Intel® Power Gadget is a software-based power estimation tool enabled for 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processors or newer. It provides real-time processor package power information in watts using energy counters. Avoid the degradation in performance with the memory eating applications such as Photoshop, Office and iWork. It is a great tool to make sure apps are not eating away the memory compromising the performance. Want a simple user interface in a tool to speed your Mac and stop the memory leakage, then choose Memory Purge. KisMAC — an open-source WiFi analyzer application for Mac OS that can map wireless networks and lay out the info on their performance so you can easily troubleshoot. Mac Wireless Diagnostics Tool — a built-in Mac WiFi analyzer that’s included in all version of macOS. The Rational performance tester is an automated performance testing tool that can be used for a web application or a server-based application where there is a process of input and output is involved. This tool creates a demo of the original transaction process between the user and the web service. One way to get an idea of how well your Mac is working is to run benchmarks and a set of performance tests on your MacBook or Mac desktop. There are a number of benchmarking apps that will help you.
You might be experiencing some performance issues with your Mac and you knew from your PC days about defragging computers. Well, you won’t find any command or utility to do that on Mac. The point is that the Mac File System is designed differently than Microsoft's, and it defragments files automatically. However, there are still some situations when you may need to defrag Macbook once in a few years.
In this article, we’ll tell you how to defrag a Mac, all advantages and pitfalls of doing this, and what alternatives to defragging are out there. Anxious to find out? Then let’s start!
Do you need to defragment a Mac?
First of all, let’s find out why we do a Mac disk defrag. To cut a long story short, defragmentation is aimed at boosting a computer’s performance by reorganizing the data on your drive. As a result, the related bits are grouped together and loading files and programs takes less time. Simply put, Mac defragment moves everything back in order and can greatly speed up a slow system.
However, despite the obvious advantage, a Mac running any version of OS X later than 10.2 generally doesn’t need to be defragmented. The reason for this is that OS X and macOS have their own built-in Apple Mac utilities that clean up fragmented files from the hard drive. Therefore, for most users it eliminates the need to perform a regular defrag. But there is an exception to every rule and in a few rare cases a defrag for Mac can make a difference.
When do Macs need to be defragged?
If your hard drive is more than 90 percent full, the macOS may have problems with automatic defragmentation routines. This situation is common for multimedia creators who produce plenty of large files in pro tools like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut or Photoshop.
Therefore, if you have hundreds or even thousands of large (1GB and larger) movies, audio files or creative documents, you should consider removing them to free up the storage. Another alternative is defragging a Mac.
Concerning the first option, there is a fast and safe way to remove unnecessary files from your Mac — a powerful app CleanMyMac X. It finds above 74 GB of junk on an average computer, including old and large files, app leftovers and system clutter. It helps to boost computer performance, so you probably won’t even need to defrag a Mac.
However, if you still wonder “How do I defrag my Mac?” read on. We’ve prepared all essential guidelines for you.
How to defragment a Mac
One of the simplest and most user-friendly methods of a Mac defrag is to use a trusted third-party defragmentation program. But before choosing and installing the app, make sure to back up your data. Should something go wrong, you’ll be able to easily restore all necessary files. For this purpose, you can use Time Machine, iCloud, Dropbox or any other external storage at hand.
When choosing the defragmentation app, pay a special attention to the compatibility requirements. Macs running operating systems older than OS X 10.2 are not compatible with the latest modern defragmentation software, so finding a relevant tool is challenging.
Once you’ve installed the program of your choice, open the utility and follow the instructions of a disk defragmenter for Mac. Give the process plenty of time to complete and don’t move your computer anywhere until the defragmentation is finished. Usually, you’ll need to restart your Mac as well.
Will defragmentation harm my HDD?
You may not worry: OS X defrag will not harm your HDD. As you already know, disk defragmentation can greatly speed up the traditional hard drive. It’s because HDD fragments all the data and stores it in multiple locations. And it may take quite a time to read the file with its pieces situated in different places. The procedure of arranging the data is not harmful for your HDD and is aimed at boosting the computer’s performance. And while it is not advisable to turn to such extreme measures, defragmenting a hard drive disk is a safe procedure if, of course, performed accurately.
