My real workflow for speeding up a slow Mac without a full reset

Photo by Amanz on Unsplash

Hey, let’s start today’s scheduled programming with a game!

What’s your favorite beach ball?

Mine is the one you knock about on beautiful white sands, in front of clear blue seas (preferably whilst sipping a cocktail…)

My least favorite is the spinning one on my Mac screen. The one that usually starts when I’m in the middle of a ‘nineteen tabs open rodeo’ research and writing fest.

Pro tip: When I want to understand how to make Mac run faster, I rely on the **ChatGPT Productivity Assistant** to suggest apps that’ll assist me.

I speak from experience as the latter scenario happened to me just last week…

So, what did I do to fix it?

What do I need to look at when my Mac slows down

I try to take a considered approach when I want to know how to speed up my Mac. I might not necessarily want to take belt and braces action, deleting everything and starting again, when it probably doesn’t need it. There is a time and a place for that, and this isn’t it.

When it comes to checking the overall health of my Mac, things like memory, fan speed, and all the other things that go on in the background without me giving it much thought, I tried out **iStat Menus**.

It worked for me because of its simplicity. With a click, I can view anything I need to know about how my Mac’s hardware is functioning. Even through to CPU and GPU usage.

Even better, I can do it without the app open, simply by looking at the handy widget in the menu bar. It lets me see everything at a glance.

From looking at this, I was able to see which of the nineteen million tabs and apps I had open on the day my device slowed down was causing all the issues.

A simple shutdown of apps and the shutdown of the Mac helped to cool everything down and get it back to normal again, in a jiffy. Nothing else is needed.

When publications like **Forbes *rate it, it gives me a bit more confidence to try myself. Barry Collins says, “I’m a huge fan of iStat Menus. It tickles my inner geek and makes diagnosing problems with my Mac or internet connection much easier than diving into Apple’s own tools.”*

I’d also suggest a battery health checker, too

My last tip to you is to consider investing in a decent tool to assess your battery’s health, like Battery Monitor.

Yes, there’s a native checker on your Mac, but it often doesn’t go into quite enough detail for me…

This tool offers much more detailed info about everything to do with charging, a quick overview of the device’s full health, and helps me understand how I can make the most of my Mac whilst not needing to keep it powered up (something I am guilty of).

I find it much more useful than the relatively basic info on the native Settings app.

You don’t always need to do a full reset on your Mac

I think using tools like iStatsMenus and a battery monitor lets me look at fixing the actual cause of a slowdown, rather than throwing solutions at my Mac screen and seeing which one sticks. This approach just doesn’t work long term!

With these apps installed, I can take control of my processes and regularly monitor my device health, without needing to resort to a full scan to remove unnecessary data.

Here’s more Mac housekeeping gubbins

I’ve got some other pieces on how to make the most of your Mac, from quick refreshes to proper clearances. Why not try them out next time you need some help with housekeeping? Let me know how you get on…

• Ways to clear system data on your Mac
• Refresh your Mac to get peak performance