macOS Catalina was the newest macOS system until Apple released macOS Big Sur in 2020. Many users prefer to stick with Catalina because it’s good and they are more familiar with it. Still, Catalina has its issues, and one issue that is often mentioned is speed. We know from the system requirements that it’s more demanding of resources than its predecessor, which is why it won’t run on some older Macs that could run Mojave. Happily, there are things you can do to boost performance. Here’s how to speed up Catalina.
Next, click the Disk Utility option, followed by Continue. On the following screen, select your Mac’s primary drive and click the Erase button. Follow the instructions to pick a drive name, file. Disk Utility’s First Aid should be run to ensure the startup drive and the target drive do not have any issues that could impact installing macOS Catalina. A new installer will usually take care of the issue, but there’s another problem that could lead to the same message: a damaged target drive for the installation. I don’t see how the boot image is loaded when the first hard disk is the Catalina ISO. In other people procedures, we see that the imageboot is an optical drive setup, and booted before the catalina image(ISO/VMDK). When you see the available startup disks, select one, then click the Up arrow (on Mac) or Continue button (on Mac with Apple silicon.) The next time you restart your computer, it starts up from the disk selected as your startup disk in System Preferences. Stop applications launching at startup. If the speed problem you’re having is that your Mac takes much longer to startup now that you’ve installed Catalina, it could be because you have lots of applications that are automatically launching at startup. You can prevent them auto-starting like this.
macOS Catalina running slow: what do to?
To make macOS Catalina faster, you have to know what’s slowing it down. So do this:
- Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Activity Monitor.
- Click on the CPU column heading to order processes according to how many CPU cycles they are using.
- If you see one that’s using a huge amount more CPU cycles more than anything else, that’s the problem. Use the Quit Process button to quit the process and speed up your Mac, or if it’s a browser tab causing the problem, just close it in the browser.
- If the CPU column doesn’t reveal anything, do the same with the memory column and look to see if any process is using a huge chunk of RAM.
1. Stop applications launching at startup
If the speed problem you’re having is that your Mac takes much longer to startup now that you’ve installed Catalina, it could be because you have lots of applications that are automatically launching at startup. You can prevent them auto-starting like this:
- Click on the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
- When it has launched, select the Users & Groups pane.
- Select your user account.
- Click the Login Items tab
- Check the box next to any items you want to prevent automatically running at startup.
- Press the ‘-‘ button at the bottom of the window.
- Quit System Preferences.
That’s the long way to get rid of startup items. There is a much quicker way that I prefer to use. CleanMyMac X has a tool that will quickly remove startup programs on Catalina. Here’s how to use it.
- Download and install CleanMyMac X.
- Launch it.
- Choose the Optimization tool in the left hand sidebar.
- Select Login Items
- Check the box next to the ones you want to remove.
- Press Remove.
2. Remove Launch agents
Launch agents are similar to startup items except that they are not full applications, they are additional programs that add functionality to a related application. They launch at startup and could be a reason Catalina i
s slow to boot. Unfortunately, tracking them down manually on your Mac is difficult and time consuming. However, happily, CleanMyMac X can do it for you. Here’s how to remove launch agents.
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Choose the Optimization tool, as you did for Login items.
- This time, choose Launch Agents.
- To disable a launch agent, click the green dot to the right of it.
- To remove a launch agent, check the box next to the launch agents you want to remove.
- Press Remove.
3. Close hundreds of tabs
Keeping lots of browser tabs open is convenient, but each one uses resources and they mount up. If, for example, a tab is displaying a page which has lots of animation or auto-running video on it, it will slow your Mac down. So close all the browser tabs you don’t need.
4. Take control of your Spotlight
If you have Spotlight set to its default, it will index every folder on your Mac, including those on external drives that are mounted. And indexing can slow down your Mac. You probably don’t need to search the contents of, say, your Downloads folder, or Library directory. Here’s how to exclude folders from Spotlight indexing.
- Go to the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
- Select the Spotlight pane.
- Choose the Privacy tab.
- Press the ‘+’ to add folders to be excluded and then navigate to them, or just drag folders onto the window to exclude them.
- Quit System Preferences.
