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Sluggish iMac

Avatar Alan Cox
I had an email ysterday from someone calling herself Alyssa who is for all I know a fellow member. Anyway she suggested several steps to take if your iMa is slowing down. These included:
- It's friendly with activity monitor- Clean up any cache files/junk- Shut down unnecessary apps- Manage disk space- Keep MacOS updated (and quit any Mac Cleaner software).
It all sounds good BUT what is an activity monitor and where are my caches (whatever they are).
By the way if anyone has macula degeneration or other visual impairment and finds the discussions hard to read, you may find it easuer by presssing Command and + .

Re: Sluggish iMac

Avatar Mick Burrell
She's not a member.

Activity Monitor is a program found in Applications>Utilities which will show you what's going on in your machine - as long as you understand a) what it's showing you and b) what it should show! It can for instance show you if one particular program is hogging all the processor.

I think a Mac with an up-to-date OS still cleans its caches without you having to bother but if you enable the Developer menu in Safari (Safari>Preferences>Advanced - bottom tick box) you can use the menu to choose to clean Safari's cache. I wouldn't at this stage worry about other caches.

Not sure shutting down apps will help unless they're working on something in the background.

You can check disc space. In Finder Preferences, show Macintosh HD on the desktop if it's not there already. Right click (or Control click) on the icon and choose Get Info. Your free space should be at least than 10% of the total capacity - more than 10% is better!

Re: Sluggish iMac

Avatar Tony Still
The number of times I hear people suggest clearing caches! Unless there is a clear indication that a cache is corrupt (ie contents are damaged) then this is a BAD thing to do; caches are there to make the computer go faster and it will only spend yet more time rebuilding them.

Grumble, grumble, grumble. The rest of the advice is fine, though totally generic; Mick's advice is much better. Do you actually have a problem?

Nice to hear from you Alan.
 
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