How to make your Mac start up faster

The biggest thing you can change about a slow start is what opens after you log in. Remove the login items you do not need, clear out leftovers from apps you deleted, keep some free space on the disk and install pending updates. Those four steps cover almost everything you control, and the rest of the wait is down to the Mac itself.

This post goes through each one, starting with the step that makes the most difference, and says plainly what you should not expect.

Two waits that feel like one

A start has two parts. First comes the part before you see your desktop: the Mac turns on, macOS loads and you reach the login screen or your desktop. After that comes the part where your apps and background helpers open and the Mac is busy for a while before it feels ready.

There is not much you can do about the first part. It depends on the Mac, its age and its storage. The second part is where your own choices matter, because every app set to open at login and every helper an app installs adds work at exactly the moment you want to start using the Mac. If your desktop appears quickly and then the Mac crawls for a minute or two, this second part is your problem, and it is the part this post fixes. If you want to understand what is going on in that minute, why your Mac is slow right after you start it up goes into it.

Step 1: Cut what opens at login

Open System Settings and go to General > Login Items & Extensions (Login Items on macOS 14). The top list, “Open at Login”, holds the apps that launch when you log in. Select one you do not need straight away and click the minus button under the list. The app stays installed. It just stops opening by itself.

A good test for each entry is whether you would open it within the first few minutes of sitting down. A chat app you check all day can stay. A music player, a game launcher, a cloud storage app you use once a week, a printer utility or a tool you tried once and forgot should go. You can always open an app by hand when you need it.

Below that list is a section called “Allow in the Background”. These are helpers that apps have registered to run without a visible window: updaters, sync tools, menu bar utilities. Each has a switch. Turning a switch off stops that helper from running in the background. Read the name and the app it belongs to before you switch anything off, and if you are unsure what an item does, leave it on. The post on whether it is safe to disable startup items covers how to judge that.

One catch: this screen does not tell you everything. Launch agents and daemons are often listed under the maker’s company name rather than the app’s, it does not show whether an item is running right now, and a switch only turns an item off without removing it. How to find out what starts when your Mac starts shows where the files behind the list live.

Step 2: Remove the leftovers of apps you deleted

When you drag an app to the Trash, the app goes but things it set up elsewhere can stay behind. The ones that matter for startup are background items: a helper that was meant to open at login or run in the background. If the app is gone, the helper usually has nothing to run, so it does nothing useful. But it can still sit in your startup list, and in some cases macOS keeps trying to launch it.

These leftovers rarely cost much on their own. The reason to clear them is tidiness and a clear picture: a startup list where every entry is something you recognise is far easier to judge than one full of names from apps you removed years ago.

Foreman has a Startup Apps page that lists everything that opens at login or runs in the background, grouped by the app it belongs to, with readable names. An item whose app has been deleted shows the status “Program missing”. You can remove those one at a time with Remove, or all at once with Clean Up Leftovers, and their files go to the Trash rather than being deleted outright. Clean Up Leftovers asks for one administrator password for the system-wide ones. Foreman only removes these startup leftovers. It does not uninstall apps or clear other files an app left behind.

Step 3: Keep some free space on the disk

A Mac with an almost full disk has less room to work with. macOS uses the disk for things it needs while it runs, and a very full disk can make everything feel slower, including the start. There is no magic figure to quote, but if your disk is nearly full, freeing some space is worth doing.

To see where the space has gone, open System Settings, choose General, then Storage. It shows a breakdown by category and gives you recommendations. Large files in Downloads, old installers, video projects and old backups of an iPhone are the usual suspects. Delete or move what you no longer need to an external drive, and empty the Trash afterwards, because files in the Trash still take up space.

This step helps a Mac that is short of space. It does nothing for a Mac with plenty free, so check Storage first and do not go hunting for gigabytes you do not need to recover.

Step 4: Install updates and restart now and then

Open System Settings, choose General, then Software Update, for macOS itself. Apps update through the App Store or their own update checks. Installing updates matters because they fix bugs, including ones that cause slow starts. It is also normal for the first start after a macOS update to be slow, because the Mac does extra work in the background for a while. That settles on its own, and why your Mac is slow after a macOS update explains what it is doing.

A Mac that has been running for weeks can also pick up the habit of keeping things open you have forgotten. An occasional restart gives you a clean slate. In the Apple menu, choose Restart. If “Reopen windows when logging back in” is ticked, macOS brings back what was open, which can slow the next login, so untick it when you want the fastest result.

Check the result and be realistic

After you have trimmed the list, restart once and watch. The honest expectation is this: if you had many login items, especially heavy ones, the Mac will feel ready sooner. If you had only a few, you may notice no difference, and that is fine, it means your Mac was not being held back by them.

Things that will not make a difference are worth naming, because they are often sold as fixes. Clearing caches, which some tools sell as a speed-up, is not a reliable way to make macOS load faster. An older Mac with a slow drive will start slowly whatever you do. On an older Mac, the better next step is to use fewer apps at once, not to hunt for a trick.

To judge an item with some facts instead of guessing, Foreman’s Startup Apps page shows “Impact now” for each item: whether it is running and how much it is using. You can disable an item from there and enable it again later, so nothing is permanent. Foreman costs $12 once, works on up to 3 Macs and is free for 24 hours, which is long enough to clean up your startup list. The same cleanup can be done with System Settings alone, so it is a convenience, not a requirement.

A short checklist

1. Open Login Items & Extensions and remove the apps you do not need at login.
2. Look through “Allow in the Background” and switch off helpers for apps you no longer use.
3. Clear leftovers from deleted apps.
4. Check General, then Storage, and free space if the disk is nearly full.
5. Install updates in General, then Software Update, and restart.

Do these in that order, restart once, and judge the result. If there is a gain to be had, it usually comes from the first two steps.