How to Increase the Performance of Your MacBook Pro

If your MacBook Pro is no longer running as smoothly or quickly as it used to when you first purchased it, you can implement changes that rev up its performance. The following steps will help you increase the performance of your MacBook Pro.

Step 1
Tone down the visual effects
Fancy animations and transparency effects consume resources that could be allocated towards actual applications. If you want to boost the performance of your computer, then you have to tone down the visual effects. To tone down visual effects, go to ‘System Preferences’ from the Apple menu > go to Accessibility and launch the ‘Display Tab’. Click on the boxes marked Reduce motion and Reduce transparency. This will effect a faster, although plainer interface.

Step 2
Check on system use
If your computer is slow, you need to figure out what might be slowing it down. To figure out where all your system resources are going, Open Spotlight with Command + Space, then type ‘Activity Monitor’ into the box. Choose the first option that comes up in the list. This will show you details of activities (applications and background processes) currently running on your computer. If you find unfamiliar applications or processes, click the little ‘i’ button for details about what the program does. If you find that a program is consuming more than its fair share of resources, click the little ‘x’ button to shut it down.

Step 3
Free up hard drive storage
The Mac OS relies on the hard disk space to temporarily store files, without that space your computer is going to slow down. To free up hard drive storage, launch the Apple menu > select About this Mac > then switch to the storage tab to see information of the files using up your disk space. To tidy them, click on the 'Manage button'. Click ‘Optimize’, to store in iCloud. This would move some of your files to the cloud so you can delete the local copies. Now to the last entry, Reduce Clutter. Click on ‘Review Files’. The utility will recommend data such as downloads, large files and other files that you don't really need to be storing. Use the cross icons to delete files you deem unnecessary.

Step 4
Prevent programs from launching at startup
When too many programs load themselves into memory at startup, your system's startup lasts longer and your computer slows down. Preventing some of these programs form launching at startup can restore some of the performance you have lost. To effect this change, launch the Apple menu > Open System Preferences > click on ‘Users & Groups’ and select your account. Go to the Login Items tab to identify and set the programs that get to start automatically. Use the minus button to remove entries.