alex.cvitanovic

Your mac is run­ning slow. Really slow. You often find your­self yelling at the com­puter to HURRY THE HECK UP and threat­en­ing to throw it out the win­dow. Instead of burst­ing a Jugu­lar, try these easy + effec­tive tricks.

// FONTS //

Fonts are noto­ri­ous for slow­ing down OSX. Font files become cor­rupt or cache files become invalid, which slows down every­thing on your sys­tem. Clear­ing out invalid fonts and the font cache will bring a not­i­ca­ble boost to sys­tem per­for­mance. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open up Font Book from your appli­ca­tions folder.
2. Make sure you are on the “all fonts” pane and then select all the fonts (cmd + a)*
3. Go to the File menu and select “Val­i­date Fonts”. Font Book will now attempt to val­i­date the font files installed on your system. When Font Book has fin­ished val­i­dat­ing fonts, you will notice “minor prob­lems” and “seri­ous problems”.
4. From the drop-down menu select “warn­ings” — The list now only con­tains fonts with problems
5. Tick the check­box that says “select all fonts” then click “Remove Checked”. A dia­logue box appears ask­ing if you wish to pro­ceed, click “remove”. You may need to enter an admin­is­tra­tor pass­word to continue.

Clean­ing the font cache // Clean­ing out bad fonts is only fix­ing half the prob­lem. OSX still has cache files ref­er­enc­ing to those invalid fonts. We need to remove the font cache files and get OSX to rebuild them based off the valid fonts.

1. Down­load and install Font Fina­gler [3.9mb]. This is a free application.
2. Open font fina­gler, click OK when a dia­logue appears warn­ing you about dis­abled fonts.
3. Click “Inspect Font Cache Files”
4. Select all files that come up in the list, and click “Clean Font Cache Files”.
5. A dia­logue appears stat­ing that you will need to restart your com­puter imme­di­ately after the oper­a­tion com­pletes, click “Con­tinue Clean­ing”
6. Restart your computer

// VERIFY PERMISSIONS //

Invalid file and folder per­mis­sions can be the cause of a slow com­puter. Repair disk per­mis­sions using the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Open Disk Util­ity from the appli­ca­tions folder
2. Ensure your startup disk is selected.
3. Press the “Repair Per­mis­sions” but­ton.
4. Go grab a cof­fee, this can take a while.
5. When com­plete restart the computer.

// UNINSTALL ANTIVIRUS AND FIREWALL PRODUCTS//

So, when you were using a PC you were told that the would would end if you didn’t have a fire­wall +antivirus appli­ca­tion installed. While this is the case with win­dows, this is NOT the case with OSX. There is only a hand­ful of viruses for mac, and apple is pretty good with soft­ware updates and patches.

Prod­ucts like Nor­ton Sys­tem util­i­ties or Antivirus do lit­tle more than take up hard drive space and hog CPU power. The best thing to do is unin­stall these applications.

// GOOD HOUSEKEEPING //

Here are some more tips that will help keep your mac run­ning smoothly

1. Remove old and unused applications
2. Per­form a full sys­tem update.
3. Ensure you are run­ning OSX 10.5 Leop­ard. If not, go buy it. $129 @ the apple store. Also keep in mind that Snowl­eop­ard  is going to be released soon, and it boasts to be more sta­ble and much faster than Leop­ard, so it will def­i­nitely be worth the $29 upgrade price.
4. Remove unused user accounts
5. Remove unused Lan­guage Packs (using ONYX)
6. Keep the desk­top clean (many peo­ple I talk to say that this helps and I agree)
7. Empty the trash regularly.
8. Turn off unused Blue­tooth and Wifi devices (this can be done from within sys­tem preferences)
9. Dis­able unused ani­ma­tions (eg the Dock reflec­tion, taskbar transper­ancy, dock “genie” effect) from within sys­tem preferences
10. Turn off unnec­es­sary dash­board widgets.
11. Keep at least 10% of your startup disk space free.
12. Remove unwanted startup items (from sys­tem pref­er­ences > accounts > login items)
13. Refor­mat. Noth­ing beats a good old clean out, backup, erase and for­mat. You will be sur­prised how much dif­fer­ence it makes and you will thank your­self for tak­ing the time and effort to do it.

And there you have it, 15 ways to speed up OSX. Please leave me your feed­back, and any other sug­ges­tions you have!

Tagged as Apple, Leopard, OSX, Productivity, Snowleopard + Categorized as Technology, Apple, Technology