Power Up Your Mac

If your Mac’s not running as quickly as it should be, or you just want to squeeze every ounce of power you can from it, read on

- By Kenny Hemphill

Whether you only use your Mac occasionally or you’re the kind of power user who spends hours sitting or standing in front of it every day, it’s likely that you sometimes become frustrated because it won’t run as quickly or as smoothly as you’d like it to or you think it should. It’s also likely that you’ve encountered the dreaded beachball, and that you know that there are things you could do differently that would make using your Mac more productive but haven’t got around to figuring out what they are.

That’s exactly what we’ll do over the next pages. From everyday housekeeping tasks that will keep your Mac running smoothly, to tips and tricks to make you more productive, to third–party apps that can do a lot of the work for you, we’ll cover them all. We’ll even suggest hardware that can boost your Mac’s performance.

If you’ve thought about creating keyboard shortcuts, investigating the new Shortcuts app in Monterey, or dealing with all those duplicate files that you know are scattered around your drive, now is the time to do it. Consider this your prompt and your guide on the journey to a more productive, and fun, experience with your Mac.

While some of what we cover here, like the Shortcuts app, is specific to macOS Monterey, most of it can be applied to any recent version of macOS. However, whichever version you’re running, you should make sure you have installed the latest available update. That way, you know that your Mac has the latest security patches installed. Consider that your first tip.