Up next in 10
5 Easy Ways To Speed Up Your Mac
Mar 11, 2025
Check out our updated video for 8 more tips! https://youtu.be/83TerRCGADQ The most commonly overlooked ways to speed up your Mac.
View Video Transcript
0:06
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
0:08
five ways to speed up your Mac and while
0:10
these might seem like minor settings
0:12
when you first apply them you'll be
0:14
surprised at how much they actually
0:16
improve the performance over time of
0:17
your back so the first one and it's
0:20
probably the most obvious but it's
0:22
occasionally overlooked is you want a
0:25
lot of space on your boot drive at least
0:28
10% ideally 20% % so if you look here I
0:31
have a 250 GB hard drive I have 70 GB
0:35
free it's enough it could be more but
0:38
the more space that you have on your
0:40
hard drive generally the faster your
0:42
computer's going to be that's pretty
0:44
much kind of how it works bottom line
0:46
that's what it is so if you have any
0:48
stuff on your computer that you don't
0:50
really need or you think you can get rid
0:52
of and you know just don't throw stuff
0:53
away just to get rid of it but you know
0:55
what I mean get rid of it because it
0:58
will speed up your Mac and if you have
1:00
under 10% of your hard drive available
1:02
you really need to do this because
1:03
you'll notice extraordinary performance
1:06
improvements now the second tip is
1:10
probably the most overlooked of them all
1:12
but it can be the easiest one of them
1:14
all as well clean up your desktop if you
1:17
have icons scattered all over your
1:19
desktop normally I keep mine very clean
1:21
as you can see here I have one folder
1:24
that sits on my secondary monitor here
1:27
but that's it the more stuff you have on
1:30
your desktop the slower your computer
1:32
will run because it has to render all
1:34
those icons in your desktop and it slows
1:36
finder way down so if you take all that
1:39
junk on your desktop and just put it in
1:40
one folder like I do it's going to be
1:43
faster it's going to be more efficient
1:44
finder is going to run quicker it's
1:46
going to start up way quicker and it's
1:49
probably the most overlooking it's such
1:50
a simple thing too that people probably
1:52
don't even realize they should do the
1:55
third tip is repairing your permissions
1:57
so to do this you have to launch disc
1:59
utility so you can search for it up in
2:01
spot Spotlight search dis
2:05
utility and pop it open now in dis
2:09
utility you are going to be repairing
2:11
your permissions and you'll do this on
2:14
your main hard drive so I'm just going
2:16
to select my hard drive here Macintosh
2:19
HD and you can see right here I can
2:21
repair my dis permissions now it's just
2:24
one click and it'll repair uh this
2:26
process takes a while you might want to
2:28
leave your computer for a little while
2:30
because you really don't really want to
2:31
do much else while it's repairing the
2:34
permissions um first of all it does slow
2:36
it down while it's doing it you might
2:37
get the spinning beach ball cursor um
2:40
but secondly it's just best to leave it
2:42
alone while it's doing it so you know
2:44
budget a little bit of time if you're
2:45
going to do this but it's just a simple
2:47
thing you might want to do every couple
2:48
months if there's any errors with the
2:51
disc permissions it'll just repair them
2:52
all and it should um smooth out a lot of
2:56
issues you might have with the OS and
2:59
another good tip if you're having
3:01
problems with slow login times um if you
3:03
head into system preferences and you
3:06
click on the accounts
3:07
Tab and then go under the login items
3:10
tab in there uh you're going to see all
3:12
your login items and these are all the
3:13
applications that run as soon as you log
3:16
in so when you type your password and
3:17
hit enter all these things start loading
3:19
and if you notice your computer's being
3:21
unresponsive for a period of time at
3:24
login this could be a problem if you
3:25
have a lot of items in here you um you
3:29
know if you see any that you don't
3:30
really need to start up um let's say for
3:33
example I don't really use dropbox that
3:35
much so I'm not going to you know have
3:38
it run on Startup anymore I can just
3:40
select it hit the minus button and it
3:42
will not start up on login anymore and
3:44
the less things you have start up on
3:46
login the typically the quicker your
3:49
computer is going to log in and be ready
3:51
to work I'm not saying you should just
3:53
get rid of all your login items just
3:54
because it'll speed up your computer I
3:56
mean they're nice to have uh but if you
3:59
really don't need ones running why
4:01
bother having them taking up RAM and
4:03
processing power and things like that it
4:06
just doesn't really make sense so they
4:08
will build up over time if you install
4:10
um different menu bar applications and
4:12
stuff and you just kind of forget about
4:14
them that stuff's all going to be uh
4:16
still running when you log in and simply
4:18
disabling these from running at login
4:20
can really save you quite a bit of time
4:22
on boot up and speaking of taking extra
4:25
RAM and processing power dashboard is
4:28
one of the big biggest biggest resource
4:31
Hogs that you probably don't even
4:33
realize that's on your system um the
4:35
more widgets you have it takes up more
4:37
RAM and you know just having dashboard
4:40
run will dramatically slow on your
4:43
computer under certain circumstances so
4:46
if you really like dashboard you can
4:48
click the plus button down in the corner
4:49
here and maybe get rid of some of the
4:51
widgets you don't use much you know I
4:53
don't think I've ever done a Google
4:54
search from dashboard I'll get rid of
4:56
that and you know maybe I I don't really
4:58
use the calculator in there either so I
5:01
can just get rid of that but if you
5:03
really never use dashboard at all and
5:06
you want to get rid of it completely of
5:08
course you can always bring it back but
5:10
if you want to get rid of it you can
5:12
actually disable it so that when you
5:14
press the dashboard button or click on
5:15
the dashboard application icon nothing
5:18
will happen and it's not gone forever
5:20
you can just type in a command and get
5:22
it back but I'll show you what to do to
5:24
disable dashboard completely so I'm
5:27
going to go up into Spotlight and I'm
5:28
going to search for
5:30
terminal and open that up and in the
5:33
terminal window I'm going to write a
5:35
string of text and I'll have it spelled
5:38
it at the bottom of the screen uh pretty
5:40
big so you can read it and I'll also uh
5:42
type it out here for you so it is
5:46
defaults space write space com. apple.
5:54
dasboard
5:56
oops space MCX X Das
6:02
disabled space minus
6:06
Boolean space then all caps yes and
6:11
you're going to hit
6:12
enter and then you're going to type in
6:14
kill all as one word space capital D OC
6:19
K so kill all Doc hit enter again your
6:23
Doc's going to disappear for a minute
6:25
and then it's going to come back and
6:26
dashboard will be disabled so if I quit
6:29
terminal here and I press my dashboard
6:31
button on the keyboard you can't see it
6:33
but but nothing's happening I can go
6:35
into my applications folder click on
6:38
dashboard right here nothing happens So
6:41
dashboard's Gone and what's not gone is
6:44
your RAM and your processing power
6:46
that's all given back to you because all
6:49
those widgets are not running in the
6:51
background uh tap taking up you know the
6:53
valuable processing power you need to do
6:57
actual work so those are five easy ways
7:00
that you can really uh speed up your Mac
7:02
and they may not seem like much but they
7:03
really add up and I also think they're
7:06
probably the most five overlooked um
7:08
kind of most obvious but people never
7:10
think of them kind of ways uh to speed
7:13
up your Mac and they really do help out
7:15
and I find them to be really helpful on
7:17
my Mac so I hope you'll find them
7:20
helpful too and I hope you found this
7:22
video useful thank you for watching
#Software