macOS Catalina was the newest macOS system until Apple released macOS Big Sur in 2020. Many users prefer to stick with Catalina because it’s good and they are more familiar with it. Still, Catalina has its issues, and one issue that is often mentioned is speed. We know from the system requirements that it’s more demanding of resources than its predecessor, which is why it won’t run on some older Macs that could run Mojave. Happily, there are things you can do to boost performance. Here’s how to speed up Catalina.
- Use Mac’s Safe Boot Option. One of the easiest and most straightforward methods to diagnose.
- You may also be able to diagnose problems with your Mac if you start in Safe Mode. When you start up in Safe Mode your Mac will not load startup items and some software. The mode also performs a.
There Are Always Problems Mac Os X
macOS Catalina running slow: what do to?
To make macOS Catalina faster, you have to know what’s slowing it down. So do this:
So, I finally got around to investigating the problem – I had’t seen any good blog posts on it (most of them were things like take it to a Mac Genius). Finally, I found a hint buried in an Apple forum: the problem stems from Spotlight. The indexes for Spotlight get corrupted, and that causes the reboot. Fortunately, most of it seemed to happen at night – I’d get up in the morning and find my Mac had rebooted. So, I finally got around to investigating the problem – I had’t seen any good blog posts on it (most of them were things like take it to a Mac Genius). Unlike the Mac OS X, there are numerous distributions of Linux including various software options offering users the choice of choosing the one that best suits the need. Ubuntu OS It is also common knowledge that Linux system rarely crashes and even in the advent of it crashing, the whole system normally won’t go down.
- Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Activity Monitor.
- Click on the CPU column heading to order processes according to how many CPU cycles they are using.
- If you see one that’s using a huge amount more CPU cycles more than anything else, that’s the problem. Use the Quit Process button to quit the process and speed up your Mac, or if it’s a browser tab causing the problem, just close it in the browser.
- If the CPU column doesn’t reveal anything, do the same with the memory column and look to see if any process is using a huge chunk of RAM.
1. Stop applications launching at startup
If the speed problem you’re having is that your Mac takes much longer to startup now that you’ve installed Catalina, it could be because you have lots of applications that are automatically launching at startup. You can prevent them auto-starting like this:
- Click on the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
- When it has launched, select the Users & Groups pane.
- Select your user account.
- Click the Login Items tab
- Check the box next to any items you want to prevent automatically running at startup.
- Press the ‘-‘ button at the bottom of the window.
- Quit System Preferences.
That’s the long way to get rid of startup items. Fallen god mac os. There is a much quicker way that I prefer to use. CleanMyMac X has a tool that will quickly remove startup programs on Catalina. Here’s how to use it.
- Download and install CleanMyMac X.
- Launch it.
- Choose the Optimization tool in the left hand sidebar.
- Select Login Items
- Check the box next to the ones you want to remove.
- Press Remove.
2. Remove Launch agents
Launch agents are similar to startup items except that they are not full applications, they are additional programs that add functionality to a related application. They launch at startup and could be a reason Catalina i
s slow to boot. Unfortunately, tracking them down manually on your Mac is difficult and time consuming. However, happily, CleanMyMac X can do it for you. Here’s how to remove launch agents.
s slow to boot. Unfortunately, tracking them down manually on your Mac is difficult and time consuming. However, happily, CleanMyMac X can do it for you. Here’s how to remove launch agents.
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Choose the Optimization tool, as you did for Login items.
- This time, choose Launch Agents.
- To disable a launch agent, click the green dot to the right of it.
- To remove a launch agent, check the box next to the launch agents you want to remove.
- Press Remove.
3. Close hundreds of tabs
Keeping lots of browser tabs open is convenient, but each one uses resources and they mount up. If, for example, a tab is displaying a page which has lots of animation or auto-running video on it, it will slow your Mac down. So close all the browser tabs you don’t need.
4. Take control of your Spotlight
If you have Spotlight set to its default, it will index every folder on your Mac, including those on external drives that are mounted. And indexing can slow down your Mac. You probably don’t need to search the contents of, say, your Downloads folder, or Library directory. Here’s how to exclude folders from Spotlight indexing.
- Go to the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
- Select the Spotlight pane.
- Choose the Privacy tab.
- Press the ‘+’ to add folders to be excluded and then navigate to them, or just drag folders onto the window to exclude them.
- Quit System Preferences.
