How To Clean Up My Imac Desktop

1. How To Clean Up My Mac Desktop
2. How To Clean An Imac
3. How To Clean Up My Imac Desktop
4. How To Clean Up My Imac Desktop Settings

Just like any day-to-day item, your Mac needs a good cleaning once in a while. Getting rid of all the unnecessary files will help your Mac return to its factory excellence and speed up to match your needs. However, you might find yourself clueless as to where to start your Mac clean up: what can be deleted and what should be left on drive? Don't worry. You might be a little bit lost right now but, as usual, we have some bulletproof tips and tools to help you clean your Mac and speed it up.

We show you how you can tidy up your desktop folders and icons so you can find what you are looking for, and customise your Mac Deskop. We also explain how to use Desktop Stacks in Mojave -. An obvious way to free up space on your Mac is by emptying the Trash (right-click on Trash in the dock and choose Empty Trash). You should also delete any items you're unlikely to need from the.

4 steps to Mac cleanup

The good news is that in four (or even less) steps you can get a cleaner Mac and boost your Mac's performance.

If your Mac is out of storage space or starts running slow, you're up for a cleaning game. And you don't have to do it alone. We've prepared the smartest memory-boosting hacks and practices to speed of your Mac safely. Time for an easy Mac cleanup!

Clean up your Mac's Desktop

This might seem like an obvious step to take, but you'd be surprised how many Mac users believe the Desktop is the perfect place to store files and docs, handy and always on tap. However, that's a rookie mistake. Fortunately, you can fix it. That's why you should clean your Mac starting from the Desktop before you go any deeper. Be honest, can you even see your desktop background clearly now or is it obscured because of the icon-riddled mess?

The fact is, that the Finder treats any folder or file on your desktop as a window. A couple of items on the desktop cause no problem, but if the clutter persists, your Finder will soon slow down and get on your nerves. So better sort it all out to separate folders and let us quickly take you to number two.

Free up your Mac's hard drive

When it comes to storage, there are items you know about (like your photos and videos) and many hidden entities (like cache files, logs, and app junk). These deep-seated junk files may start off small, but over time they will begin to weigh your Mac down.

Tip: According to one test conducted by MacWorld, nearly full hard drives perform 17.5% slower than the cleaner ones. That's why it's so important to refresh your hard drive every now and then. Your system will convert the newly-released free space into virtual memory to ensure your apps are running smoothly. Otherwise, if you're low on space, your Mac will slow down.

One folder you should regularly clean up for a faster Mac is the Downloads folder. This is where junk piles up little by little, resulting in a total mess. For a complete Mac clean up, make sure to also ditch any unnecessary widgets or apps. Wait, but you think you might need them one day? Truth is, if you haven't used them so far, you won't use them in the future. So gather all your courage and hit Delete.

If your Mac is still running slow, then it could be due to old hardware. A new SSD or more RAM is the easiest way to boost your hardware performance without having to spend too much.

How do I know what to delete?

How to speed up a song on imovie. What's really annoying is that some massive folders on your Mac remain invisible. Each app or website visit leaves behind its own archive of data, which keeps growing over time. To hack this, you can use CleanMyMac X app by MacPaw. It uncovers large redundant files you can delete. And this application is notarized by Apple.

You can delete:

• broken downloads

• remains of old apps

• outdated cache

It found 5.81 GB on our computer, but it may detect even more on your Mac.

Take control of startup and login items

When your Mac boots up, the macOS will launch various startup items. Some you do need, but nearly half of them can be safely switched off. Otherwise, they'll sit in the background using up your system resources and slowing your Mac down.

To remove startup and login items manually, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and click on your username. Next up, click on 'Login Items' and select all the apps you don't need running at startup. Then click the '-' button below and you're done. By disabling the startup programs, you'll have a speedier Mac next time you boot up.

Repair disk permissions

Disk permissions act like doorkeepers preventing third-party apps from meddling with your system. But disk permissions can get broken, which limits your Mac ability to find the right files.

