MacOS is a robust operating system however as you clutter it up, the performance goes down. Every device needs regular maintenance and cleanup to deliver its best performance. Optimizing Macs is not that tricky. You need to clean up Mac storage and uninstall unwanted apps while optimizing your Mac. Here are the best tips and tricks to optimize your Mac in less than 30 minutes. Before you start optimization, ensure that you have the latest MacOS installed and there are no pending updates. If your Mac is still cluttered with unwanted files, you can make use of the Best Mac Optimizer Tools to automatically declutter your Mac.
1. Uninstall Old Apps
We install recommended apps from the App Store or some third-party sources however it is not necessary that all the apps are in use. If you have not used an app for months, you may not require it in the future. You can always revisit your app collection and uninstall unwanted apps.
Step 1. Go to the Apple menu and click on the Applications folder.
Step 2. Identify apps that you don’t want to use anymore.
Step 3. Right-click on the app you wish to remove and click on the ‘Move to Trash’ option. The selected app will be uninstalled in the background. Another way to remove the app from your applications folder is to drag and drop the app icon into Trash.
Alternatively, you can click on the launcher on Dock and list out all the apps. Click and hold on to any app icon until all the icons start jiggling. You will find a small X on all the apps that can be uninstalled. Just click on the X icon to uninstall the app and confirm submission.
2. Clear Cache & Cookies
Uninstalling the app using any of the above methods will not remove the cache, temp files, and folders. You will need to manually dive deep into all the directories and clean up Mac storage.
Step 1. Access the Go to Folder option from the Go menu on the Finder bar.
Step 2. Paste ~/Library/Caches on the search bar and click on the Go button. You will find cache folders of different apps and subfolders containing cache files.
Step 3. Explore the folder of apps that you have uninstalled and clear out files inside. Do not delete any folder to be on the safer side. You can repeat the same process with the below destination folders to clear more cache, cookies, temp files, and other unwanted clutter.
~/Library/Logs
~/Library/Containers
~/Library/Saved Application State/
~/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/
~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
~/Library/Preferences
~/Library/Cookies
All these deleted files and folders will go to the Trash folder. You can access the Trash Folder and Empty Trash to clear up the removed clutter.
3. Optimize Your Browser
We browse for a lot of searches and accumulate a lot of cache files on our browsers. We can clear up our browsing cookies to attain fast browsing. It is one of the major tips to keep your browsing history and privacy confidential.
Step 1. Access the Safari browser and go to the menu options to find History.
Step 2. Go for the Clear History option and then select the range of how old history you wish to clear. Clear the history of websites, open web pages, frequently visited sites, icons, content, images, quick web search, and more.
“Please Note: If you have more than one browser like Google Chrome, ensure you perform the same steps on the other browser to declutter cache and cookies.”
4. Quit Background Apps
The next step to optimizing your Mac is to kill background apps and processes that are occupying a lot of system resources. If you do not restart your Mac frequently, you will need to follow these steps to quit apps running in the background.
Step 1. Access the Activity Monitor console from the Dock.
Step 2. Get on to the Memory tab next to the CPU tab and then click on the Memory column to arrange all the processes according to the memory consumption.
Step 3. Right-click on the apps that you are not using anymore and select the Quit option. Quitting background apps will free up RAM and other system resources to give more power to necessary apps.
5. Get Rid of Large Files
Large Files, Movies, Videos, and duplicate files may take up a lot of space in your storage. you can check out folders like Downloads, Videos, or large backup files to find and remove unwanted or old files. You can sort files by size to prioritize the files. You can also make use of the Smart Folder to find the right files and delete unwanted stuff to clean up Mac storage.
Final Words
These top 5 tips on how to clean up and optimize your Mac storage can give new life to your Mac and make it as good as new. These tips on optimizing your Mac will recover a lot of space on your storage and will declutter your Mac from unwanted apps, files, and folders. For heavily cluttered Macs, use the Best Mac optimizers to automatically clean up the storage.
