Slow Mac.

[Bramleyboy]

While I’m here, my Mac is 9 years old and is about 4/5 full. It runs very slow. Is there a good programme I could use as I am not competent to tackle this problem alone. I live in Wiltshire and took it to the Genius Bar in Cribbs Causeway in the summer. They were useless and this is a round trip of 80 miles so I don’t fancy a repeat! Bramley

[Zacs-Master]

As a first step I'd buy an external hard drive and dump everything that you perceive to be slowing it down, on there.

[Bramleyboy]

Thank you Zacs, but how do I find out what the culprit is that is causing the slowing? Bramley

[Rationalist]

You can use 'Activity Monitor'
( menubar Go-->Utilities-->Activity Monitor )

It will tell you which programs are soaking up resources.

I suspect it will be related to lack of memory (RAM) rather than anything else. Most Mac models from 9 years ago were upgradable by adding more memory, though many today are not.
I'd say a minimum is 4GB, or pfeferably 8GB, if you can get that.

What model is it?

You might also want to stop some programs loading at startup

Settings-->users and groups-->yourname then click the 'login items' tab and use the + and - options to remove any that you no longer need/use.

I'd also clear out the hard drive, if you can. 80% full is getting a bit high for a mechanical disk. Maybe get an external SSD drive or large capacity USB stick and put some or all of the files on there either temporarily or permanently.
Good luck!

[Atheist]

It might be worth downloading CCleaner (which is free). You can run it to find and delete useless files. It may take some time the first time because of the large amount of rubbish to clear, but subsequent runs will be quicker. I use it most days

[Bramleyboy]

Thank you Atheist. I have installed CCLeaner and it appears to be doing the trick. Do you think it’s worth buying the ‘Professional’ version? Many thanks, Bramley.

[Atheist]

I'm pleased it seems to have helped. Did you run it several times? I don't have the pro version, but I find the free one is fine if you remember to use it. You can also use it to tidy your register and to uninstall programs.

[Khandro]

When I have used CCleaner it cleans away all my remembered passwords, which is a real pain re- entering them. Can this be stopped from happening?

[MacNews24]

People who don't want to download any software can use tricks explained in this article -
https://macnews24.com/fix-mac-slow-startup-boot/
Here you can find easy ways to speed up your Mac.