Use Mac Disk Cleaner to Enhance Mac Performance

People are getting into Mac world, quitting Windows, aiming for a high-speed machine that suites the needs of today’s digital world. The applications a user run can be of small as well as of large sizes, which require a set of resources of the machine. These resources include RAM to execute, Processor to process the execution, and large amount of memory for storage. Though Mac machines are in favour of such activities with their amazing quality hardware, users have always been reporting Mac performance issues, such as slow running Mac. When people get annoyed with their slow Mac, it is obviously time for them to search for a good Mac disk cleaner to improve Mac performance.

Causes of Mac slow down

People start uninstalling applications when they find their machine is running slower as compared to when there was only a few of them installed. It can be one of the causes for why a Mac slows down, but is not enough to speed it up. Let us go through a few activities that damage Mac health.

Unwanted Applications

People install so many applications on their Mac for different purposes. It is not like that an app utilizes system resources only if you run it, but eats up less or more RAM and processor every time the system is run. Therefore, it is in favor of the user as well as of your Mac to install the application that is to be used, but not those which would probably be used in future.

Overfilled Desktop

Desktop is the very first screen that executes when your Mac is turned on. Installing a slew of applications, saving data and placing docks on the desktop minimizes Mac performance, thereby eating up the RAM and processor. Try to minimize such items on the desktop to get a faster and better startup.

Temporary Files

System programs create several files when some data and applications are processed. These files may contain intermediate calculations or other binary transactions. After the process is complete, these files are useless; however, utilize much of the machine resources. Removal of such files does not affect internal system resources, but enhance Mac performance.

Cookies and Junk Files

Cookies are temporary internet files, which automatically get downloaded whenever a user goes online. Just like temporary system files, cookies also eat up RAM and processor, keeping them busy. Users meet a spinning beach ball, which, sometimes, sinks in a loop that does not end.

Browser History

Web and file browsers store the history i.e. log of their relative activities performed by the user. In addition, browser plug-ins and other add-ins eat up RAM and processor in fragments and result in slower browser response while opening and displaying web pages.

Mac disk cleaner thoroughly scans every installed application, log, transaction report etc. and allows the user to remove all unwanted items, such as temporary files, cookies and junk files. It frees up the hard drive memory, speeds up operating system, and even facilitates quick app uninstall by a simple drag and drop.

Some easy tips to Speed Up Macbook | How to speed up a Slow Macbook

Please note that the following post is only for those Macbook users who want to improve their performance by speeding up their Macbook performance. Those who are satisfied with their Mac speed, may move to some other posts.

If you don't mind, consider me as a vet and yourself as a person with a sick puppy ( here, this is your slow and sluggish Macbook). 
I know you love your Mac more than your puppy. So, first confirm me if your Macbook shows following symptoms

• Slow Startup

• Slow application launch
• Takes too long to copy even few GB of data.
• A very low amount of free space in hard drive

If your answer is "yes" then congratulations! for being at right place because very soon you will get out of this “slow Mac” circle. I believe, knowing the causes 100% is equal to achieving more than 50% of the solutions. Lets start with the causes of slow Mac.

What are the reasons of a slow Mac?

1. Lack of free space : This is the most effective reason for a slow Macbook , to suddenly slow down. The reason behind this statement is that the OS uses free space on drive as temporary memory to serve the running programs. That is why the applications get delayed when there is no adequate amount of free space in drive. It is recommended to have at least 30% of free space in boot drive.

If this is the case with you then I would suggest to go with some Mac cleaning tool like Stellar Speed Up Mac. These tools remove unnecessary data and applications permanently, to gain free space in drive.

2. Too many applications running simultaneously: It happens sometimes that we start with one and launch many applications one after the another and keep them running even if we are not using them.

The users should also concern about the applications running in background check the same with activity monitor. Stop the programs which you are not using or consuming too much memory.

3. A badly fragmented Mac drive: Although the term “fragmentation” is not very common among Mac users but it is a prominent reason behind delaying a program. (Imagine a situation where you are feeding your puppy with pieces of bread, scattered everywhere in the house. Won't it make him tired. This is the case with your OS too.) Sorry to say but there is no built-in app to check the status of a fragmented drive so, one can opt for third party Mac defragmentation software.


4. Lack of minimum requirements: Many users just upgrade their OS and start expecting some magic in their machine. So, please confirm if your Macbook has the minimum hardware configuration required by the OS, before upgrading to new version of OS X.