If you're on El Capitan or older OS X versions, you can repair disk permissions using the following command in the Terminal window:

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --verify --standard-pkgs /

It will now check the validity of your disk permissions. If you get anything saying 'permissions differ', then you can fix it with this command:

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs -- volume /

If you are a mere mortal, uneasy with using Terminal, a Mac cleaning utility like CleanMyMac X, can do a better, risk-free job. A single click in Maintenance > Repair Disk Permissions solves it without fuss. With your disk permissions fixed and verified you can enjoy a smoother overall Mac experience.

The free version of this tool is available for download here.

Once you've finished to clean up your Mac, make sure to reboot your machine for a fresh start.

Delete System Junk and browser cache

System Junk can account for significant amount of disk space. It's a broad term that describes temporary files created by your OS itself and all your apps. Since we mostly use our Macs to go online, the internet-related junk takes up the most space.

How to clean up your browser cache:

• For Safari, click Develop in the top menu

• Then, click Empty caches

• For Chrome, click the 'hamburger' icon in the top right corner

• Then click More tools > Clear browsing data

Find hidden files on your drive

You probably know that a lot of files are purposely made invisible on your Mac. Not necessarily with bad intentions. Such files could be crucial system components and thus protected from accidental deletion. Quite often, however, you'll encounter remains of old apps, invisible adware, and extensions.

There is a shortcut key combination to reveal the unseen files.

• Go to your Documents, or any other directory

• Click Shift +Command + Period key

Do you see any grayed out files? Check what these files are and delete them if they look suspicious.

Remove old backups (and Time Machine backups)

There are several layers of backups built in your macOS. Local Time Machine snapshots, iOS, and iCloud backups, etc. If we're talking about a clean Mac, that's free from old baggage, you should look into removing them too.

Here is how to remove local Time Machine backups (a.k.a snapshots)

Click Launchpad and type in Time Machine

Your backups will be broken by locations, like Desktop. You can use arrows to the right to navigate between past states of that location.

Now, click on the gear icon in the menu above.

Select 'Delete All Backups' in the menu.

Delete the iCloud backups stored on your Mac

Open System Preferences > iCloud.

Click Manage.. at the bottom the pane.

Look through the list of iCloud backups in the sidebar.

Build the map of your storage

Any computer is ultimately a tree of folders. What if you could draw the map of all folders you have on your Mac and see how large these folders are?

Apparently, there is an ultra simple way to do it. Some applications like Daisy Disk or CleanMyMac will build such 'folder tree' for you and it's really fascinating to look at.

For example, this is the Space Lens tool from CleanMyMac X:

The blue bubbles stand represent my folders big and small. You can dive into each folder exploring your drive in a completely new way, much more informative than using the Finder. You can find your long lost folders and locate your biggest space wasters.

• To use this tool, download the app (see the button above)

• Click the Space Lens tab in the sidebar

Clean your Mac the smart way, all the way

If you've been following the steps above (and read some extra tips), you are fully equipped to clean up your Mac. Because you don't need to be a bearded IT guy to do it. Let alone spend extra cash to improve your Mac's performance. Simply cleaning your system as steps above suggest or using a dedicated app like CleanMyMac will help you out. By the way. CleanMyMac is free to download, so give it a try. And see your Mac's capabilities now, when it it's not weighed down by junk.

Remember the feeling of a brand new Mac? A Mac without rainbow wheels. A Mac that didn't cause headaches or frustration. Below we'll show you 15 ways you can shake off the dust from your system. All it takes it to disable a few things here and there.

Here's How to Speed Up Your Mac

These simple steps provided below won't take much time, but will greatly help to improve your Mac's performance. If you do these activities regularly, you won't have to worry about the need to speed up your Mac again.

1. Find resource-hungry processes

Some apps are more power-hungry than others and can slow your Mac to a crawl. To see which apps are eating up your system resources, use Activity Monitor. You can open it from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it.

