![]() For example, if you’re exporting a movie project from iMovie and it’s using heavy CPU, and the Mac feels very slow, that’s normal and to be expected, so let iMovie finish the task at hand. Of course many apps use heavy CPU to accomplish tasks, and that will slow down the Mac to do so. We’ll cover more on the visual effect aspect of system slowdowns shortly, but the first thing you could try is closing windows or applications. If you see something using significant CPU, that is likely the cause of your slowdowns.įor example, if you see a system process like ‘mds’ or ‘mds_stores’ using heavy CPU, that’s likely because Spotlight is reindexing the drive, and the earlier advice of waiting should resolve that problem.Īnother example of a native process using CPU usage is ‘WindowServer’, and if you see that using a lot of CPU (as the screenshot here shows at 68%) then you may have too many open windows, or applications open on the Mac, and/or things like window transparency and visual effects may be slowing the display of open applications and windows, as each fancy visual effect requires system resources to render and look fancy. Once Activity Monitor is open, choose the CPU tab to sort processes by CPU percentage usage – this is basically showing you what processes or applications on the Mac are consuming processor, as a percentage of available CPU resources. Open Activity Monitor by opening Spotlight (Command+Spacebar) and typing “Activity Monitor” and then hitting the return key. This is somewhat advanced to take action on, but it’s simple enough to observe that it can be helpful. If a Mac feels slow or sluggish, one way to possibly find the culprit is to check Activity Monitor for processes that are using the slow down. This is often the the number one reasons Mac users think a new operating system is slower than a prior version, so don’t disregard this simple advice! 2: Check CPU Use in Activity Monitor for Apps, Processes, etc When they’re finished, the performance of the Mac should be significantly better, if not entirely back to normal. So basically, let the Mac sit turned on overnight, perhaps for a few nights in a row, and allow those indexing and optimization processes to complete. I know that sounds like weird advice, but here’s the logic behind it: after a major macOS system software update, the Mac performs various maintenance routines behind the scenes, it reindexes the drive for Spotlight and Siri, and apps like Photos may reindex too. If you just recently updated to macOS Big Sur and you feel the Mac is slower than usual, the best course of action is to keep the Mac awake, plugged in (if it’s a laptop), and let it sit for a while (perhaps overnight or for a nights) – basically, hurry up and wait. ![]() 1: Slow Mac right after macOS Big Sur update? Wait it out! ![]() ![]() Why is the Mac with Big Sur running slow? And what can you do about it? Let’s review a few of the possibilities and options to fix potential performance issues. We’ll walk through some possible reasons as to why macOS Big Sur feels slow on a Mac, as well as covering some advice and general tips and tricks to speed things back up again. ![]()
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