You would have heard that “as you sow, so shall you reap”. This is the case with your computer or say puppy also. The healthy you feed the longer and responsive it will become. Here, healthy diet means a healthy drive, optimum power supply, timely cleanup and backup processes etc.

Speed up Mac Lion but first understand how your Mac works

Many users ask about “ Why my Mac is running slow” , How to speed up Mac Lion get out of this beach balling situation. Here we are explaining the working of computer and reasons of slow Mac lion.

Understand how your computer works and what you can/not change

Central Processing Unit - (CPU) is the brain where all the calculations are done. However Intel and AMD CPU's are now incorporating limited graphics processing ability called Integrated Graphics.The CPU's on Mac machine cannot be changed or upgraded. The only choice user remains with is to buy a new machine.

Random Access Memory - (RAM) it serves as a temporary memory for your CPU's (and Integrated Graphics). RAM is very fast, but volatile ie; its contents get erased if the power goes off. This is the reason why contents of your working material are saved to the more pernament boot drive. Accessing RAM is much faster than storage drive which is also used as extra memory (aka "Swap") to support RAM. RAM can be increased on Mac computers, more RAM usually results in more performance.

Mac Beach Ball

Video RAM - (VRAM) is referred to portion of RAM available to graphics rendering purposes. This cannot be increased or decreased by users but it raises with increase in RAM in some models of Mac.

Boot Drive – This refers to the drive (memory storage) which holds the OS - operating system that gets loaded into RAM as needed or requested. Boot drives can be replaced or upgraded. A drive with 5,400 RPM can be replaced with 7,200 RPM or even with an SSD, which of course would speed up Mac performance.

Interfaces – This refers to the medium which connects various devices or a CPU to RAM/memory. The faster an interface is, the faster the computer operates. For example SATA 3, 2, 1, Thunderbolt, FireWire 800, are faster than FireWire 400, USB 2,1. Its important to notice that the interfaces cannot be upgraded or changed.

Operating System - (OS) Sometimes newer versions of operating systems are much larger than the previous ones and have more hardware demands than your machine's supportability. OS can be upgraded, however there is no guaranty that it will speed up your Mac performance. For example keeping the hardware unchanged, OS X 10.7 (Mac Lion) is slower than 10.6 which is again faster than 10.5.

What is the average boot time in Mac

When your has no login items, no auto-start programs, no network connections, then the average boot time of Mac on a 5,400 RPM hard drive should be between 30-40 seconds. This decreases to 20 seconds on an SSD.

If the boot time goes beyond 1 minute, it is a matter of concern and there is something wrong and need to take some steps to speed up Mac by identifying the reasons of slow Mac booting.

What can cause a slowdown with Mac performance


Network related issues

You need to check whether your network is the only cause or is part of the problem. So, disconnect from your network and attempt the same tasks offline to see if your problem is related with computer or with the network. If your problem occurs only while you are online, then you need to fix the network issues first.

The purpose of this User Tip is to focus on computer issues, see this User Tip of possible WiFi/Internet related issues if or before you have eliminated the computer as the source of the slowdown. If it's not enough, call in a professional.

Browser based issues

Corrupted Caches

The caches are used by the OS X to load things faster, if these get corrupted/overbloaded then performance issues may occur. The issue can be fixed by cleaning all the system and other caches. The task is not something that requires to be done often as the basic need of cache is to speed up the machine's operation.

Less free space in Boot drive

Go to Activity Monitor in your Applications > Utilities folder and look at your Disk Usage.

If your boot drive is near full or about 80%, then you should take steps either to delete the unnecessary files or to move the important user files to another media and have some more free space in boot drive.

Not enough RAM for OS X and other programs

As explained earlier, the higher versions of OS X need more resources so please check if your machine has RAM, as per the requirements of new OS X.

10.8 users may have to System Preferences > Security > General > set downloads to "Anywhere" to install software from the web.

Too many programs running at once, runaway process

Go to your Activity Monitor -> CPU ->All Processes. Here, you can check the list of processes and amount of RAM they are consuming, too many at once will over load your RAM and slow down your machine, and in Mac Lion 10.7 slow down your boot time.

Bad sector effect the process and slow read speed of your computer

Sectors sometimes fail and thus create problems for OS X to read files from the disk. There is an automatic mechanism adopted by driver software to map off these failing sectors and place your data on another sector, but it is comparatively a slower process and causes slight beachballing effects, slow reads etc.

