Some, however, may not be useful to you, such as Universal Access (which offers help for visually and hearing impaired users) or Bluetooth (which allows certain devices to be used wirelessly). Apple has generously included a number of very useful features as preferences.

While System Preferences is open, take a look at a few other things. Turn Off Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing if You Don’t Use Them However, be sure that you know what you’re removing otherwise you may kill some critical function for the next time you restart.

To remove them, simply select the item by clicking on its name and then hit the “minus” button at the bottom of the list. You may be surprised at how many there are. You can find out what is in your startup items list by navigating to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items. Some applications automatically (or when asked) set themselves as a Login Item, which causes them to open at every restart or login. These are tips for getting the most out of the Mac you currently have without investing in hardware upgrades. They mostly have to do with reducing memory use by limiting the number of active processes and freeing up drive space, since a too full drive (especially past the 90% mark) can slow down your Mac. Publisher’s note: None of these tips will improve your Mac’s performance as much as more system memory (RAM), a faster hard drive, or a CPU upgrade, which isn’t always possible.

Here are a few tips I’ve found for restoring my Macs to full speed without spending a penny. When those don’t speed things up, I’ve found a number of things I can do to encourage my Macs back to their youthful snappiness. This alone will bog down any Mac.Īt other times, I realize that it’s been weeks since I restarted the computer, and a simple restart will solve a lot of these woes. There are many potential reasons why: I tend to run 8 to 10 applications all the time – and sometimes push 15 or more.

If you find Ed’s articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.Įvery now and then, my Macs begin to feel a little sluggish.

We hope to add similar articles covering later versions of OS X. Most of these tips apply to Intel-based Macs running Tiger, but we specifically address G3, G4, and G5 PowerPC Macs, since Intel Mac users really should be using something newer than Tiger by now (we love OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the last version before OS X became heavily influenced by iOS). It was written toward the end of the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger era and has been updated since its first publication. Publisher’s note: This article, originally written by Ed Eubanks Jr and published on 2007.03.12, has been the most popular article in the history of Low End Mac with well over 2 million hits.

How to optimize my mac 10.6.8