How to speed up my MacBook?

1. Use Activity Monitor

If you want to see what apps are using up your system, open the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.

Activity Monitor shows all the processes on your Mac (some of which you can’t or shouldn’t close) so click on View and Windowed Processes. Now click on the CPU button and the CPU column to list all programs by the amount of CPU they are using.

2. Manage your startup items

Take control of your Mac again! Go to your System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on your username. Now click on Login Items. Select a program you don’t immediately need when your Mac starts up, and then click the “–” button below.

3. Turn off visual effects

Most Macs are now capable of running Mac OS X Mavericks without any trouble. But some people prefer to keep the dock static to prevent slowdown. Click System Preferences > Dock and uncheck the following check boxes:

a. Magnification

b. Animate opening applications

c. Automatically hide and show the dock

d. Turn off accessibility

e. Now click on Minimize windows using and change Genie Effect to Scale Effect.

4. Update your software (and set to auto update)

Make sure you perform a software update for Mac OS X and all the apps installed in Mac. Click on the Apple icon in the menu bar and choose Software Update (or open Software Update in the App Store).

5. Clean up your hard drive

Cleaning your hard drive is by far the best and easiest way to speed up your Macbook. Go through your hard drive and clean out everything that’s slowing it down.

i just replace my hd with a ssd drive and added more ram.

this made my mac speed up alot. it cost me about $200 ($150 120 gb ssd drive, $50 4 gb ram)

programs like adobe cs5 fly on my mac now.

The main reason behind the slow behavior of macbook is the accumulation of unused data. Cleaning the Mac drive can clean the problem too. You can use mac utilities like Stellar Speed up Mac to remove all types of unused files and to remove unused mac applications.

If your MacBook has the slots free you could also add more RAM if you wish. I know in my '09 MacBook it has 2GB RAM but you can add up to 2GB extra.

I know this is an old post but for the sake of sharing valuable information, I would like to mention that to speed up a slow Mac system/hard drive one may choose to install a speed up Mac tool which wipes out unnecessary redundant data, unwanted applications, system logs, caches etc. To do so one may use Stellar speed up Mac tool, which I had personally used on time periods and performance I received is great.

Many thanks help me answer a few questions and check on speeding it up thanks guy well done keep up the good work your be surprised how many people ask others for info great

erase unwanted files

All Macs begin to slow down with age — MacBook Pro, iMac. It doesn’t matter. I have found several ways to make your Mac faster. You can try.

1. Clean up your hard drive

2. Update your macOS.

3. Manage your Startup Items

4. End processes with Activity Monitor

5. Upgrade your hardware

6. Use the Mac cleanup software. Such as Mac Cleaner of iMyMac

7. Plow through your desktop items and Clean the desktop

8. Remove extensions to make your Mac run faster

9. Clean lots of outdated cache files

10. Finder uses too much memory and Adjust Finder preferences

11.Animations and rich graphics are extremely resource-hungry. So cut down on animations

12. Reset SMC to factory settings

13. Too much temporary files in memory. So restart your Mac regularly

14. Turn off the FileVault encryption

15.Over time, permission problems occur, causing your Mac OS X to lag, freeze and even crash. Then You can repair disk permissions.

16. Clean up Downloads and Trash folders

17. Clean up Preference Panes

I hope the above method can help you.