Click here for more tips to speed up Mac

Pros and Cons of Defragmentation of Mac Drive

When you store your data on your hard drive, it acquires the memory in a non-continuous fashion as it finds large and unoccupied memory blocks. These memory blocks (i.e. fragments) are created in the memory when you delete or move some data from a memory location. Defragmentation is the process of physically re-arranging all the occupied large memory blocks in a logical order, thereby removing the fragments to optimize the performance of your Mac.

You might have ever thought how does it improve the performance of my Mac or does it affect the internal resources of my Mac machine. A non-professional user often thinks whether he should defrag Mac hard drive or not. This article is going to discuss the pros and cons of defragmentation on a Mac drive.

1. Pros of Mac Hard Drive Defragmentation

When it comes to optimizing the Mac performance, a user gets his mind directed towards Disk Defragmentation. Mac OS X formats its hard drive volumes with an intelligent HFS, HFS+, HFSX and HFS wrapper file systems that takes care of such internal processes. Let us see what the pros of disk defragmentation in Mac are:

1. Removes Fragments

The file systems in Mac prove their intelligence by shifting forward the physical memory locations and removing all the unoccupied memory in a continuous data stream. This automatically defrags the memory and improves the Mac OS X performance.

2. Memory Optimization

Mac’s intelligent file system refreshes the memory by re-allocating the physical locations on the hard drive in a continuous fashion. This makes a Mac respond faster to all executed commands and hence, memory is optimized.

3. Improved Performance

Mac Defragmentation improves the performance of the hard drive as well as the execution of all processes. Therefore, when you try accessing an application or executing a command, you get result in a short span of time.

2. Cons of Mac Hard Drive Defragmentation

Defragmentation is the process of removing fragments from the continuous streams of data stored on the hard drive in order to shorten the execution time, and thereby enhance the overall performance of your machine. Defragmentation is completely in favour of your machine. However, in spite of several pros of drive defragmentation, you might also have noticed some cons i.e.

1. High System Resource Utilization

Defragmentation is a process that highly utilizes the system resources and keeps them busy until you get the process completed. In the meantime, the machine gets slower and you may not run any graphic or large application.

2. Time-Consuming Process

The amount of time consumed in drive defragmentation relies on the amount of data stored and fragments on your hard drive. It takes time to complete the process, if your hard drive is almost full. However, it completes shortly when you have the hard drive with large amount of unallocated memory.

Find Out and Delete Large Files Quickly from Your Mac and Get Back Its Speed

Macs undoubtedly are one of the most advanced operating systems that are less prone to corruption, but their dipped performance is always a matter of concern for its users. With time Mac machines lose their original speed and become sluggish. Though a relatively slow Mac is tolerable to an extent, but it becomes annoying as soon as you start getting a beach-ball while performing even a smallest activity. This occurs as your Mac gets old and becomes cluttered with large amount of data.

Nearly full hard drive is one of the biggest reasons responsible for constant deteriorating speed of Mac machines. The hard drive of your Mac gets filled with time as you keep on adding new files and folders. That means if you make free space on your hard drive, then you can expect speedy Mac. You can do this by upgrading your hard drive or deleting all unwanted data from there. Large files and folders, and unwanted application plug-ins are some of the common reasons that are responsible for the slow behavior of your machine.

Therefore, searching for these files in your Mac and deleting them can free up all the unnecessarily eaten up space and thus speed up your machine. But, is it possible to search for all the large and unwanted files manually in your system? Well, it is but will require a great deal of hard work and large amount of time, which practically is a difficult task. Therefore, if you have a tool that searches and identifies all the large files in your system, then it would comparatively be easy for you to remove these files.

If you are searching for such utilities, then you need not to worry as there are professional non-Apple tools available that quickly locate all the large files present in your Mac hard drive and give you an option to delete such files or folders completely from your machine. By using one such tool, you for sure will notice a speedy machine that runs as fast as new.

Most of the tools of this category provide detailed view of all the folders and files present in a drive that help you to quickly find out which files are large in size and thus require deletion. Some tools provide you different views for seeing the files and folders on a drive like ‘Graphical View’, ‘List View’, and ‘Column View’. Moreover, a reliable tool gives you different options like you can open and delete a folder from the application.

With the help of a reliable software, you can find out and delete all the unnecessary large files from your Mac and get back its speed. Therefore, such tools are a must to have software when you are dealing with slow Mac.

