Ask LH: Can I Stop Yosemite Slowing My Mac Down?

Hi Lifehacker, I have recently upgraded to Yosemite on my MacBook Pro. I love the aesthetics but it has severely slowed my computer down. Any tips on how to improve the performance? Thanks, Yosemite Sam

Dear YS,

Any operating system upgrade is always a little risky — there’s no guarantee that performance will improve, and if you have an older machine, the reverse is often true. We’ve heard the full gamut of reports about Yosemite, from users finding everything snappier to machines becoming slow and unusable and crashing repeatedly. (If you’re not sure if your Mac is up to it, check our guide to whether moving to Yosemite is worth it.)

There are a few tricks you can try if your Mac is having problems:

  • Make sure you keep up to date with Mac OS X updates in the future — these may improve performance. Also make sure that all your apps are up-to-date — many apps have upgraded for better Yosemite compatibility.
  • As we mention in our roundup of ways to fix Yosemite’s biggest annoyances, disabling Dashboard has improved graphics performance for some users.
  • Follow the steps in our guide to fixing a sluggish Mac. Although these are not Yosemite-specific, they can improve performance.
  • Consider reinstalling Yosemite from scratch. That’s an annoying and slow task (remember to backup first), but it could produce an improvement. (Apple has a basic explanation of this process here.

These are simple strategies, but they can help. If readers have other Yosemite-boosting tactics that have helped, we’d love to hear them in the comments.

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