If you have a high-end laptop computer like a MacBook Pro, you expect high-end performance.
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These computers are built to handle multiple tasks at once and have to ability to process demanding tasks quickly and effectively. A slow MacBook Pro can seem like a car that is running out of fuel, you know it should be moving fast but something is bogging it down.
Luckily, if you want your MacBook Pro to be faster overall, there are some things you can do either before you make your purchase or once you have the computer, to speed things up.
A faster MacBook can help accomplish important tasks, enjoy your favorite entertainment seamlessly, and provide a better overall experience.
Contents
- How to Make MacBook Pro Faster After Buying
Benefits of a Faster MacBook Pro
A faster MacBook Pro is going to be able to handle normal computer tasks more quickly and will also allow you to handle more demanding tasks at a higher level. On a basic level, an increase in speed will give you the ability to keep more windows and tabs open in your browser so you can load multiple web pages at the same time without the others crashing.
A faster laptop also means that you can run multiple apps at the same time at full speed.
For more intense and demanding computing needs, a faster MacBook Pro is also a benefit. Increased speed translates directly into an increase in the performance and capabilities of your computer.
With a faster MacBook Pro you will be able to take advantage of increased processing which is perfect if you use high-end editing software for music, video, or any other purchase that demands high CPU.
An increase in speed will give you the ability to see advanced graphics on your screen. If you use any software designed for Macs such as Logic Pro X, Adobe Photoshop, or Final Cut Pro, you will see an immediate increase in the function of these great programs with a faster computer.
Basically, if you use your Mac for video editing or similar demanding reasons, you will benefit from a faster machine.
How to Make MacBook Pro Faster Before Buying
There are multiple speed options that you can choose from when purchasing your MacBook Pro. Faster performance comes with a cost, but it is definitely worth it if you have the need for a fast machine.
An easy way to make your MacBook Pro faster from the get-go is to increase the memory of the machine. It’s important to know that most newer MacBook models will not allow you to increase memory after you have made the purchase so it must be done when you order the computer.
The new MacBook Pro models offer up to 32GB memories which, if you decide to get that much memory, can really make your computer fast!
The internal processor of your MacBook Pro also has a lot to do with how fast your computer will be. The newest models offer up to an 8-core Intel processor with as high as a 5.0GHz turbo boost. This is for the most expensive version of the MacBook Pro and will be a really fast machine.
Apple also offers multiple options that aren’t quite this fast (but still are pretty fast!), with smaller processors and turbo boosts to match your needs and budget.
The main things to consider when purchasing your MacBook Pro for speed are the memory, number of cores in the processor, and level of turbo boost. For all of these considerations, the higher the number, the faster the computer will be.
How to Make MacBook Pro Faster After Buying
If you have an older model MacBook Pro or have purchased a new one and want it to be faster, there are still some things you can do to speed up the machine. In general, older machines are going to be slower but trying a few of these tips can get your MacBook Pro back near the speeds it was when it was brand new.
1. Check Your Activity Monitor
Checking your Activity Monitor will give you a precise look at all of the programs and apps that are running on your MacBook Pro and how much of your computer’s operating power is being used by each.
This diagnostic window monitors memory, energy, CPU, network and disk usage. In relation to speed, CPU is very important so if a program or app you are not actively using is eating up a lot of CPU, go ahead and close it.
To access the Activity Monitor go to the Finder in your Dock, click on Applications then on Utilities. In this window, you will see the Activity Monitor.
Double click the Activity Monitor and a window like this will appear where you can manage apps and programs.
2. Clean Up Your Desktop
Another thing you can do to speed up your MacBook Pro is to clean up your desktop.
By putting icons in folders instead of having them each on the desktop screen individually, it can save RAM which will speed up your computer. Once you have organized your desktop, restart the computer to notice the change in speed.
3. Uninstall Any Unused Apps
If your computer has a bunch of apps on it, it can slow things down significantly.
Go through all of your apps and delete and uninstall any of them that you do not use. You can always download them again later if you really need them.
Apps can take up a lot of storage and memory which will slow down your machine.
4. Clean up startup items
If you have a lot of programs running when you start up your MacBook, it will have an impact on speed. By cleaning up your startup items, you can help everything run more smoothly and boost performance.
Your MacBook runs many apps upon startup that you might not use or need. Stopping these can increase speed.
To get rid of unneeded items at startup, follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Click on Users & Groups
- Select your username
- Click on Login Items
- Select the programs you don’t need at startup and click the – button
5. Make sure visual effects are turned off
Visual effects on your MacBook may look great and help with a customized user experience, but they can also cause performance issues, including a slow MacBook. By turning visual effects off, you can boost the speed of your computer.