Defragmentation – An Important Aspect to Optimize Mac Performance

Fragmented hard drive is not a rare term instead it is a common situation that occurs with every hard drive irrespective to the Operating System (OS) installed in it. But, some operating systems like Mac OS X have safety guards for preventing fragmentation, thus their users do not get to know about the fact that their hard drives too get fragmented. With time as you keep on saving and deleting files on your hard drive, the small chunks of memory are created.

These small chunks of memory are called fragmented space on hard drive. Now when you save a new file on such hard drive, it can occupy any of these free memory fragments. However, if the file is larger than the available memory chunk, then the OS will divide the file into parts and save them on different locations of this drive. In this way, fragments of file too are created and file fragmentation took place. Now when you try to access this file, the OS for sure will take more time as it need to search for all the parts of this fragmented file. Moreover saving a new file will also take more than usual time as the OS has to search free space on fragmented drive. In this way, a computer with fragmented hard drive deteriorates its speed.

However, according to Apple, the HFS+ file system avoids filling recently freed space on its hard drive and thus prevents file level fragmentation. The ‘Hot File Adaptive Clustering’ of OS X based machines creates a hot zone of frequently accessed files and thus optimizes their access time. Apart from this OS X is smart enough to perform defragging on small files. But, situations arise when OS X too becomes unable to defrag Mac hard drive and at that time Mac users too come across the dipped performance of their machine. These situations are:

• When you have big amount of large files such as video files in your hard drive.
• When your hard drive gets completely filled and has less than 10% free space.

In both these above mentioned situations, the built in safeguards of Mac OS X to prevent fragmentation fail to do any needful, and thus users have to face the sluggish behavior of their smart machine. The best way to optimize Mac in such cases is its defragmentation. There are various non-Apple utilities to defrag Mac hard drive available online and users have to select the best tool that defrags Mac files and optimizes all the available free space and hence improves the overall performance of their machines. Most of these tools enable users to create bootable DVD of their machine and hence perform the defragmentation of boot volume as well.

What Influences Mac Startup Speed | Reasons of slow Mac startup

When you start your Mac, it reads thousands of files from your disk, copy some of them into RAM, and calls a number of programs. Out of these launched programs, most run in the background. Beyond just Mac OS X files, the process may also launch some third-party software.

After your OS X booted, the login process begins. It may happen either automatically or may ask for username and password. Either way, Mac OS X loads and runs still more programs than shown in the Login Items list in the Users & Groups pane (for OS X 10.7 and later) / Accounts pane prior to 10.7 Lion) of System Preferences .

Usually the whole process takes less than 30 seconds. If your machine is taking too much time than what is said then you must look into some factors to fix the issue.

Disk speed: Because there are too many files to be read, the data transfer speed of disk matters. In general, hard disks higher rotational speeds are faster (SSDs are the fastest) and recommended.

Directory health: Directory is a set of special files in a disk that keeps record of all the data in it. The issues in directory can interrupt the process of reading files on drive and thus it can be a factor for a slow Mac.

Low RAM: In mid-2012, the lowest amount of RAM any Mac comes with is 2 GB which I think is too low to serve the purpose. The OS X itself uses so much RAM that it restricts many applications and files you open, before virtual memory begins paging memory to disk. This slows you down significantly if you are working with a mechanical hard drive.

Low Free space on Disk: In addition to RAM, your Mac also uses free memory on disk which is called virtual memory. If your drive is falling short of required amount of free space then it increases the waiting time and delays the processes. In such situations a Mac cleaning software can bring some help for slow Mac.

 

Causes and Solutions for Slow Mac

Experts say that understanding the cause solves half of the problem. As all Mac users know that their smart OS X loses its performance with time, thus knowing the real cause behind such behavior solves the major part of the problem. Therefore, today we are discussing the main causes behind sluggish Mac, because by knowing them you will get to know that you can solve most of the problems without any major efforts. Mentioned below are top reasons that slow down Mac performance with their solutions:

