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If You Want Your Mac To Function Optimally, Follow These Hacks

If You Want Your Mac To Function Optimally, Follow These Hacks

Regular maintenance is essential to ensure your Mac functions optimally. Similar to hiring technicians and contractors to repair your home devices and vehicles, you must care for your Mac computer. This will ensure your system performs at its best, and you don’t have to visit the service center too often.

Look at the simple hacks you can follow to ensure the optimum performance of your Mac.

Get Rid of Old Files and Manage Storage

Do you have a lot of documents and items in your Mac storage? Eventually, this will slow down your computer and prevent you from downloading or storing more files and apps. You can preserve storage space by regularly cleaning out old files, including photos, videos, email attachments, downloading music or movies, word documents, etc. After deleting files and documents, you must clean out the Trash. Otherwise, the deleted files will remain in the Trash and continue taking up space for thirty days.

If you don’t want to delete files, you can store data in iCloud and free up space on your Mac’s storage.

The more the storage space, the faster your Mac will perform. On the other hand, if the storage space is full or nearing its capacity, it will slow down, and you’ll notice performance glitches. So, organizing and clearing clutter will help your system function optimally.

Shut Down Your System Now and Then

Macs are great at preserving energy by use. Unless you have tinkered with the settings, Macs are set to dim the screen, show the screensaver, and put itself to sleep by default. The system dozes off when it is left idle.

However, shutting down your Mac proves to be much more beneficial than putting it in sleep mode. You can set a power schedule so your system can automatically shut down.

If you want to learn how to shut down program on Mac, follow these steps:

  • Go to the System Preferences app > Energy Saver
  • Switch to the scheduled tab and check Sleep > replace it with Shut Down
  • Specify the exact time and date you want your Mac to shut down automatically
  • Select Apply

You can also use Terminal to make your custom shutdown timer.

Shutting down your computer now and then will give your Mac a fresh start. It will cleanse your system of the regular glitches and performance issues you encounter.

Clear Temporary Cache

Computers create temporary caches for different reasons, including remembering the browser history and creating temporary backups of files you are working on. With time, these files become significantly huge and slow down the system. It is possible to clear the cache for each application individually or clear the entire cache.

To clear the cache files, head to Finder > choose Go > click on Go to Folder and enter ~/Library/Caches/ > click Go. There will be a directory containing all the caches. Delete them and everything else that’s unimportant.

Do Not Minimize Applications; Close Them

Minimizing applications means letting them run in the background and consume essential system resources. However, you must remember that clicking the X button doesn’t close the application and might run in the background. This may be why your computer is running slowly and performing sluggishly.

Look at the Dock, and if you see a dot below any of the applications, it means they are open. The apps may not have an active window, but they might run in the background without your knowledge. Therefore, when you are finished using an app, quit the process by pressing Command + Q. Also, you can click the application in the Dock and choose Quit.

When the app is completely closed, the dot beneath the app will disappear.

Run First Aid To Diagnose Problems

The Disk Utility application is an in-built tool of macOS, and it comes with a first-aid function. By running the First Aid feature, you will instruct macOS to diagnose errors in the formatted directories. Also, this tool will repair software errors. The feature can even detect if the hard drive requires replacement.

When you run the Disk Utility application, you will see the names of the volumes and partitions on your computer. Click on the partition or volume you wish to run the First Aid on and follow the on-screen instructions.

Keep the Desktop Clean

A cluttered desktop can slow the performance of your computer. Hence, you can use the Stacks feature to organize the desktop. Or you can create separate folders for different files and keep the desktop clean. This will also help you to find files and documents faster.

The Bottom Line

What are you waiting for? Note these hacks and ensure your Mac runs optimally. As a bonus, these tricks will make your Mac run smoothly for years.

Do you have more tricks to offer? Please share in the comment below.

Saasland
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