All computers eventually get clogged up with user files and traces left by different applications. There are also a number of other reasons that can cause the Mac OS X to become slow or unresponsive. I wanted to share a few things I do for OS X maintenance in order to optimize, clean and speed up my Mac. Remember, whenever system maintenance is being done there is a chance that something could go horribly wrong!

I am only sharing what works for me.  How to download all versions of minecraft for mac. Proceed with care, stay safe and always have up to date backups! Never do anything you’re not sure of! Maintaining the OS X File System via Disk Utility Disc Utility is a tool with that comes with OS X. You will find it in the Applications/Utilities folder. There are three functions in Disk Utility I normally use:.

Mac Cleanup Free

Repair Disk. Repair Disk Permissions. Erase Free Space Repair Disk The repair disk function is useful for fixing common file system issues. This includes things like corrupt directory structures and files left in unknown state because of crashes, forced restarts or forced application quits. To only identify if you have any issues, run “Verify Disk” first. Repair Disk Permissions I try to do this every couple of months. It’s not the end-of-all-problems as some seem to think, but it still pays off to keep your file permissions in check.

To only identify issues without making any repairs, run “Verify Disk Permissions”. Erase Free Space This is a little feature in disk utility that many people don’t know of. It is meant for rewriting the free space on your hard drive in order to improve security. This is because deleted files don’t actually get properly deleted until the physical part of the disc where they are located is rewritten. But I use it for different reasons. What most people don’t know is that this rewriting process of free space can actually increase the available disk space on your drive.

I have yet failed to find an exact explanation for why this is. I am not an expert but I’m guessing that over time your hard drive becomes fragmented and more inefficient, and erasing the free space fixes that issue (at least partly). In any case, the first time I erased free space 11 GB of more free space appeared on my 750 GB hard drive! Since then I have erased free space every few months and it always gives me a few extra GB of free space. Obiding The 15% Rule For good performance, it is recommended to keep at least 15% of free space on your system hard drive at all times. (If you look carefully at the picture in the previous chapter of this post, you can see that I failed). According to, the more free space on your drive, the faster it performs.

With the 7200 RPM 1 TB hard drive they tested, the difference in speed was up to 35% (depending on the task) when comparing a 5% full drive to a 97% full drive. Lesson: Don’t leave clutter or archive material sitting on your work or system disk. Where does the 15% number come from though? It’s said to be the minimum requirement for your system processes to run properly. OS X needs free hard drive space for it’s built in defragmentation process and a swap space for managing memory use, among other things.

Individual applications also use the free disk space temporarily. Audio, graphics and video applications can be especially demanding in this respect with temp file sizes reaching several gigabytes sometimes.

If your hard drive becomes too full, it causes your computer to slow down and freeze up. OS X becomes unable to run it’s automatic system maintenance processes properly. Always having a good amount of free space on your drive also provides good buffer space for when you have to download or handle very large files temporarily. Are you, like me, finding it hard to keep 15% free? You should, like me, probably think about archiving some of your data. If it’s not being used, it doesn’t belong to your main HD. Doing a proper cleanup with help of some good software (more on this later) can also help.

Cleaning Startup Items Startup items are applications that launch automatically when your Mac boots up. A lot of software you install tend to sneak their own processes into your startup items. Often times these processes can be absolutely unnecessary. These unnecessary startup items are eating up your computer’s resources. You should periodically check and clean up your startup items list. You will find startup items at: System Preferences - Users & Groups - Login Items. My startup items.

Nice and tidy. Note that in order to remove startup items, you need to click the little minus button below the list. The little checkboxes are for hiding startup items (they will still run). Be careful not to remove stuff you might actually need. If you’re not sure of what something is, I advice you to leave it be and go do some research (Google is your friend there). Getting Rid of Junk: Clean My Mac 3 I’ve been using this brilliant piece of software for a couple of years now and grown extremely fond of it.

By MacPaw is a tool for scanning your computer for all sorts of crap and then getting rid of it. Getting rid of junk is not only about the files you create or download. Many kids of supporting files are constantly being created by different applications. Ultimately these become useless and can be safely removed. This not only frees up space on the hard drive, but also makes the system faster and more efficient.