Activity Monitor details five different resources: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage. If your Mac is running slowly, pay special attention to the CPU section. It shows how processes affect the CPU (processor) activity. Click a column name, such as % CPU, to list all programs by the amount of CPU they're using.

How to use activity monitor to speed up Mac

If you see that some app is using a lot of CPU power, you can close it from here by choosing the app with the mouse and clicking the X in the left-hand corner of the Activity Monitor.

2. Manage your startup items

It goes without saying that a clean startup helps speed up slow Mac. When your Mac launches faster, it takes less time to do anything. No waiting for Safari, Chrome or Firefox to launch — they open instantly. How do you get such speed? Well, when your Mac boots up, it runs a lot of unnecessary apps. But it's quite easy to take control of it. Go to your System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on your username. Now click on Login Items and select a program you don't immediately need when your Mac starts up, and click the '-' button below.

3. Turn off visual effects

A great tip to help you when you wonder how to speed up your Mac is to turn off visual effects. Sure, they look pretty, but who cares if your Mac is running slowly? Turning off some of the features can greatly speed up iMac or MacBook.

Here's how to speed up a Mac by turning off some visual effects:

1. Click System Preferences > Dock.
2. Untick the following boxes: Animate opening applications, Automatically hide and show the Dock.
3. Click on Minimize windows using and change Genie effect to Scale effect.

4. Delete browser add-ons

All articles on how to speed up Mac mention browsers. It's 2020 and today's browsers got simply too complicated. Chrome and other browsers often get overloaded with various add-ons and extensions we install on top of them. These tools do a useful job like checking our grammar but we pay for that with reduced browser speed. You can battle that by reducing the number of open tabs (a good practice in and off itself) and by removing any browser extensions you don't need.
Here is how to delete extra browser extensions in all 3 main browsers:

5. Reindex Spotlight

If you recently updated your OS, you would be aware of the slowness that occurs when Spotlight is indexing. This only takes a few hours and then your Mac will be fine. But sometimes the indexing gets stuck, and you need to speed up a Mac. To solve this problem, you need to reindex Spotlight by going to System Preferences > Spotlight and clicking on the 'Privacy' tab.

Now drag your hard drive from Finder into the Privacy List. Once added, remove it by clicking the '-' sign. The indexing will start again, but hopefully, after a few hours, it will finish properly and boost your Mac speed.

6. Reduce Desktop clutter

How To Clean Up My Mac Desktop

Remember, every desktop icon takes up RAM space. Fewer icons — the faster your Mac gets. When your Desktop is clean, restart your computer. And the 'Desktop Stacks' feature lets you put those icons in order. If you're running macOS High Sierra or older macOS version, don't worry. The mere deletion of desktop items will make your MacBook faster.

7. Empty the caches

Cache files are temporary data used to speed up the processes. For example, a web browser will cache web pages to download a website faster when you revisit it. Sounds great, right? Actually, it is, but there is always 'but.' Over time, these cache files take much storage on your Mac, and instead of speeding things up, they slow your computer down.

So how to speed up MacBook by emptying the caches? There are two ways: you can clean them up manually (step-by-step) or you can remove them in a second with a cleaning utility CleanMyMac X.

If you want to clear cache automatically, do the following:

1. Launch CleanMyMac — download the app for free here
2. Choose System Junk.
3. Click Scan and then Clean.

That's it!

However, if you decide to clean cache files manually, check out his guide on 'How to Clear Cache on a Mac.'

8. Uninstall unused apps

Another proven way to speed up MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac is to uninstall the application you don't need anymore. So how to remove unwanted apps on your Mac? You may be surprised to find out that simply dragging them to a Trash bin is not enough. It leaves gigabytes of junk behind. Dragging documents and movies to Trash works fine but apps should be uninstalled completely. Check out a step-by-step guide on 'How to Uninstall Apps on a Mac.' It describes the manual way and the easy way.

