Pep up your performance
Keep your Mac running smoothly and find its weak spots to see where tweaks could help
I f your Mac feels like it’s struggling, the first step is to narrow down exactly what’s causing this. Age is one obvious possibility: there’s not much inside that will get slower before it actually dies, but hard disks and batteries can definitely get glitchier towards the end of their life. Ultimately, as you keep upgrading your OS and apps but not your hardware, it’s eventually going to fall behind. That’s due in large part to the CPU, which can’t be replaced, and this is why we have the Apple Store and its enticing selection of shiny new Macs.
Before things get to that stage, though, your first port of call to find fixable causes of slow–downs and other shenanigans is Activity Monitor. It lives in Applications/ Utilities, but it’s easiest to find it with Spotlight. Quit all apps and see if anything’s still bothering the system. Now try while doing the things you do in your apps, and see where the strain is showing. It’s normal to see lots of gobbledygook system processes running as part of macOS at all times, but if you can identify any that look suspicious, check our diagnostic tips in our March 2020 issue (Mac|Life 164), where we also discuss how to fix a variety of glitches — even those that can stop your Mac starting up.