Introduction
Getting frustrated and venting out anger on your Mac are the two most common reactions to a slow and sluggish processing speed. Not surprisingly, neither of the two is productive and will not get you anywhere. You can start deleting files and some of the heavy-duty applications and games that you have grown so fond of. That said, knowing which files eat up virtual memory can greatly assist you in your endeavors of optimizing the performance of your Mac. And it is not rocket science either; you just need to make a checklist before you start.
Steps on how to clean up a Mac
Random deletion of a couple of applications and programs here and there to increase free disk space won’t help you much in breathing back life into your Mac. You should be skilled in how to clean your Mac effectively. To really make your Mac work as fast before you need to take more concrete measures. Here is a list of steps that are bound to help you.
Check for malicious programs and backdoor entries
Many a time, Mac users are unaware of the fact that a malicious program has gained access to their device. Much of it has got to do with the general belief among Mac users that Mac OS is immune to viruses, spyware and malicious codes. Times have changed and “bigger and badder” viruses have found their way into Mac. Viruses and spyware have a big role to play in slowing down your Mac as they can cause some serious damage. Run a virus check and an anti-spyware/adware scanner to hunt down parasitic programs and malicious codes.
Clear historical data and logs
If you didn’t know this, Mac maintains a logged record of all activities that the user performs on it. Apart from the usual data logs such as cookies, caches and browsing history, this detailed log also records data transferred on email clients and makes backup of critical system data and applications. Because this task is automatic and not user-controlled, the vast amount of data being accumulated in the dedicated logs folder goes unnoticed by the Mac user. If not cleaned up regularly, this folder can have a size of many gigabytes.
Cleaning up unnecessary data and applications
Many Mac users cite that cleaning up unnecessary files and data does not help much when optimizing the performance of your Mac. However, they are gravely mistaken. Unnecessary files take a lot of disk space and useless applications can eat up virtual memory if they ruin in the background. Moreover, many applications maintain their own dedicated folders on the hard-drive that they keep updating frequently. This means that the size of the folder will inevitably grow with time. This entire background process of recording and updating data also affects virtual memory. Therefore, deleting such applications will optimize the performance of Mac.
Post Clean-up Maintenance
Even after you have successfully cleaned up your Mac, keep a vigilant eye on the available free disk space and the virtual memory scanner. Make it a point to frequently scan for malicious content as it is half of the cure against them.