There are also unseen apps, called launch agents that may slow your Mac down. For example, your internet download speeds suddenly plummeted. How to speed up downloads on Mac? Delete background agents that cannibalize your internet speeds.

9. Clean up Mac's hard drive

If you want the most bang for your buck, cleaning your hard drive is by far the best and easiest way to speed up MacBook or iMac. Go through your hard drive and clean out everything that is slowing it down. But what is slowing down my Mac? What to look for? Caches, logs, apps, widgets, hidden trash, large and old files.

Extra step: Delete large unused files

Think of a car that has a heavy load in the trunk. For all its engine power, it cannot really go fast. The same happens on your Mac only your disk is stuffed with heavy files.
1.Go to Apple menu > About this Mac >Storage.
2.Click on 'Manage…'

In the menu that appears, click on Documents. These should be your largest space-wasters. In our case, these are movie files. Review these and move them away onto an external drive.

Of course, you can clean up your Mac manually. But finding and removing all these things takes time. And you have to know where to look. The good news is that there is an easy solution to the problem. CleanMyMac X, by MacPaw has everything you need to finish the 3-hour task of hard drive cleanup in under 5 minutes. Even more, it will clean up the junk you didn't even know about and speed up Mac.

10. Update your Mac (OS and hardware)

Typically, Macs take care of themselves. Having the latest software from Apple makes speeding up your Mac simple. To check your version of the operating system, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and then About This Mac. Make sure you have the latest macOS/OS X installed (or the latest you can install since not all Macs upgrade to macOS Catalina).

As for the hardware upgrade, as you've probably guessed, it is costly. But if your OS is the latest possible version and you've cleaned up the hard drive, and you still have troubles with speed, this could be your solution. Keep in mind that upgrading some hardware is not possible for certain Macs.

Upgrading to the latest OS and upgrading your hardware will typically solve a bunch of slowness issues.

You probably know that a lot of files are purposely made invisible on your Mac. Not necessarily with bad intentions. Such files could be crucial system components and thus protected from accidental deletion. Quite often, however, you'll encounter remains of old apps, invisible adware, and extensions.

There is a shortcut key combination to reveal the unseen files.

• Go to your Documents, or any other directory

• Click Shift +Command + Period key

Do you see any grayed out files? Check what these files are and delete them if they look suspicious.

Remove old backups (and Time Machine backups)

There are several layers of backups built in your macOS. Local Time Machine snapshots, iOS, and iCloud backups, etc. If we're talking about a clean Mac, that's free from old baggage, you should look into removing them too.

Here is how to remove local Time Machine backups (a.k.a snapshots)

Click Launchpad and type in Time Machine

Your backups will be broken by locations, like Desktop. You can use arrows to the right to navigate between past states of that location.

Now, click on the gear icon in the menu above.

Select 'Delete All Backups' in the menu.

Delete the iCloud backups stored on your Mac

Open System Preferences > iCloud.

Click Manage.. at the bottom the pane.

Look through the list of iCloud backups in the sidebar.

Build the map of your storage

Any computer is ultimately a tree of folders. What if you could draw the map of all folders you have on your Mac and see how large these folders are?

Apparently, there is an ultra simple way to do it. Some applications like Daisy Disk or CleanMyMac will build such 'folder tree' for you and it's really fascinating to look at.

For example, this is the Space Lens tool from CleanMyMac X:

The blue bubbles stand represent my folders big and small. You can dive into each folder exploring your drive in a completely new way, much more informative than using the Finder. You can find your long lost folders and locate your biggest space wasters.

• To use this tool, download the app (see the button above)

• Click the Space Lens tab in the sidebar

Clean your Mac the smart way, all the way

If you've been following the steps above (and read some extra tips), you are fully equipped to clean up your Mac. Because you don't need to be a bearded IT guy to do it. Let alone spend extra cash to improve your Mac's performance. Simply cleaning your system as steps above suggest or using a dedicated app like CleanMyMac will help you out. By the way. CleanMyMac is free to download, so give it a try. And see your Mac's capabilities now, when it it's not weighed down by junk.

