OSX Maintenance Tips for Your Macintosh to Optimise & Boost – Tune up your Mac’s performance for maximum productivity

Here are few OSX Maintenance Tips that can boost up your Macintosh’s performance over the years.

 

 
Ideally you should perform this tasks once a month or on weekly basis which will optimise & tuneup your Mac to run at it’s optimum level.

 
Here are following things that you have to perform,

 
Step 01

 
Verify & Repair Disk Permissions, Verify & Repair Disk for Errors

 

 
First thing you have to do is delete ‘Cache’ folder residing in your Library folder

 
Path: Macintosh HD > Users > YOUR USERNAME > Library

 
Now reboot your Mac & After login in to your account empty the ‘Trash’ folder.

 
Second step is to verify & repair HD Permissions in ‘Disk Utility’

 
You can find ‘Disk Utility’ App here:

 
Path: Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > (Disk Utility.app)

 
Now choose ‘Macintosh HD > Macintosh HD’, Now click on ‘Verify Disk Permissions’, After completing tis task click on ‘Repair Disk Permissions’.

 
After Completing this task click on ‘Repair Disk’

 
Note: Don’t use your finder & computer till all above tasks complete.

 
Step 02

 
Run NVRAM or PRAM Reset

 

Your Mac stores certain settings in a special memory area even if it is turned off. On Intel-based Macs, this is stored in memory known as NVRAM; on PowerPC-based Macs, this is stored in memory known as PRAM.

 
NVRAM / PRAM Resets information stored or cached inside it including,

 

Speaker volume

Screen resolution

Startup disk selection

Recent kernel panic information, if any

 
Method & Step to Execute PRAM Reset:

 

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound
6. for the second time.
7. Release the keys.

 
For More information navigate to this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

 
Step 03

 
Clean ‘Open with Menu’

 
Sometimes one app appears three or four times in ‘Open with’ menu after you right click on something as it is cached by Mac Operating System.

 
Here is method to clear ‘Open with’ Menu cache,

 
First thing first open ‘Terminal’ App residing in Utilities folder inside your Applications folder on your Macintosh HD. (Please refer above to locate path to navigate to ‘Utilities’ folder).

 

 
Now type following or copy paste following text after your username:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

 
Type password if asked.

 
Your ‘Open with’ Menu will be cleaned up for double entries.

 
Step 04

 
Run OSX Maintenance Scripts

 

As Mac is based on UNIX it has routine Maintenance Scripts that get executed between 03:15 AM to 05:30 AM Local Time as per the requirement i.e If your mac is running & up in that period. It performs action such as cleaning up a variety of System logs and temporary files.

 
To see when the last time Daily, Weekly & Monthly scripts were run, You can write or copy paste following code in Terminal,

 

ls -al /var/log/*.out

 
Then press enter.

 
Now Execute Daily, Weekly & Monthly Scripts run following command in Terminal App.

 

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

 
Then press ‘Return’ key & if asked enter your passwords.

 
Now, Your Mac is up & running at it’s best…!!!

 
Thanks & Regards
Mandar Apte