Explained Get to know your application station

Check your apps

Open the Applications folder to see everything you’ve installed. Also, take a look at the Applications folder within your user folder, if it exists, in case you’ve installed any apps to your user account for your use only.

View by date used

You might have a number of apps installed that you never use. In Finder’s List view, Ctrl-click on a column header, enable the Date Last Opened column, and re-sort the list by clicking it. Consider trashing any apps you haven’t used for a while and no longer need.

View by size

When viewing your Applications folder, choose View > as List. Sort your apps by clicking column headers; click Size to see which take up lots of space. Consider deleting unneeded apps if your storage is running low.

Prune login items

In the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences, select your account and click Login Items. If there’s anything listed here that you don’t need, or at least don’t want every time you log in, select it and remove it from the list to speed up startup.

Monitor app loads

If your Mac often feels sluggish or locks up, open Activity Monitor and keep an eye on the CPU and Memory tabs. If you find specific apps are putting too much load on your Mac, start considering alternatives to use instead.

Review and manage apps’ support files

Some apps install many gigabytes of support files, such as GarageBand and its loops. Use GrandPerspective (Free, grandperspectiv.

sourceforge.net) to locate large blocks of files that you may never need.