Remember the feeling of a brand new Mac? A Mac without rainbow wheels. A Mac that didn't cause headaches or frustration. Below we'll show you 15 ways you can shake off the dust from your system. All it takes it to disable a few things here and there.

Here's How to Speed Up Your Mac

These simple steps provided below won't take much time, but will greatly help to improve your Mac's performance. If you do these activities regularly, you won't have to worry about the need to speed up your Mac again.

1. Find resource-hungry processes

Some apps are more power-hungry than others and can slow your Mac to a crawl. To see which apps are eating up your system resources, use Activity Monitor. You can open it from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it.

Activity Monitor details five different resources: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage. If your Mac is running slowly, pay special attention to the CPU section. It shows how processes affect the CPU (processor) activity. Click a column name, such as % CPU, to list all programs by the amount of CPU they're using.

How to use activity monitor to speed up Mac

If you see that some app is using a lot of CPU power, you can close it from here by choosing the app with the mouse and clicking the X in the left-hand corner of the Activity Monitor.

2. Manage your startup items

It goes without saying that a clean startup helps speed up slow Mac. When your Mac launches faster, it takes less time to do anything. No waiting for Safari, Chrome or Firefox to launch — they open instantly. How do you get such speed? Well, when your Mac boots up, it runs a lot of unnecessary apps. But it's quite easy to take control of it. Go to your System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on your username. Now click on Login Items and select a program you don't immediately need when your Mac starts up, and click the '-' button below.

3. Turn off visual effects

A great tip to help you when you wonder how to speed up your Mac is to turn off visual effects. Sure, they look pretty, but who cares if your Mac is running slowly? Turning off some of the features can greatly speed up iMac or MacBook.

Here's how to speed up a Mac by turning off some visual effects:

1. Click System Preferences > Dock.
2. Untick the following boxes: Animate opening applications, Automatically hide and show the Dock.
3. Click on Minimize windows using and change Genie effect to Scale effect.

4. Delete browser add-ons

All articles on how to speed up Mac mention browsers. It's 2020 and today's browsers got simply too complicated. Chrome and other browsers often get overloaded with various add-ons and extensions we install on top of them. These tools do a useful job like checking our grammar but we pay for that with reduced browser speed. You can battle that by reducing the number of open tabs (a good practice in and off itself) and by removing any browser extensions you don't need.
Here is how to delete extra browser extensions in all 3 main browsers:

5. Reindex Spotlight

If you recently updated your OS, you would be aware of the slowness that occurs when Spotlight is indexing. This only takes a few hours and then your Mac will be fine. But sometimes the indexing gets stuck, and you need to speed up a Mac. To solve this problem, you need to reindex Spotlight by going to System Preferences > Spotlight and clicking on the 'Privacy' tab.

Now drag your hard drive from Finder into the Privacy List. Once added, remove it by clicking the '-' sign. The indexing will start again, but hopefully, after a few hours, it will finish properly and boost your Mac speed.

6. Reduce Desktop clutter

How To Clean Up My Mac Desktop

Remember, every desktop icon takes up RAM space. Fewer icons — the faster your Mac gets. When your Desktop is clean, restart your computer. And the 'Desktop Stacks' feature lets you put those icons in order. If you're running macOS High Sierra or older macOS version, don't worry. The mere deletion of desktop items will make your MacBook faster.

7. Empty the caches

Cache files are temporary data used to speed up the processes. For example, a web browser will cache web pages to download a website faster when you revisit it. Sounds great, right? Actually, it is, but there is always 'but.' Over time, these cache files take much storage on your Mac, and instead of speeding things up, they slow your computer down.