5. Update applications
macOS Catalina performance may get worse if applications on your Mac are out of date. Developers update applications regularly for all sorts of reasons. Most updates include bug fixes and performance improvements, so it’s important to keep them up to date. For apps that you download from the App Store, it’s easy. Just launch the App Store, go to Preferences and select Automatic Updates and your apps will always be up to date. For other apps, you’ll have to launch each one and check for updates from the application menu. Happily, there is a way you can update all your apps in one go using CleanMyMac X. Can you see how useful it is?
- Launch CleanMyMac X.
- Select the Updater tool in the Applications section.
- Press Select All.
- Press Update.
6. Shut down your Mac regularly
Modern Macs, especially MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros are designed to be able to run and run without being restarted, thanks to their low power sleep mode. However, shutting down you Mac does more than just conserve energy. It clears temporary files, like swap files that are used as virtual memory, and it frees up RAM. Restarting your Mac regularly will keep it running quickly and smoothly.
7. Add more RAM
Sometimes, the only solution to fix macOS Catalina speed is to update your hardware. Adding more RAM will almost always make your Mac faster, whether it’s running Catalina or an older OS. If your Mac has RAM slots available and you can afford it, adding more RAM is a very worthwhile investment.
There are many tools that claim to speed up your Mac. Don’t believe apps that tell you that “your Mac is hijacked by virus” — this is a well-known scam. On the other hand, there are apps that help you better manage memory on Mac. For example, the app we’ve told you about, CleanMyMac X, has a tool called Speed that disables heavy-memory consumers. And this program is actually notarized by Apple.
- Give it a go in a free version — no obligations:-)
- Install the app and click Optimization
- After running optimization tools, click the Maintenance tab
If macOS Catalina is very slow, there are lots of ways you can speed it up. Follow the steps above and it should be running smoothly in no time.
If you install macOS on an additional volume of your startup disk, you can switch between that macOS and the macOS on your other volume, as if each were on a separate disk. And because storage space is shared across APFS volumes, you don't need to reserve space for the new volume. Its size automatically adjusts to fit your content.
What you need
Your Mac must already be using macOS High Sierra or later on an APFS-formatted startup disk. Find out which format your startup disk is using.
You don't need to reserve storage space for the new volume, but macOS needs as much as 20GB of available space to install, depending on the version of macOS. If you don't have enough space, the installer will let you know.
About This Mac includes a storage overview: Choose Apple () menu > About This Mac, then click Storage.
Back up your Mac
It's a good idea to back up your Mac first, especially if you're installing a beta version of macOS. Beta software is software that is still in development, so some apps and services might not work as expected.
Add an APFS volume
- Open Disk Utility, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- In the sidebar, select your existing APFS volume.
- Choose Edit > Add APFS Volume from the menu bar, or click in the Disk Utility toolbar. These options are available only when an APFS volume is selected.
- Type any name for the new APFS volume, then click Add:
- Disk Utility should now show the new volume in the sidebar. The new volume will also appear in the Finder, as if it were a separate disk. You can now quit Disk Utility.
Install macOS on the volume
Choose an installation method:
- To install a beta (prerelease) version of macOS, enroll in the Apple Beta Software Program and follow the installation instructions on the program website.
- To install a release version of macOS, you can use macOS Recovery. The keys you press at startup determine which macOS is installed.
When the installer opens and you're asked to choose where to install, click Show All Disks, then select the new volume.
Switch between macOS versions
Download Startup Disk For Vista
After installation is complete, you can use Startup Disk preferences or Startup Manager to quickly switch between each macOS:
- Choose Apple () menu > Startup Disk, then click and enter your administrator password. Select the volume that you want to use, then click Restart.
- Or press and hold the Option key during startup. When prompted, choose the volume that you want to start up from.
Keep the macOS on each volume up to date
To find the latest updates for each version of macOS, check for software updates, then start up from the other volume and check for software updates again.
Catalina Startup Disk
Learn more
How To Create A Catalina Startup Disk
If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, or the startup disk is formatted as Mac OS Extended instead of APFS, you can create a new partition instead. The space it occupies doesn't automatically adjust to fit your content, so you must manually size the partition. Learn how to add a volume to a device formatted as Mac OS Extended.