Another option is to hide all desktop icons completely using a defaults command, but that is best for advanced users since it involves the Terminal and disabling the Desktop feature. The easiest solution to this is to drag and drop everything from the desktop into a separate folder on the desktop, call it “Clutter” or “Desktop stuff” or whatever you want, and then open and use that folder when you need to access your desktop stuff.
#MAC MINI VERY SLOW FULL#
Many Mac users store tons of files on their desktops, resulting in a very cluttered desktop full of files and folders and other stuff.ĭon’t do this.
#MAC MINI VERY SLOW MAC OS#
This will have an immediate effect on the appearance of Mac windows, titlebars, sidebars, and other UI elements by using reduced transparency, and you won’t see as many animations throughout Mac OS either with Reduce Motion turned on as well, which is a new option in Sierra. Check the box for “Reduce motion” and “Reduce transparency”.Open the Apple menu and go to System Preferences, then choose “Accessibility”.
#MAC MINI VERY SLOW ZIP#
Additionally, the Mac has many motion type effects within Mission Control and elsewhere that zip and zoom around.įortunately macOS Sierra allows you to turn this eye candy off, which can result in a notable performance increase, particularly for power users who have a lot of apps or windows open concurrently. 3: Use Reduce Transparency & Reduce MotionĮye candy effects like transparent windows and overlays sure look nice, but they can also lead to performance reduction as each new window requires more system resources to draw and maintain. While gifs, effects, and stickers are undoubtedly fun (even though you can’t send the message effects back from a Mac… for now anyway), just have a little awareness about leaving these message windows open on the Mac.Īnd by the way, for the technically inclined people, you can test this out immediately by opening a new message window and sending or receiving a few animated gifs and leaving that chat window open… in Activity Monitor you will see Messages spike in CPU activity. The good news is that the animated gifs will stop playing and pause automatically once they are off screen in the Messages app, so just send a few messages in response, or clear the chat log, and Messages app will be smooth again and whatever sluggish behavior will remedy itself. Receiving animated GIFs in particular can cause a temporary slowdown on the Mac and in the Messages app in particular, if those message windows are open and actively on display and animating as intended. 2: Mind Your Messagesĭo you use the Mac Messages app? If so, pay attention if you are receiving tons of animated GIFs and stickers, which can arrive in abundance from an iOS 10 iPhone user who is having fun with the new Messages stickers, gifs, effects, and other chaos that can be sent from iOS 10 Messages app. Let the Mac sit turned on overnight while it’s not in use, and all indexing processes should be complete by morning with performance returned to normal. (this can also be the case with iOS 10 sluggishness, by the way). These tasks can consume a notable amount of CPU cycles as they complete, leading to blazing fans, slow performance, and Mac that feels like it’s running hot, but once the background tasks are finished the Mac will be speedy again. I know, waiting isn’t always satisfying, but it’s easy and it works! For the vast majority of users, the reason their Mac feels slow after updating to macOS Sierra is because of the reindexing features that are going on in the background.
This is another process that you need to let complete in order for Photos to work properly. This can take quite a while as well, particularly if you have a very large Photos app library. It is important to just let this process complete itself, interrupting Spotlight indexing will cause Spotlight to not work properly, and it will just attempt to re-index again anyway.Īnother possible cause of a perceived slowdown after updating to macOS Sierra is the new Photos app, which indexes and scans all photos for identifiable features and faces. This can take quite a while to complete, particularly if you have a large hard drive with a ton of files. Immediately after updating to macOS Sierra, the Mac must re-index the drive for use with Spotlight and Siri, the built-in search functions in Mac OS. 1: Slow Mac After Sierra Update? Fans Blazing? WAIT! Why? How? And more importantly, what can you do it about it to speed up your computer again? Let’s review five main reasons and what to do so speed things up in Sierra again, and also discuss some other reasons a Mac might be slow. OK so let’s assume your Mac with macOS Sierra is running slow. Read on to learn why macOS Sierra may be running slow (some MacBook users notice their Mac is hot and fans are blasting away too), and what you can do about it.