How to optimize mac for gaming- 8 fixes to try

Last Updated on November 26, 2023 by Rick Darlinton

Your Mac’s performance is crucial when you want to play games on your Mac. If you find the Mac is lagging, the gaming experience will be compromised. In this post, we are going to show how to optimize mac for gaming. There are quite a few strategies that can be applied to boost the Mac performance when you are playing the games on your Mac. Let’s dive into some details about how to speed up your Mac’s performance while playing games.

Free up space

The first thing you can do is clean up your Mac. You can download some third-party programs to help free up space or memory on your Mac. After using your Mac for a long period of time, it is necessary to clean up some unused files, caches, apps, bloats, and more to make your Mac load faster. Some large files like photos, videos and documents could also be deleted if you do not need them any longer.

Switching to SSD

You can also consider upgrading to SSD if you are currently using HHD for your Mac. It works a lot to help boost the Mac performance by switching to SSD. If you are not familiar with upgrading to SSD, just find a professional near you to switch to SSD. Also, remember to back up the data on your Mac or you can use some clone programs to move the data from HHD to SSD so that you do not lose the data on the Mac.

Upgrade Ram if possible

If your mac’s Ram can be upgraded, upgrading RAM is crucial to boost the Mac’s performance. The higher the Ram, the better performance will be brought to your Mac device. You can check online and see whether your Mac’s ram can be upgraded. If it is possible, just upgrade it.

Close the programs that consume lots of space

Sometimes, the reason why your Mac performs poorly is that you may open some programs that eat up lots of space resources. To optimize mac for gaming, just check what type of heavy programs are eating up space resources in the Activity monitor. You can follow the steps below to check the list of running programs.

  • First off, find the Finder on your Mac
  • Navigate to Applications>Utilities>Activity monitor
  • Now tap on Memory and check the list of running programs
  • Find the programs you do not want to run in the background

Stop The Apps From Starting Automatically

You may always experience this but never do something to make a change: each time you open your Mac, so many apps start and pop up on your screen. This not only reduces the Mac performance but also affects the use experience. So why not close some startup apps? Just follow the solutions below to stop apps from starting automatically on your Mac.

  • Find the Apple icon on your Mac
  • Now navigate to system preferences and then go to Users and groups>Login items.
  • Next, choose the apps you do not want to start automatically.

Give your Mac desktop a clean sweep

Is your Mac’s desktop full of all kinds of documents, photos, videos, and more? If this is the case, it is time to give your Mac desktop a clean sweep. Delete those files you do not need anymore and move some important files to other places on your Mac. After cleaning up your desktop, just check whether the Mac performance is boosted.

Uninstall unused software

This is easy to understand but many people may just ignore the necessity to uninstall some unused programs on the Mac. Uninstalling an app on Mac is quite easy: Go to Finder on Mac and then go to Applications. Next, find the programs you want to uninstall.

Update  the system

After trying the solutions above, you can also update the Mac system and software to boost the Mac performance. Some outdated apps may be the culprit causing a slow Mac. To update the system or apps, try the steps below.

  • Find the Apple menu on your Mac screen
  • Go to system preferences and then click on software update
  • Select Update now

These are some simple tips you can try about how to optimize mac for gaming. Just try them and see whether a change can take place to your Mac’s performance while playing the games. Finally, you could also ask for help from the professionals from the computer repair shop nearby about what you can do to boost the Mac performance.

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How to speed up Mac performance