Keeping your Mac well-maintained is a huge factor in its performance. When we think about the device being optimized, we can consider what isn’t optimal. That is, to have a full hard drive, cluttered desktop, out-of-date software, and redundant apps. So, here is a quick guide on cleaning up Mac.
Update your software
The most important thing when maintaining a device, whether it’s a Mac or not, is to keep it up to date. This is because security updates and patches are brought in to ensure it can stay strong against the latest attacks and bugs. So, being out of date is a huge risk for security, as well as causing other problems when using applications and software.
Login Items
When turning on your Mac, it isn’t very optimal to have a bunch of applications auto-start each time. Chances are, you have several that you don’t exactly need and can turn off, thus boosting the speed in which the Mac boots.
To do this, head to System Preferences, Users & Accounts, then press the Login tab and remove any apps you don’t want.
Clean out unused files and apps
The next step is to clear some space on the hard disk by deleting unnecessary apps and files. Not only will you clear up space, which can improve the performance of the device, but you can improve your own performance on the Mac by having less clutter to sift through.
Head to your Applications folder and assess if there are any apps there that you no longer need. Move them to Trash.
Then, head to your downloads folder, because this is where you likely have a bunch of random files and media that you have downloaded over the internet. This is often the messy closet of any Mac user, so try and maintain this space roughly once a week to stay on top of things.
Clean cache
Next, you want to clean out the cache on the device, as this will free up some space too, and better optimize the device. Use cache cleaning software to automate this, but otherwise, you can head to Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show Develop Menu -> Check Develop Menu -> Empty caches.
Check what’s using up resources
To see if you’ve missed anything, head to Finder, click on Applications, then Utilities, and finally, Activity Monitor. Here, you can view what background processes are hungry for your processor and memory.
Click on the Memory and CPU tab to put it in order. From here, you can simply close down these background programs. This will free up resources immediately. But, you may want to take note of their name and uninstall them altogether if they’re not too important.
Clear Trash
Finally, a lot of what you have deleted so far will end up in the Trash. Right-click on the Trash icon and press Empty Trash – this will permanently delete everything inside of it. You can also head to storage settings and turn on a setting that will auto-delete contents inside Trash when they’re in there for 30 days or more.