To turn off visual effects on your MacBook Pro, follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Select Dock and Menu Bar
- Uncheck the boxes Automatically hide and show the Dock and Animate opening applications
- Also, click on the Minimize windows using: box and change it to Scale effect
6. Remove browser add-ons
Browsers are demanding apps that eat up a lot of resources on your MacBook Pro. These browsers are often packed full of add-ons and other unneeded or unused extensions that you don’t use.
No matter which browser you use, removing browser add-ons can help improve speeds. Each of the three main browsers – Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, can be adjusted in a similar way. Go to the Extensions or Add-ons section of the settings menu and adjust accordingly.
7. Spotlight Reindex
OS updates can cause issues with speed, and this is usually a result of the Spotlight indexing on your MacBook Pro. This process can get stuck, and you might need to reindex things to get everything working normally again.
To perform a spotlight reindex, follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Clock on Spotlight
- Click on the Privacy tab
- Click and drag your HD into this privacy list.
- Click the – button
This will start the reindexing process, and it can take several hours to complete.
8. Empty caches
Your MacBook automatically stores specific temporary files, which help it access things quicker and boosts browsing speeds. These are known as caches and can be convenient until they start to slow down your computer. Emptying these caches can increase speed.
To empty your cache, follow these steps:
- Open the Finder
- Select Go to Folder
- Type in ̴ /Library/Caches
- Highlight the caches you want to remove and delete them
- Be sure to empty the trash afterward
Manually clearing caches can take a while and you risk deleting wanted items. A third-party cleaning program can help with this.
9. Clean hard drive
Think of this step as sort of cleaning out your entire house to make more space. You can clean up your whole hard drive to clear out any unused or unneeded files. This can instantly make more room on your hard drive, which can fix many speed issues.
Look for any unused apps, large files, hidden trash, widgets, or anything else that might be clogging up your computer. Once you located these, delete them, and be sure to clean out the trash afterward to free up space.
10. Create new user profile
Creating a new user profile on your MacBook Pro is another effective way to fix slow down issues. This process can change some settings and bypass your older username that unnecessary files and compromised settings may bog down.
To create a new user profile, follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences from the Apple menu
- Select Users & Groups
- Click on the padlock symbol to Unlock changes
- Click the + button to add a user
11. Use Terminal to Free up RAM
This is a somewhat complicated fix, but if you are relatively tech-savvy, it’s easily doable and can boost the speed of your MacBook Pro. This method allows you to enter code directly into the system to help improve issues associated with your system running out of available RAM.
To use the Terminal to free up RAM, follow these steps:
- Open the Terminal app either from the finder or via Launchpad
- Type this command into the text dialogue window sudo purge
- Click enter
- Enter your system password when asked
This will free up RAM. You can also use third-party software to help free up RAM as well.
12. More RAM
Adding more physical RAM to your computer is another way to increase speeds. If you have attempted to clear up available RAM and are still running into speed issues, this may be your best bet.
The more RAM you have, the faster your computer will be. If you can upgrade the RAM on your MacBook Pro, all you need to do is purchase an additional RAM card. Unfortunately, not all MacBooks can be upgraded. Check out this article for our guide to the best RAM for MacBook Pro upgrade.
13. SMC & PRAM Reset
SMC and PRAM resets can help fix various issues and are good basic skills to know how to take advantage of. You can think of these as a more in-depth reset that will give you a fresh start on critical operations involved with your MacBook.
To reset SMC, follow these steps:
- Shut down your computer
- Hold the Shift, Control, Option keys and then press the Power button
- Hold all four of these keys down for 10 seconds
- Release all of the keys
- Turn on your computer
To reset PRAM, follow these steps:
- Shut down your computer
- Press the power button and then the Command, Option, P, R keys all at the same time
- Hold down all of these until the computer restarts
14. Replace HDD with SSD
A complete upgrade of your MacBook’s internal hardware is another option you can use to speed things up. SSD will make your computer generally faster and able to accomplish more demanding tasks at the same time. HDD drives can be slower, especially older ones.
This can be a complicated and somewhat expensive fix, but worth it if you don’t want to purchase an entirely new computer. You might need to visit an Apple repair shop or the like to make it happen. If you are looking for the best SSD for your Macbook Pro upgrade then check out the link.
15. Use third-party software like CleanMyMac X
If all of these steps seem too complicated and you want a more straightforward solution to speeding up your MacBook quickly and effectively, you can use CleanMyMac X. This is a quality piece of software designed specifically for this reason and can help resolve many different issues.
CleanMyMac X can help with other issues on your computer and bundles many of the fixes mentioned here into one simple process.
Final Thoughts
If you want your MacBook Pro to stay fast, keep track of how you use it and take a good look at the tips above to help you if it starts running slowly.
Making a few upgrades when you purchase the computer can help increase significantly as well.