So how to speed up MacBook by emptying the caches? There are two ways: you can clean them up manually (step-by-step) or you can remove them in a second with a cleaning utility CleanMyMac X.

If you want to clear cache automatically, do the following:

1. Launch CleanMyMac — download the app for free here
2. Choose System Junk.
3. Click Scan and then Clean.

That's it!

However, if you decide to clean cache files manually, check out his guide on 'How to Clear Cache on a Mac.'

8. Uninstall unused apps

Another proven way to speed up MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac is to uninstall the application you don't need anymore. So how to remove unwanted apps on your Mac? You may be surprised to find out that simply dragging them to a Trash bin is not enough. It leaves gigabytes of junk behind. Dragging documents and movies to Trash works fine but apps should be uninstalled completely. Check out a step-by-step guide on 'How to Uninstall Apps on a Mac.' It describes the manual way and the easy way.

There are also unseen apps, called launch agents that may slow your Mac down. For example, your internet download speeds suddenly plummeted. How to speed up downloads on Mac? Delete background agents that cannibalize your internet speeds.

9. Clean up Mac's hard drive

If you want the most bang for your buck, cleaning your hard drive is by far the best and easiest way to speed up MacBook or iMac. Go through your hard drive and clean out everything that is slowing it down. But what is slowing down my Mac? What to look for? Caches, logs, apps, widgets, hidden trash, large and old files.

Extra step: Delete large unused files

Think of a car that has a heavy load in the trunk. For all its engine power, it cannot really go fast. The same happens on your Mac only your disk is stuffed with heavy files.
1.Go to Apple menu > About this Mac >Storage.
2.Click on 'Manage…'

In the menu that appears, click on Documents. These should be your largest space-wasters. In our case, these are movie files. Review these and move them away onto an external drive.

Of course, you can clean up your Mac manually. But finding and removing all these things takes time. And you have to know where to look. The good news is that there is an easy solution to the problem. CleanMyMac X, by MacPaw has everything you need to finish the 3-hour task of hard drive cleanup in under 5 minutes. Even more, it will clean up the junk you didn't even know about and speed up Mac.

10. Update your Mac (OS and hardware)

Typically, Macs take care of themselves. Having the latest software from Apple makes speeding up your Mac simple. To check your version of the operating system, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and then About This Mac. Make sure you have the latest macOS/OS X installed (or the latest you can install since not all Macs upgrade to macOS Catalina).

As for the hardware upgrade, as you've probably guessed, it is costly. But if your OS is the latest possible version and you've cleaned up the hard drive, and you still have troubles with speed, this could be your solution. Keep in mind that upgrading some hardware is not possible for certain Macs.

Upgrading to the latest OS and upgrading your hardware will typically solve a bunch of slowness issues.

11. Create a new user profile on your Mac

If you want to go even further than updating the macOS — simply create a new user profile on your Mac. Some settings in your current user profile may have been compromised or got cluttered with outdated system logs. You can scrap all these and start your profile afresh.

1. Click the Apple logo > System Preferences.
   
2. Click Users & Groups.
3. Press to Unlock changes.
4. Add a new user with a '+'

Next up, you will have to import your crucial user data to your new account. Luckily, macOS has a special Shared Folder just for this purpose. It can be found by clicking Finder > Go > Computer > Macintosh HD > Users. Drop your documents to this folder and then log in to your new account. Well done! You're starting a new life!

12. Free up RAM using Terminal

If you made it to this tip, you probably have enough skill to start using Mac's Terminal app. It's like using a magic wand — there are dozens of helpful combinations that you can use to speed up mac OS. One of them is used to free up RAM instantly.
You can apply this trick when your system is running out of available memory. In other words, when a particular app freezes up and desperately needs some fresh memory.

1. Open Terminal app via Launchpad.
2. Paste in the following command: sudo purge
3. Hit Enter.
4. You will be asked to enter your system password

If you're not comfortable with using Terminal, there is a shortcut way to free up RAM that requires no hacking skills.
You can download the app I've mentioned above, CleanMyMac X, preferably, the 2019 version.