5. Update applications
macOS Catalina performance may get worse if applications on your Mac are out of date. Developers update applications regularly for all sorts of reasons. Most updates include bug fixes and performance improvements, so it’s important to keep them up to date. For apps that you download from the App Store, it’s easy. Just launch the App Store, go to Preferences and select Automatic Updates and your apps will always be up to date. For other apps, you’ll have to launch each one and check for updates from the application menu. Happily, there is a way you can update all your apps in one go using CleanMyMac X. Can you see how useful it is?
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Select the Updater tool in the Applications section.
- Press Select All.
- Press Update.
6. Shut down your Mac regularly
Modern Macs, especially MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros are designed to be able to run and run without being restarted, thanks to their low power sleep mode. However, shutting down you Mac does more than just conserve energy. It clears temporary files, like swap files that are used as virtual memory, and it frees up RAM. Restarting your Mac regularly will keep it running quickly and smoothly.
7. Add more RAM
Sometimes, the only solution to fix macOS Catalina speed is to update your hardware. Adding more RAM will almost always make your Mac faster, whether it’s running Catalina or an older OS. If your Mac has RAM slots available and you can afford it, adding more RAM is a very worthwhile investment.
There are many tools that claim to speed up your Mac. Don’t believe apps that tell you that “your Mac is hijacked by virus” — this is a well-known scam. On the other hand, there are apps that help you better manage memory on Mac. For example, the app we’ve told you about, CleanMyMac X, has a tool called Speed that disables heavy-memory consumers. And this program is actually notarized by Apple.
- Give it a go in a free version — no obligations:-)
- Install the app and click Optimization
- After running optimization tools, click the Maintenance tab
If macOS Catalina is very slow, there are lots of ways you can speed it up. Follow the steps above and it should be running smoothly in no time.
Rachel is trying to sell her Mac, but…
My friend was wiping my Mac so I could sell it and I’m pretty sure they’ve deleted the start up disk? It’s not letting me reinstall the OS on a recovery startup.
There Are Always Problems Mac Os Sierra
She wonders about a fix. There are a couple of options with an erased partition.
Because Recovery didn’t work, the fastest way to install fresh is to make or borrow a macOS installer on a USB flash drive or a disk drive. We have instructions for making a bootable installer with macOS Sierra (as well as archived versions for several previous releases). You need at least an 8GB flash drive. The article includes instructions on obtaining the installer, which might involve you having to use someone’s else Mac to download it, if you don’t have a replacement Mac on hand yet.
But if you can’t get access to another Mac or the necessary drive, it’s still possible to use a different Recovery mode on all recent Macs, dating back to 2010. Normally, you can start up a Mac while holding down Command-R to boot into what Apple now calls macOS Recovery. That allows you to run Disk Utility, reinstall or wipe and install the system, access Terminal for command-line functions, and so on. In that mode, when you choose to reinstall without erasing the drive, my recollection is that Recovery looks for the current OS system installer on your startup disk in the Applications folder, and uses that. (Apple doesn’t document that, and I haven’t had to test that for years.)
Failing finding it, Recovery downloads the currently installed version of macOS (or OS X), which is about 5GB. When complete, it installs it and reboots, and places the installer in the Applications folder.
However, there’s yet another option: macOS Recovery over the Internet, which requires either a Mac model released in 2012 or later, or most 2010 and 2011 models with a firmware upgrade applied. There, the Mac reaches out over a Wi-Fi or ethernet connection to download the relatively modest Recovery software, which then bootstraps the download of the full macOS installer.
Apple says Internet-based Recovery should happen automatically on supported models, and you should see a spinning globe when that mode is invoked while the download occurs. However, if you have normal Recovery installed and it refuses to install macOS for some reason, you can manually invoke Internet Recovery.
While Command-R at startup always installs whatever the most recent version you installed on your Mac, holding down Command-Option-R brings down the very latest compatible version that can be installed. Apple also offers Shift-Command-Option-R, which installs the version of OS X or macOS with which your computer shipped, or the next oldest compatible system still available for download.
(Apple just changed this behavior with 10.12.4, but if you’re using Internet Recovery for a clean install on an erased drive, the new behavior should be active as it will be pulled from the version of Recovery that’s bootstrapped from Apple’s servers. The pre-10.12.4 option is simply Command-Option-R, but it acts like the new Shift-Command-Option-R, installing the shipped OS or the oldest compatible version.)
Apple recommends the Command-Option-R option as the only safe way to reinstall a Mac with El Capitan or earlier versions of macOS if you want to be sure your Apple ID doesn’t persist even after erasure.
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