “Storage” to see both used and remaining space.

You should also read about How to Use Split Screen on Mac

Wrap up

There are many other advanced tricks and hacks that can help boost the speed of your slow Mac.

You can start with these simple ones, and hopefully, it will help you get up to the desired speed.

Original Author – Coby Helmsworth is the new technical head at Outreach Monks. His keen interest in technologies driving the growth has fetched him several accolades from some leading journals and magazines.