How to speed up a slow Mac
To speed up a Mac, it helps to know what slows it down: usually one app keeping the processor busy, too little memory for what is open, or a nearly full disk. This guide shows how to tell which it is on your Mac and what actually helps, from login items to updates and browser tabs.
Find what slows your Mac down: Activity Monitor
- Open Activity Monitor: Applications › Utilities › Activity Monitor, or press Command-Space and type Activity Monitor.
- Click CPU and sort the list by % CPU. An app that stays near the top while you do nothing is the likely cause.
- Click Memory and look at the Memory Pressure graph at the bottom. Green means memory is used efficiently. Yellow or red means the open apps need more memory than the Mac has.
- To quit an app that hangs or uses too much, select it, click the Stop button at the top left and choose Quit. Use Force Quit only if it doesn’t respond: unsaved changes are lost.
Memory used close to the total is normal: macOS keeps memory busy with files it may need again. Watch the color of Memory Pressure, not that number. Apps that promise to “clean RAM” only make macOS load again what it had.
Free up disk space if the disk is nearly full
macOS needs free space for virtual memory, temporary files and updates, and a nearly full startup disk slows everything down. Check it in System Settings › General › Storage, then see how to free up space on Mac.
If there is plenty of free space, deleting files won’t make the Mac faster.
Trim apps that open at login
Apps that start with the Mac take memory and processor time even when you don’t use them. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions (on macOS Sonoma: Login Items) and remove what you don’t need from Open at Login. See how to stop apps opening at startup.
Update and restart
- Install macOS updates in System Settings › General › Software Update, and update your apps: new versions often fix slowdowns.
- Restart the Mac now and then. It closes everything left running in the background and clears temporary files.
- After a big macOS update, the Mac may be slower for hours or even days while Spotlight indexes the disk again. Keep it on and plugged in. The speed comes back.
Browsers: tabs and extensions
A browser with dozens of open tabs can use more memory than any other app. Close the tabs you don’t need and remove extensions you don’t use: in Safari, choose Safari › Settings › Extensions. In Chrome, open chrome://extensions.
Keep your Mac tidy
MacWashing won’t make a Mac faster by itself: cleaning junk helps speed only when the disk is nearly full. In that case, System Junk frees the space taken by caches, logs and leftovers of deleted apps, so macOS has room to work again.
Free trial · macOS 14 or later
Questions and answers
How to speed up my Mac for free?
Quit apps you don’t use, remove login items you don’t need, free disk space if it is nearly full, install updates and restart. Activity Monitor shows which of these matters on your Mac.
Does cleaning a Mac make it faster?
Only when the disk is nearly full. Deleting caches and old files frees space, but a Mac that already has enough free space doesn’t get faster from more of it.
Why is my Mac running slow after an update?
After a macOS update, Spotlight indexes the disk again and macOS finishes setting up in the background. With a lot of data this can take hours or even days. Then the speed comes back.