Tips for keeping your MacBook clean, fast and make it last for a long time

Speed up Startup items

Apps and services that automatically start when you turn on the computer have a significant impact on the boot time and speed of your Mac.  Here is how to find and disable unwanted startup programs in your MacBook:

1. Click on the Apple located in the top-left corner of the screen. Then choose System Preferences and Users & Groups.

2. Next, go to Login Items. Here you can see startup apps and login items. There, you can remove an application from the login items by clicking on the minus icon.  Like all administrative settings in the macOS, you need to click the like and type your password to make changes here.

3. There is another hidden location where you can find startup items. Go to the menu bar in your MacOS and hold the Option Key on your keyboard. This will show a new item called Library. Click on it.

4. Scroll down the window until you see LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents. ???Both of these are a piece of installed apps that run automatically. Only remove these items if you are sure what you are doing. If you accidentally remove one of these items there is a good chance that the related app won't run anymore on your computer.

In this way, you can find and disable apps like iTunes that run automatically that launch at the boot time and consume a lot of system resources without your permission.

Keep Software up to Date

Nothing is more important than updating software on your MacBook on a regular basis. Software update not only fixes bugs and security vulnerabilities in the system but also brings performance enhancement and new features to your computer.

Run Software Update from the Apple menu once in a while and check the Mac App Store for updates of your apps at least once a month. Software update checks for macOS update once a week by default but you should check Mac App Store manually in OS X Lion. With OS X Mountain newer OS X version Software Update moves to the Mac App and the whole process is automated.

Repair Disk Permissions 

All Macs come with the Disk Utility program included. Running the Disk Utility at least 5 times a year is a good way to make sure that your hard disk is healthy and fully functional. The Disk Utility includes two basic functions. The first one is to fix disk permissions:

1. Open the Applications folder and double click on the Disk Utility.

2. Select the Volume to which you want to fix permission.

3. Click on the First Aid Tab.

4. Click Repair Disk Permission.

Fix Disk Errors

Once you've repaired disk permission that's the time to move to the second functionality in the Disk Utility and check for errors on your MacBook disk. This is especially useful after installing or uninstalling a bunch of applications.

The best way to repair a disk on a MacBook is to boot from the recovery partition by holding down Command+R and running Disk Utility from there. This will find and fix corrupted blocks on the hard drive if necessary.

Just make sure that you run Verify Disk not only on the physical disk but also on the boot partition (Macintosh HD). If the Disk Utility finds any errors, they will appear in red. Fortunately, the Disk Utility in Mac is powerful enough to handle most disk errors on its own.

Close Apps when not using

The dock is one of the coolest things in a MacBook. There you can see open programs in an attractive and handy method. The problem is that often clicking on the red X will not actually shut the apps off. For example, iTunes, Microsoft Word or even the web browser will remain running on your computer even you have closed them from the dock. These apps use a portion of your RAM and CPU and slow down your MacBook or even can end up heating your laptop. 

To see apps that you've left open, click the Apple menu at the top left corner and click on “Force Quit.” From there, you can shut down apps you aren't using and preserve the resources they're hogging. 

Uninstall Unused Apps

Apps that are not used for a long time take storage space on your drive and slow down your device. You can remove unnecessary apps either from Launchpad or the Finder:

1. Click on the Dock or open it from your Application Folder.

2. If you can't see the App in the list, search for the name or swipe left and right until you find the app.

3. Click on X next to the app.

Alternately you can delete apps from the Finder:

1. Search the app Finder. Most apps are located in your Application Folder. 

2. Drag and drop the unwanted app into the trash.

Clean off the Desktop

When you have a lot of icons on your desktop this will slow down your MacBook. The reason is that each file on the desktop its icon preview takes up RAM and resources. The slow down is less sensible on the newest systems with more RAM.

The best solution is to move files from the desktop into appropriate folders periodically. This will help your desktop look less cluttered and your MacBook become less sluggish.

Tidy up the Download Folder

Over time your download folder could get bogged down with a lot of old downloads. Move the downloaded files to the appropriate folders or delete them from your hard drive.

Regularly Back Up your MacBook

Believe it or not, even Macs can crash and run into hard drive problems. And if it happens it's very like you lose your valuable data. So having the habit of regularly backing up your MacBook seems to be a good practice.

By far the easiest way for backing up and restoring hard drives is setting up a Time Machine. You'll need an external hard drive, but once you set up Time Machine the rest is very simple and automatic backups occur without any effort.

Once you got a large and cheap external drive you can configure Time Machine through System Preference. One critical time to perform backups is before software updates. It's rare but when things go wrong, you'll be very thankful to have one.

In this post, we've tried to address tips for improving your MacBook performance and making it last for a longer time. But our tips about Macs are not finished yet. If you are interested there is another part of this post to come.