How To Speed Up Applications on Mac

To speed up your computer, you can always speed up applications on your Mac. First at all, you should always run the most up-to-date version of each program, but you can also speed up some of the most common applications by following these tips:

How to Clean Your Mac 2019 [Video]

Video uploaded by Tech Talk America on April 10, 2018.

How To Speed Up Applications on Mac

How to Improve Web Browsers

Insuring that your Web browser runs smoothly and quickly is one of the best ways to gain an overall faster experience of browsing the Web. If you use Safari (or any other search engine for that matter) :

Remove Unused Extensions

Safari (as well as other browsers) includes extensions in its preferences, as extensions add additional functionalities to your programs. You add extensions by downloading them from the Internet.

Using Safari, to manage extensions, use Safari Preferences menu. Just choose Safari – Preferences – Extensions. In Extensions pane you can disable individual plug-ins: deselect the Enable check box. You can remove the extension completely: choose Uninstall.

Can you see an On/Off switch at the top right of the Extensions pan? This switch is used to control all extensions. If you switch to Off, no extensions will be running.

If you use Firefox, go to Tools – Add-ons – Extensions. All installed extensions will appear in the Add-on window, click Disable or Uninstall button to control them as needed.

Remove Plug-Ins

Plug-ins are rather similar to extensions, but you install and remove them from individual applications, by adding them to folders in Finder and removing them if that’s your preference. To remove plug-ins from Safari, go to Help – Installed Plug-ins. If you’d like to remove a file, look for it in Finder and then drag it to the Trash bin. Then close and restart Safari, and the plug-in will be removed.

Reset Safari

Safari retains a lot of information, the browser accumulates from caches, the Web History or Autofill feature (the feature that automatically fills in the URL as you type. Autofill also retains the passwords you have entered, as well as information on forms you have filled out). If you delete these data, it may contribute to speed up your Safari browser. To wipe information and stop slowdown, go to Safari – Reset Safari. Now select the boxes you want to remove and click Reset. You can also clear the cache by going to Safari – Clear Cache, but we don’t recommend it, as cache serve to improve performance.

Speed Up Mail

Mail application can really suffer from bloat, as e-mail coming in number can clog up a system. If, in your opinion, Mail is running slowly try the following solutions: How To Speed Up My Mail.

Some Thoughts about Apps for Cleaning and Speeding up Mac

We may be wrong but we don’t recommend any of the automatic cleanup solutions. These applications either do not delete everything or delete too much, and often both. As to speedup, none of those apps do anything you can’t do yourself either via Terminal and a modicum of knowledge or using free utilities. That is why we can not recommend purchasing of any of those cleanup applications.

If you have a feeling that your Mac isn’t as snappy as it used to be, it’s difficult to offer concrete suggestions. What we can suggest is launching Disk Utility and have it verify the system’s hard drive, just to make sure there isn’t any directory damage, as such damage could cause serious performance problems. After you had checked this, look to the space on your hard drive and make sure it isn’t getting overly full. You may already know that the usual guideline is to keep from 10% to 15% of the total space of the drive open to allow Mac OS X plenty of room for the temporary files the system uses (well, experts say that this asseveration is not scientific, just a rule of thumb, but it’s been widely accepted as a target figure and it works, what is more important).

If nothing seems amiss after you had ran Disk Utility, run Activity Monitor, select to Show All Processes, and see if anything is chronically taking up CPU time or you’re seeing a lot of hard drive access, particular at times where you wouldn’t expect such access. Look also at Page Outs on the System Memory tab; if you’re seeing a lot of those, and/or a significant increase, then your system could use more RAM.

Also, do not forget to clear out your caches, as cleaning caches, in general, can help to speed your computer up. So if you’re a heavy internet browser and you have not cleared your caches in, say, several months, then this is worth doing (repeating the process from time to time). You can clean out Internet caches in Safari or Firefox by choosing Safari > Empty Cache or Firefox > Tools > Clear Recent History > Everything. Your computer has other caches that can usefully be cleared out periodically, too: Use OnyX to do so.

Finally, if the system slows with just one particular program or while trying to open some particular window, try killing some of those extensions/add-ons – every one of them slows you down just that little bit, and many slow you down a lot. Another possibility is a corrupt preference file associated with a particular app. Curing this is a bit more tricky and requires knowing your way around the hidden Library folder.

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