Further tips and tweaks
Dig a bit deeper for more system-sapping culprits
With unnecessary files and apps removed and large files moved to an external drive, if there’s still no noticeable improvement in system performance, there are further modifications you can make.
First, check for new system updates. You can usually do this by opening the App Store and clicking Updates. If you’re having trouble with the Mac App Store, consider downloading a Combo Update directly from the Apple Support website.
In the Spotlight
The Spotlight search feature – accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass at the top right – functions as a system-wide search engine. Each time you create or modify content, Spotlight ‘indexes’ it so you can find it later on. As handy as this indexing is, it can sometimes go awry. You also may not want to index certain folders for privacy reasons.
If macOS gets stuck reindexing files, this can slow down your system. Go to the Spotlight pane in System Preferences. Click on the Privacy tab to see locations which are excluded from indexing. Click the ‘+’ button and choose your startup disk, which is usually named Macintosh HD. You will see a warning message stating that this will disable the search feature. Click OK.
Select on your Mac hard drive in the Privacy tab and remove it from the list using the ‘–’ button. These steps force the Mac to ‘reindex’ your data, which can improve search speeds. If you do not want to index certain folders such as your personal Documents folder, take this opportunity to add them now using the ‘+’ button once again.
Leave the Mac on for a few hours to allow reindexing to complete. You can check the progress by clicking the Spotlight icon again.
Fixing Finder
By default, when you open Finder, it will display every file in your account. If you have a large number of files this can take a long time to load. You can change the default view from All My Files to something else by opening Finder’s Preferences. In the General tab, find ‘New Finder Windows Show’ and click on the pop-up menu to change to another location, such as your home folder. If Finder is still sluggish, click Go and Go to Folder. Type ‘~/Library/ Preferences/’ and press Return. Choose View > As List. Find the file named ‘com. apple.finder.plist’ and move it onto your desktop. Restart your Mac, then delete that file from the desktop.