macOS Catalina was the newest macOS system until Apple released macOS Big Sur in 2020. Many users prefer to stick with Catalina because it’s good and they are more familiar with it. Still, Catalina has its issues, and one issue that is often mentioned is speed. We know from the system requirements that it’s more demanding of resources than its predecessor, which is why it won’t run on some older Macs that could run Mojave. Happily, there are things you can do to boost performance. Here’s how to speed up Catalina.
To make macOS Catalina faster, you have to know what’s slowing it down. So do this:
If the speed problem you’re having is that your Mac takes much longer to startup now that you’ve installed Catalina, it could be because you have lots of applications that are automatically launching at startup. You can prevent them auto-starting like this:
That’s the long way to get rid of startup items. There is a much quicker way that I prefer to use. CleanMyMac X has a tool that will quickly remove startup programs on Catalina. Here’s how to use it.
Use Mac’s Safe Boot Option. One of the easiest and most straightforward methods to diagnose. Start the Notes app on your Mac, open an existing note or create a new note with some sample text, then click File Print and see if it will print. If it prints successfully from Notes that tell us that you have a problem with your installation of Microsoft Office. In that case you may need to uninstall Office 2016 from your Mac and then.
Launch agents are similar to startup items except that they are not full applications, they are additional programs that add functionality to a related application. They launch at startup and could be a reason Catalina i
s slow to boot. Unfortunately, tracking them down manually on your Mac is difficult and time consuming. However, happily, CleanMyMac X can do it for you. Here’s how to remove launch agents.
Keeping lots of browser tabs open is convenient, but each one uses resources and they mount up. If, for example, a tab is displaying a page which has lots of animation or auto-running video on it, it will slow your Mac down. So close all the browser tabs you don’t need.
If you have Spotlight set to its default, it will index every folder on your Mac, including those on external drives that are mounted. And indexing can slow down your Mac. You probably don’t need to search the contents of, say, your Downloads folder, or Library directory. Here’s how to exclude folders from Spotlight indexing.
macOS Catalina performance may get worse if applications on your Mac are out of date. Developers update applications regularly for all sorts of reasons. Most updates include bug fixes and performance improvements, so it’s important to keep them up to date. For apps that you download from the App Store, it’s easy. Just launch the App Store, go to Preferences and select Automatic Updates and your apps will always be up to date. For other apps, you’ll have to launch each one and check for updates from the application menu. Happily, there is a way you can update all your apps in one go using CleanMyMac X. Can you see how useful it is?
Modern Macs, especially MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros are designed to be able to run and run without being restarted, thanks to their low power sleep mode. However, shutting down you Mac does more than just conserve energy. It clears temporary files, like swap files that are used as virtual memory, and it frees up RAM. Restarting your Mac regularly will keep it running quickly and smoothly.
Sometimes, the only solution to fix macOS Catalina speed is to update your hardware. Adding more RAM will almost always make your Mac faster, whether it’s running Catalina or an older OS. If your Mac has RAM slots available and you can afford it, adding more RAM is a very worthwhile investment.
There are many tools that claim to speed up your Mac. Don’t believe apps that tell you that “your Mac is hijacked by virus” — this is a well-known scam. On the other hand, there are apps that help you better manage memory on Mac. For example, the app we’ve told you about, CleanMyMac X, has a tool called Speed that disables heavy-memory consumers. And this program is actually notarized by Apple.
If macOS Catalina is very slow, there are lots of ways you can speed it up. Follow the steps above and it should be running smoothly in no time.