Speed Up My Mac

Spring Cleaning

How to speed up my Mac

Do you remember when your Mac was brand new?  It was fast, huh?
With the time your mac may have became a little sluggish, a bit slow to respond.
Wait ! Don't sigh!  You can do something! They're apps for that!

They are a bunch of free apps in fact, each of them doing a great job at speeding up your Mac.
Let's look first at the culprits, and the ways to fix the issue(s)

Multiple languages

Each programs ships with at least 10 to 12 languages ready. Some of them are out with more than 50, including Klingon, Swahili & Breton (!)  Unless you are using all them on your Mac, you may just need few.  For the most of us: one.
Removing them will free up to 7GB of space. 
Prog to use:  Monolingual , CleanMyMac, MacKeeper

Universal Binaries

Once upon a time, it was Power PC, now it's Intel Chips.
Some progs are still written for both, hence a lot of the code is useless either for one or the other.
(If you are on Power PC and are going to move to Intel soon, skip that step)
Progs to use Xslimmer, CleanMyMac, MacKeeper

Caches

Cache(s) are made to store information that you may need to re-use. If you use Safari, Firefox or Google Earth, you probably have (large) cache hogging your hard drive.
You can do the following test: Open Google Earth and make a flight over  New-York-Paris-London-Boston.  Then Re-do it.   Much faster now: The Cache!





Yes, it's faster but I recently discovered that the cache for my Google Earth -only- was 650MB.
 If you add all the other App using a cache ... you have few gigs there.
 Progs to use: The App itself,  Onyx,  CleanMyMac, MacKeeper 

Apps

If you uninstall your Apps by trashing the App itself, there is a great chance that they are not properly removed and you left dust balls behind you. You need to remove those apps properly, along with the plists and attached folders App removal.  AppCleaner is able to protect your App against unwanted deletion.   
Progs to use: AppCleaner,  CleanMyMac, MacKeeper





Memory
 Memory is in high demand!
If you start you Mac with 10 Apps on "Open at Login", then have everything on the face of the earth running by default (Bluethooth, Universal Access,  etc ) it will drain the resources.
Take a look at Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items.  You'll see what's running at login.
I love DropBox, but if don't need it, I just kill it for the time being. Ditto for Airport (WI-FI). I used to launch everything at login, just by convenience; I quickly stopped doing that when I realized how much it slowed my Mac. 
Also, take a look at your widgets: We all have a tendency to "Widget Overload"and they are running in the background.

 A quick look at Activity Monitor may make you gasp: RAM use @ startup: Photoshop 70MB, Firefox 70, Excel 70 Etc. Some Apps (i.e Photoshop) may go up to the gig when in use, and the memory is not always freed when you Quit the app.
Progs to use: Your common sense,  iFreeMem

Diverse Junk
Logs, System Junk
Logs are kept for diverse reasons, i.e crashes etc. Unless you have repetitive issues, (insert here a picture of Office Foe Mac) you do not need to keep them for ever.
Progs to use: Finder,  CleanMyMac, MacKeeper

Double Trouble
Because I am a reformed windows user, I have a tendency to backup everything. And then backup the backup. Still,  sometimes it's not enough.  (50 crashes on Excel and counting.  Thank you MS)
Because of that, I end up with duplicates and triplicates.  Chipmunk does the trick: It checks your HDD for duplicates.  After that, it's your decision to delete or keep. MacKeeper does a good job too.


Fragmented Files
OS X has a self control over fragmented files, hence you do not need a defragmenter.  The thing that you can do for large files is to copy or move the files or directory to an external HDD,  Delete them on the original and re-copy to the HDD. It does not make miracles but when re-copied,  they are copied in one block.  issue: it does change the date and time on the file, and it's time consuming.


What I would do if I Were You 

If something can wrong, it will!   Hence an excellent idea is to Backup With Time Machine.  Seriously!  


CleanMyMac does almost everything, BUT it has a Demo limitation of 210MB of cleaning. The Good news is that there is a Workaround.
To avoid reaching the limit in the seconds, I would first start with Monolingual and Onyx and once the bulk has been removed use CleanMyMac.  Just use the Workaround explained here to reset the limit.
iFreeMem does not increase your total memory but solely swap some RAM.  It creates a temporary increase in the RAM available.

Before Clearing the Binaries:  Be sure  to update the "safe list"  Some progs have a Checksum verification. To avoid pirated versions, if the checksum is not correct, they will stop working.
Hence - UPDATE THE SAFE LIST -  (CleanMyMac >> Preferences )

Onyx Does much more than clearing cache. It Checks the SMART Status and is able also to tweak your preferences on a click.  And that's 02% of what is can do.

iFreeMem available here

Xslimmer is here   (Demo)

Download the Apps here

Once Installed,
Backup with Time Machine, then run Monolingual First,  Then Onyx (Smart, Plist, Cache)
then finish with a polish with CleanMyMac
Check your "Open at Login" settings, reboot and you should be all set.
A good spring cleanup can save you up to 10-12 gigs