Do you have any tricks to speed up your MacBook Pro?
“No matter what I do, my Mac is still slow”, an average tech-consultant hears this phrase multiple times a day. Give a person even the most powerful computer, and pretty soon it will be cluttered with apps, extensions, and things that are too much for it to handle. To reverse it, one has to go back and сlean up the mess, removing memory agents one by one. Prepare for a fight — every byte of memory is at stake. So let’s put your Mac on a diet and get it more free RAM to breathe freely.
First, remove desktop clutter. Get a combination of Setapp apps that clear away unneeded desktop files.
Download Declutter Free“Your system has run out of application memory”
How do you know your Mac is low on memory? Floating “rainbow wheels” aside, you may notice your Mac now takes ages to load. You’ll also see many browser applications crashing. You’ll be also thrown warning messages as “Your system has run out of application memory”. To help it, you should first visit the Activity monitor to see memory usage on Mac.
How to check RAM usage on Mac
Go to Applications and type in Activity Monitor in the search bar. This invokes a good old Activity Monitor that should tell how much free memory you’ve got left.
A shortcut to open Activity Monitor:
Press F4 and start typing Activity Monitor in the search bar.
I’ve attached a screenshot from my Mac and as you can see my memory usage almost reached full capacity. Here’s what it all means:
App memory: taken by apps and processes
Wired memory: reserved by apps, can’t be freed up
Compressed: inactive, can be used by other apps
Swap used: memory used by macOS
Cached files: memory you can really use
Notice the colored graph under Memory Pressure. If your graph is all but red and yellow, your Mac is really gasping for fresh memory. It seems counter-intuitive, but “available memory” your Activity Monitor is not that important after all. In fact, it’s a system intended behavior to use all memory resources when available. On the contrary, the Memory Pressure graph is much more telling, so grow a habit to check this graph in the Activity Monitor every now and then.
How to check CPU usage on Mac
Open the CPU tab in Activity Monitor to keep in check CPU-heavy processes. Normally an app would be using 0-4% of CPU. If it takes abnormally more than that, go inside that particular item in the list and press the Quit button.
How to free up memory on Mac
Tip # 1. Remove Login Items to lower Mac memory usage
Login items are programs that load automatically upon Mac startup. Some of them covertly add themselves to the list and this is no good. If you’re looking to free up RAM, they are the first candidates for deletion. Don’t worry, you’re not deleting the app itself, you just stop it from auto-launching every time.
So, to remove Login Items and at the same time reduce your memory usage of your Mac, you need to:
- Open System Preferences and select Users & Groups.
- Click your nickname on the left.
- Select the Login Items tab.
- Check programs you don’t want to load as your Mac starts.
- Press the “–” sign below.
Now, you won’t see these apps pop up the moment you turn on your Mac. Although this method doesn’t require some superpowers of yours, some special Mac optimization and memory cleaner tools may do the job faster and ensure the smooth performance of your Mac. CleanMyMac X is an excellent example of such software. Here’s how to disable Login Items with CleanMyMac X:
- Download it for free and go to the Optimization tab.
- Check Login Items to see the list of apps that get opened when you start your Mac.
- Click Remove.
As you’ve already come to the Optimization module of CleanMyMac, you can also fix hung apps and heavy memory consumers there. In this way, you’ll free up the solid amount of RAM on Mac — 100% free of charge.
Tip # 2. Free up disk space if Mac is low on memory
The available space on your Mac’s drive translates into virtual memory. This comes to save you when you’ve run out of physical RAM. So now your computer relies on your hard drive space to keep your apps going.
The classic geek rule of thumb holds it that you should keep at least 20% of disk space on your startup drive. Not only this potentially reduces your future spending on iCloud storage but it also keeps your Mac speedier.
What to delete to free up space:
- Large unused files, like movies
- Old downloads
- Rarely used applications
- System junk
But here’s a simpler solution to save your time — clean up your drive with CleanMyMac X— the app I’ve mentioned above. Many users recommend it as an excellent way to free up more space because it searches for large & old files, useless system files, Photo junk, mail attachments and shows everything you can safely delete. Interestingly, it finds about 74 GB of junk on an average computer.
Extra trick: How to free up RAM on Mac with CleanMyMac X
If you have downloaded CleanMyMac, you may also take advantage of its amazing feature — the ability to free up RAM in a few seconds. Try this next time you see “Your system has run out of application memory” message.
- Go to the Maintenance tab on the left.
- Click Free Up RAM.
- Click Run.
As simple as that!
And you can do it even if you download a free version of the app.
Tip # 3. Clean up your Desktop
This tip always comes at the bottom of instructions and unfairly so as it is quite effective. Without even looking at your Desktop I would assume it’s cluttered with mountains of icons. Thing is, your macOS was designed in a way that it treats every Desktop icon as a little active window. The more icons, the heavier memory usage on Mac. So in order to release available memory resources, it’s recommended to keep your Desktop clean.