1. Several Applications at a Time: Many times it is seen that after using an application you forget to close it. These unrequited applications eat up a lot of CPU memory unnecessarily and cause slow down in your machine. Solution: Therefore, it is suggested to find out whether unnecessary applications are running in your Mac or not, if they are, then close them.
2. CPU Hogging Applications: Several applications running on your Mac, which seem to be simple and small, eat up a lot of resources of the CPU. These CPU hogging applications cause major slow down in Mac. To know about the hogging applications, you need to open the ‘Activity Monitor’ by going through ‘/Applications/Utilities/ folder’ and clicking the ‘CPU’ tab provided at the bottom. Watch the ‘% Idle’ for some seconds and if you find that number constantly below 60, then you have processes that are eating up large CPU resources. Solution: Stay in the activity monitor of your Mac and click ‘CPU’ item provided at the top for listing the items according to their CPU usage. The item which is at the top-most location is the application(s) that is eating up maximum CPU resource. If this application(s) are not of utmost use, then quit them and free the CPU.
3. Filled Desktop: The cluttered desktop does not create problems with Windows Operating System based computers, but with Mac OS X machines it does. This is because OS X handles each and every item on the desktop as a separate window. Solution: Clean up your desktop to few selected icons. However, if it is sounding difficult, then create a new folder on your desktop as ‘Desktop Items’ and drag everything from desktop to it and find out a speedy Mac.
4. Lot Many Login Items: Several items on login or lot many startup items slow down the startup process of your Mac. Moreover, many downloaded applications as well add themselves to login items and thus slow down the startup process. Generally users are unaware of the startup items and complain about the sluggish start of their machine. Solution: It is suggested to check out the startup or login items regularly and unselect all the non-useful items from there. To check the login items go to ‘System Preferences >> Accounts >> Login Items’ and unselect all the unrequited items from there.

If none of the above mentioned methods are able to speed up Mac performance, then use of a professional speed up utility for Mac is recommended. Professional speed up tool uninstalls all unwanted applications from your Mac and removes all junk files, logs, junks, etc from your Mac.

Check Mac Hard Drive Temperature, Health, and SMART Status

What makes your Mac machine special for you? Is it this excellent operating system (OS) itself or the data you stored on it? Well, both the OS and the data can be special, as they are collectively stored together on a mutual platform i.e. the Mac hard drive. 

Hard drive is a less logical, but delicate mechanical structure. It facilitates storage for all your digital data, such as images, videos, audio, files and documents, and most importantly, the operating system. The hard drives being manufactured today include a technology, referred to as S.M.A.R.T i.e. Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. It is a self-checking mechanism that reports health and present working status of the hard drive; besides, it warns the user about the critical condition of the hard drive before it dies.

Check S.M.A.R.T Status of Your Hard Drive

Disk Utility is an efficient disk management tool in Mac OS X that reports the S.M.A.R.T status of the complete hard drive (Volumes do not have S.M.A.R.T status). Let us see where and how Disk Utility shows this status:

• Open Disk Utility (Applications-> Utilities folder).
• Click your hard drive shown in the left-pane.
• Now, go to First Aid tab in the right-pane (It is the default tab).
• Refer to the information shown in the bottom-pane and look for S.M.A.R.T status.
• If it displays “Verified”, that means your hard drive is OK.
• Back up your data immediately to avoid data loss otherwise, as it may conk out.

Check Boot Volume Health

In case you find the S.M.A.R.T status of your hard drive other than “Verified”, you can check health of the boot volume; besides, create a backup of your data. Let us know how to check a volume health:

• Open Disk Utility (Applications-> Utilities folder).
• Click the boot volume in the left-pane and First Aid tab in the right-pane, respectively.
• Click “Verify Disk” beneath the window showing drive status detail and let it finish.

If you get any red colored error messages, it indicates the volume is suffering from criticality. Therefore, you need to repair it as:

• Restart your Mac while pressing and holding “Option” and “R” keys.
• Select “Recovery HD” in the boot menu.
• Go to Disk Utility in the Mac OS X utility screen.
• Click the boot volume in the left-pane and First Aid tab in the right-pane, respectively.
• Now, click Repair Disk and let it run.
• Boot your Mac normally, once disk repair finishes.

Hard Drive Temperature

The temperature of your Mac hard drive as well as of CPU relies on several factors, i.e. if it is shut down, it remains on a normal room temperature or nearby; if it is running, the temperature relies on the process going on inside the machine. Generally, hard drive temperature rises during rigorous use of resources and an overheated drive affects machine’s performance (and may suffer from disk failure).

Mac OS X does not offer any hard drive temperature reporting mechanism in the Disk Utility to avoid failure due to overheating. However, you can use external software to check Mac hard drive temperature and health.