Why is my Mac running so slow? - Part Three

Welcome to Part Three of “Why is my Mac running so slow?” Previously, I wrote about the importance of having free space on your hard drive and memory installed on your Mac. This next subject will be a short one.

Keep your desktop clean.

Your desktop is actually a folder. It lives at (your startup disk, usually called “Macintosh HD”) > Users > (your user name) > Desktop. The difference is that the desktop folder displays it’s contents on your desktop as icons. These are not your normal icons, because the operating system treats every icon on the desktop as a window. So having 100 icons on your desktop is like having 100 windows open at the same time. This uses tremendous amounts of system resources and slows everything down.

It’s easy for the desktop to get out of hand. Icons on the desktop are generally laid out in a grid. When the grid fills up, the operating system starts to place any additional icons in the same place, stacking them on top of icon for your start-up disk! So now, the problem is getting worse and worse and you don’t even realize it.

The solution is easy. Start by creating a new folder on your desktop. Call it “Stuff to file”, or something like that. Then, take everything on your desktop and put it in that folder. I doesn’t matter how many items are in that folder or how much space those item take up. To the operating system, it’s just another window. Once you have done that, you should notice an immediate improvement in performance.

Next, do some house cleaning. Start moving things from the “Stuff to file” folder into the the proper folders in your home folders: Documents, Music, Pictures or Movies. Create sub-folders in those folders, if necessary. Then, just keep track of the amount of icons on your desktop. If you notice, say, more that three columns of icons, it’s time to move things to their proper places, or throw them away.

As Dr. Bobby says, “Cleanliness is next to Steveliness”.

Thanks for the read,

Your Genius