Why you should never defrag Mac’s SSD
The process described above is applied only to the hard drives. If you have a newer Mac that comes with SSD (solid state drive), you should never defrag its data. SSDs operate in a different way to a traditional HDD and already have a built-in automatic maintenance process. Therefore, it is not necessary to defrag a solid state drive to boost a Mac’s performance.
Furthermore, all defragmentation attempts can even hurt your SSD. Flash memory used by a solid state drive has a finite lifespan because of the limited write and read cycles. And disk defragmentation is a process of reading the data from one place and writing it to another. So if you defrag SSD, you will perform thousands of write operations each time on the drive. It can speed up the degradation of a solid state drive and lead to its wear and tear. And that’s not what you need.
What are alternatives to defragment a Mac?
If your Mac is running slowly, you don’t necessarily need to defrag Mac hard drive. Sometimes it’s not your HDD that’s having problems. Therefore, try some alternative methods that may help you speed up the system without disk defrag on Mac.
Repairing Disk Permissions
“Try repairing your disk permissions” is a standard Mac troubleshooting tip. Permissions are file settings that affect the ability to read, write and execute the file. And if they are no longer set correctly, software that uses the file may not work right.
In OS X Yosemite or earlier, the file permissions on a startup disk can be repaired with the help of Disk Utility. Note that beginning from OS X EI Capitan, disk permissions are automatically protected and there is no need to verify them with Disk Utility.
How do I repair my Mac startup disk?
Here are the steps for optimizing your Mac:
- Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
- Choose your startup disk.
- Click the First Aid tab.
- Click Verify Disk Permissions to check permissions.
- Click Repair Disk Permissions to repair any inconsistent permissions.
If you don’t want to repair disk permissions manually, you can easily perform the action with an utility we mentioned above — CleanMyMac X. It has the Maintenance module that will help you optimize your Mac, including verifying startup disk and repairing disk permissions. Thus, you’ll ensure that your Mac’s operating system is functioning properly. You can download CleanMyMac here.
Therefore, before defragging your Mac, try to perform the Mac disk cleanup to increase the disk speed. It’s an easy and risk-free process that will not take more than a few minutes.
General speedup tips
Sometimes your Mac needs a good kick-start to run smoothly. Here are some tricks to speed up your computer.
How do I improve my Mac performance?
1. Update macOS software
Try to update your software to the latest versions as it performs better than the previous ones. Usually system updates include performance and bug fixes that could be the reason of slowdowns.
2. Delete unnecessary files
Ensure that your Mac has at least 10 percent of total drive storage available at any time to perform background actions and provide enough space for temporary files, caches, and virtual memory. Once again, CleanMyMac X is a great solution for finding and removing useless and large files that take gigabytes of space on your Mac.
3. Stop programs from launching automatically
A large number of apps may launch simultaneously when you turn your Mac on. Some of them run in the background and are only visible in a menu bar, so it’s even hard to define if they’re actually running. You can stop them from loading by opening System Preferences, clicking on Users & Groups and then choosing Login Items. You’ll see a list of applications that launch during the startup. You can switch off the ones you don’t need by clicking the minus sign (-) button.
If you’re looking for some utilities that can help with all of that and even more, try Mac maintenance software like CleanMyMac X. It will optimize Mac performance safely and quickly.
We hope this article was helpful and you found the answers to all your questions here. Thanks for reading and share this article if you liked it!
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How to monitor your Mac’s performance? How to tell that your computer works at its full? How to compare it to other machines with similar specifications? The answer: Mac benchmark tools.
Benchmarking can help you understand the performance of your Mac’s software and hardware, including the disk speed, memory, and graphics card performance. This information is very useful as you can see the weak spots in your system that can be enhanced.
Luckily, there are many apps that can help you measure how various components of your Mac work. And in this article, we’ll look at five tools that can help you test your Mac performance.
You’ll know how they work and what they can measure. Plus, we’ll tell you about a utility that cannot only help you monitor your Mac’s performance but also improve its work and take it to a whole new level. So let’s roll!
1. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
As you have already understood from its name, the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test measures your hard drive performance, in particular, its reads/writes speeds. It was designed to help video editors to determine if their hard drives can handle various video files.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is extremely easy to use. It consists of a single window and a big Speed Test Start button. If you have a single hard drive, simply click the Start button and Blackmagic will test your hard drive and show the results.
If you have multiple hard drives, you need to choose which one you want to test. To do that, go the Blackmagic’s settings by opening the File or Stress menus from its toolbar. Once you’ve chosen the hard drive, you may click Start to run a test.
If you are looking for a good hard drive speed test on Mac, feel free to use Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. It is free to download from the App Store, so take advantage of this tool whenever you need.
2. Geekbench
Geekbench is a useful app for measuring the CPU performance and memory speed on your Mac. It includes different tests that were designed to estimate how well your Mac can run everyday tasks.
To start the Macbook performance test, you need to install the app, launch it, choose your processor architecture and click Run Benchmarks.
When the test is completed, you can compare your results with other users. Don’t miss this great opportunity, it is really useful to see whether users on the same computer get the similar results. This may suggest that there is a problem with your Mac and what you should really expect from your particular model and hardware.
You can try Geekbench for free, but if you want to get the full version, you need to buy it from the App store.
3. Cinebench
Cinebench is a platform used to test two things: CPU and graphics card performance. It may be interesting for you to know that Cinebench is based on MAXON’s Cinema 4D animation software that is used for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in different popular movies, including Iron Man 3, Prometheus, and Oblivion.
You can use Cinebench to test:
- Main processor performance. Cinebench uses all your system’s processing power to test how quickly your processor can render a complex 3D scene that contains more than 2,000 objects, a great number of shadows, sharp reflections, and more. And the higher number you get, the faster your processor.
- Graphics card performance. This test uses a 3D car scene that shows the car chase. And to test the capabilities of your graphics hardware, Cinebench uses a great variety of different effects and textures. The higher the numbers, the faster your graphics card is.
Cinebench is free to use, so if you need to run a CPU speed test on Mac or measure your graphics card performance, try it out.
4. Novabench
Perf Tool For Mac Free
Novabench is a free tool that provides Mac benchmark test for your whole system, including CPU, RAM and graphics performance.
You can test your whole computer in minutes and even compare results with thousands of other systems. To run the Mac speed test, do the following:
- Launch the app.
- Click the Start Tests button. Novabench will start running different tests.
- Wait 1-2 minutes for the tests to run. Don’t use your computer during the tests.
- Get the results of each test along with the Novabench score (the higher the number you’ve got, the better).
Once you've tested your computer performance, you can add results to your profile or keep them private. If you want to share results with others, click the Submit and Compare button.
Novabench is easy to use and provides a quick way to test Mac performance.
5. CleanMyMac X: For overall computer performance
While the apps mentioned above are designed to measure Mac performance, a utility like CleanMyMac X can also optimize your Mac and improve its efficiency.
CleanMyMac keeps you up-to-date on all the important stuff going on inside your Mac:
- processor load
- memory usage
- available disk space
- battery health
If there’s a problem with your Mac, the app will let you know immediately and help you with the fix.
You get alerts when apps stop responding, disk temperature is high, the memory use is unusually heavy, and battery status is critical. With CleanMyMac X, you always know if your Mac is running well and can fix the problem as soon as it arises.
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CleanMyMac also has the Maintenance module that gives you access to all Mac optimizing goodies: running maintenance scripts, repairing disk permissions, verifying startup disk, running Mail speedup, reindexing Spotlight.
All those things may sound a bit complex, but don’t worry: CleanMyMac X is extremely easy to use. Just run a scan of your whole system and the app will tell you what should be removed to boost your Mac performance. The scanning and cleaning process requires just 2 clicks and less than 5 minutes. Impressive, right?
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Good news, CleanMyMac X is free to download. So give it a try and boost your Mac’s performance!
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That’s it. We hope our article was useful and you’ve chosen a Mac benchmark tool that works best for you. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!