1. Download CleanMyMac X here.
2. Navigate to the Maintenance tab.
3. Click Free up RAM
4. That's it!

Extra tip: Add more RAM

How to speed up my Mac? How to get it run faster? In fact, upgrading RAM is usually a great solution for improving your Mac's performance. But first, check how much RAM you physically have on your Mac.

1. Click on the Apple logo > About this Mac..
2. Look out for Memory specs

The normal amount in 2019 is anything above 8 GB of RAM. An extra 8 GB RAM card will cost you around $30.

The more RAM your Mac has at its disposal, the more windows or tabs you can have open without slowing the system down. With more RAM, the operating system isn't making calls to virtual memory which uses the hard drive and slows down the system considerably. Here's a comprehensive guide on 'How to Upgrade Your Mac's RAM.'

One more hardware solution to speed up your MacBook is to reapply MacBook's thermal paste which has probably worn off over time. The tell-tale sign for this is your Mac overheating too often. The thermal paste transfers heat away from your Mac's processor thus making it more efficient.

13. Reset SMC & PRAM

Sometimes your Mac will act strange for no apparent reason — it sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly, the battery doesn't charge properly, the keyboard backlight behaves incorrectly, and your Mac performs slowly. If these issues are not solved by restarting your computer, you'll need to reset SMC (system management controller) and PRAM (parameter RAM).

How To Clean An Imac

How to speed up MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook

Resetting the SMC

First of all, you need to determine whether your Mac's battery is removable. That's because the process of resetting the SMC for computers that have a non-removable battery is quite different.

If the battery is non-removable:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Press Shift+Control+Option on your keyboard and press the power button at the same time. Hold the keys and a power button for 10 seconds.
3. Release all keys.
4. Press the power button to turn on your Mac.

If the battery is removable:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Remove the battery.
3. Press the power button and hold it for 5 seconds.
4. Press the power button again to turn on your computer.

How to speed up iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro

1. Shut down your computer.
2. Unplug a power cord and wait 15 seconds.
3. Plug the power cord in.
4. Wait 5 seconds and press the power button.

Resetting the PRAM

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Press the power button.
3. Press the Command+Option+P+R keys at the same time.
4. Hold the keys until your Mac restarts.
5. Release the keys.

Resetting SMC and PRAM may seem to be difficult, but it can really help with Mac speedup.

14. Replace your HDD with SSD

So you're asking yourself how to speed up my Mac — but have you tried hardware solutions? You can breathe new life into your Mac by replacing its traditional hard drive with a solid-state one. Adding an SSD will make your computer boot faster, copy files in the blink of an eye and make the system really fast when multitasking.

A word of caution: it's recommended that you consult a professional before attempting any hardware upgrades yourself because the process is quite challenging. And don't forget to make a complete backup of your data before replacing your HDD with SSD, so that you'll be able to restore all important files if something goes wrong.
By today's standards, a good SSD will have 240-256 GB of capacity. It is recommended to clean install the macOS on the new drive. When asked about the formatting system, choose the APFS+ file system which works much faster.

15. Use CleanMyMac X

How To Clean Up My Imac Desktop

If you don't feel like spending the next several hours trying to get your Mac in shape manually, there is a great solution. Download CleanMyMac X and let it do the job for you. This powerful utility is the best way to speed up old Mac. It has a dedicated feature, called Speed that battles the slow macOS. It does some of the following:

How To Clean Up My Imac Desktop Settings

• Disables your Hung Apps
• Disables Heavy Memory Consumers
• Runs macOS Maintenance Scripts
• Switches off extra Login items and more

Some users reported that the Speed feature is pretty impressive, especially on older Mac models.

Now, speed up your Mac, take a deep breath, do a Mac speed test and come to thank us.

Here is a short video recap of what we've discussed above.

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