You don’t have to do it all by yourself. With apps like Declutter and Spotless, every desktop cleaning session will be scheduled in advance and executed automatically. Your only job is to define the rules on how your files should be organized.
Tip #4. Clear cache files
Another way to free up RAM on Mac is to clear it of cache files. Of course, it won’t save you gigabytes of space, but deleting cache regularly, you can help your Mac run faster and avoid system issues.
So, to remove cache files on your Mac, you need to:
- Open Finder.
- From the Go menu, select Go to Folder.
- Type ~/Library/Caches in the field and press Go.
- In the window that appears, you will see all your cache files.
- Press Command+A to select all files or delete files one by one.
- Enter your user name and password to confirm.
If you find some files still in the folder after you emptied it, maybe you have some windows open on your Mac. Just like that, you can save up some space on your Mac. Don’t forget to empty the bin afterward.
Tip # 5. Tune up Chrome’s Task Manager
Although Google Chrome is not the one to blame for massive memory usage, it can indeed affect your Mac's performance. If you use Chrome as your primary browser, you probably have many windows opened there. Chrome runs a lot of processes to ensure a fast browsing experience for you. So, it uses your RAM for storing your tabs, plugins, and extensions. Look at how many entries Google Chrome has in Activity Monitor:
The question then arises, 'Why does Chrome use so much RAM?' The thing is that each process is responsible for a separate plugin or extension of your browser. For example, when a tab unexpectedly falls, you need to refresh it to continue your work there. If one process were responsible for all tabs and extensions, you would need to restart the whole browser instead. Can you imagine how many times would you do that? That’s the proper answer to why Chrome uses so much RAM.
I’ve been using Chrome for some years only to discover (recently) that Chrome had a task manager of its own. You can use it to force quit memory-heavy processes in the browser. It’s a handy tool because it lets you see how a page weighs on CPU usage on a Mac.
- Go to Chrome settings (dotted icon in the top right corner)
- Click More tools -> Task Manager
To free up even more RAM, close the GPU process. The GPU Process, though helpful in theory to accelerate pages, eats up a considerable amount of memory. Click to end it to free up RAM on your Mac.
Tip # 6. Manage RAM usage with CleanMyMac X menu
CleanMyMac X has another useful and convenient feature for managing your Mac’s performance and memory usage. As you install CleanMyMac X and start it for the first time, it’s icon will appear in your menu bar. Click the icon to open the CleanMyMac X menu. Here you can find updates on the current condition of your Mac and perform quick tweaks to increase your Mac's speed. Whenever you feel like your Mac underperforms, open the CleanMyMac X menu to check how much RAM is available and free it up as well.
Tip # 7. Close Finder windows
Okay, suppose you’re still asking yourself, how do I clear RAM on my MacBook Pro/MacBook Air. The next trick is as magical (you’ll see for yourself) as it is time-saving. It’s no secret that each window in the Finder eats up RAM. But how many open windows are there? Some of them are collapsed or stacked in some blind spot on your screen. This Finder command merges all your windows into one. See how to do it:
Click on Finder > Window > Merge All Windows
Now you can manage Finder windows more effectively and free up memory on MacBook.
What else you can do to minimize memory usage on Mac
I’ve saved the easiest tips for the end, as long as these ones are self-explanatory.
- Replace AdBlock (very memory-demanding) with a lighter extension
- Keep fewer opened tabs in the browser
- Restart your Mac more often to free up RAM
- Close all hung-up print queues
That was my take on how to make your Mac a bit speedier to use. If you’re looking for more guidance, check simple ways to speed up your Mac.
Reset Ram Macbook Pro 2012
Frequently Asked Questions
Reset Ram Macbook Pro
How to check application memory on Mac?
Clear Ram Macbook Pro
To check RAM usage on your Mac, go to Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities). In the Memory tab, you will see all the active processes that are using your Mac’s RAM. At the end of the window, there is a Memory Used graph, which indicates how much application memory is used.
How to find out whether your Mac needs more RAM?
Your Mac may be using almost all its RAM, but you don’t need more if it’s using it efficiently. Open Activity Monitor and go to the Memory tab. The Memory Pressure graph shows the current condition of your RAM: green color means your Mac’s using RAM effectively, while yellow is a sign that some application or process is using too much of application memory. The red memory pressure signals that your Mac needs more RAM.
How to quickly free up RAM on your MacBook?
To free up RAM on your Mac, firstly, you should find out what app uses so much of your memory. The memory-heavy programs are listed in Activity Monitor, Memory tab. If there is an app you aren’t using at the moment, click it and press the “X” sign to quit it. This will, in turn, free some of the application memory.