#MACOS SIERRA PERFORMANCE MAC#

While you have Activity Monitor open, you may also want to take a quick look at the other tabs, to see whether any apps are making large demands on your Mac’s CPU, Energy, Disk or Network, as this can all contribute to your Mac running more slowly than it should. Closing the applications that are putting the biggest demands on memory, is more likely to have a noticeable impact on your Mac’s performance. If you select Activity Monitor’s ‘Memory’ tab, you can see exactly how much memory each app and process is consuming. To see a complete list of every app and process that’s currently running on your Mac, open the Activity Monitor app and take a look at the ‘Process Name’ column. It’s far too easy to minimise applications and then forget all about them.

Audit what’s currently running on your Mac.

#MACOS SIERRA PERFORMANCE HOW TO#

Since the number of open apps has such a huge impact on your Mac’s performance, here’s a few additional tips on how to keep that number under control: This may seem obvious, but we’re all guilty of leaving applications running in the background, so try to get into the habit of taking stock of what apps you have running on your Mac, and closing any you aren’t currently using. The more applications you have running, the more memory these applications are going to consume, and the slower your Mac is going to run as a result. To enable this feature, open your ‘System preferences…’ and select ‘App Store,’ then ensure ‘Automatically Check for Updates’ is selected.ģ. You can also get your Mac to check for updates automatically.

#MACOS SIERRA PERFORMANCE INSTALL#

To check whether an update is available, click the ‘Apple’ logo in the menu bar and select ‘App Store.’ Select the ‘Updates’ tab and check for any system updates – if an update is available, then make sure you install it! It’s not unusual to notice an overall performance improvement after updating your version of MacOS, so you should always ensure that you’re running the very latest version of the Mac operating system.

#MACOS SIERRA PERFORMANCE FREE#

To ensure the system always has sufficient virtual memory to fall back on, make sure you have at least 10% of free space set aside at any one time.Ģ. If the system ever requires more memory than is physically available, it’ll resort to using your hard disk as virtual memory. It’s also worth noting that your Mac doesn’t have an unlimited amount of physical memory. Here, you’ll find an exact readout of the total memory available (‘Physical Memory’), and how much of this is currently being used by the system (‘Memory Used’). If you want an exact number, then check the figures to the right of the Memory Pressure graph. This graph is useful for getting a quick insight into just how good (or bad) your Mac’s memory situation is, but it doesn’t provide you with cold hard facts about how many bytes the system still has available. This is a strong indication that your Mac requires more RAM – whether that means purchasing additional RAM, or taking steps to free up some of the memory that’s already available. Your Mac is out of memory and MacOS has resorted to using your hard drive as virtual memory. Memory resources are available but they’re being taken up by memory-management processes, such as compression. This live-updating graph provides an instant overview of your Mac’s memory situation: Once you’re inside Activity Monitor, make sure its ‘Memory’ tab is selected and then take a look at the ‘Memory Pressure’ graph. Select ‘Utilities’ and double-click ‘Activity Monitor.’ To access Activity Monitor, open your Mac’s ‘Finder’ and navigate to the ‘Applications’ folder. One way to check whether your computer might be ready for a RAM upgrade, is to use the Activity Monitor app to analyse your Mac’s memory usage. If it’s somewhere near the maximum amount of RAM installed on your machine, that might explain any system slowdowns or crashes you’ve been experiencing.Upgrading your RAM is one of the most effective ways of speeding up your Mac (although, disclaimer: it’s also the most expensive tip we’ll be covering in this article). (A computer’s RAM, or Random Access Memory, stores information.) Keep your eye on the Memory Used entry down at the bottom of your window-this shows how much RAM macOS is currently eating up. Switch to the Memory tab, and you’ll find similar readings, but this time for RAM. The bottom of this tab will show you the overall CPU usage with a constantly updating graph. (CPU stands for Central Processing Unit this component acts as the brains of the computer and performs most of its calculations.) You’ll see all open programs in the column on the left, along with the percentage of processor time they’re currently taking up. The first tab, CPU, shows how much processing power each running program requires. These screens are actually pretty simple to navigate. Within Activity Monitor, you’ll see a barrage of constantly changing numbers and app names, but don’t panic.

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