Macs can perform slowly, too. If your Mac seems to be running slower than it should, the variety of tips here should help you identify and fix the problem. As with a Windows PC, there are many reasons a Mac might be slow. Stay away from programs that promise to “optimize” your Mac and make it run faster. After I restored my computer to a clean reinstall of El Capitan, I have experienced incredibly slow download speeds in Apple applications only (Safari and the App Store). I tested downloading a file in safari, and I got around 256 kilobytes per second, but when downloading the exact same file with the exact same internet connection, I got much. How to resolve issues with slow patch downloads. How to Download a Blizzard Game. Instructions on how and where to download our games. Failed to Download Data. Failed to download data. Please check your network connection.
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There are few things more frustrating than an internet connection that’s very slow. Thankfully, there’s a great deal you can do to troubleshoot the problem and speed up your connection. Here’s how to do it.
Why is my download speed so slow?
Internet speed is measured by how much data per second can be downloaded and uploaded. It totally depends on your Internet use, but the processes like uploading large files and video conferencing require decent speed.
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So what is a fast download speed? Normally, anything that’s above 100 Mbps is considered good Internet. This means, your Mac will handle multiple simultaneous online activities without major interruptions. Still, there’s no limit to perfection. If you want to reach the optimal speed to make downloads faster, there are a couple of things you can try.
First, you need to find out whether the slow download speed is due to your broadband connection or your wireless network. Since your wireless network is the bit over which you have control, you should check that first. In any case, optimizing and fine tuning your home or office wifi will improve performance.
How to increase Internet speed
Firstly, look at where your router is situated. Ideally, it should be in the centre of your house, so that every room gets a good signal. It should be away from walls, the floor and the ceiling as much as possible. And keep it away from metal furniture, which will reflect radio waves rather than allow them to pass through. Modern routers support both 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks. The latter allows for faster speeds, but the former suffers from less interference from other devices like microwave ovens and cordless telephones. So connect to the 5GHz network on devices that support it. If you have devices that only support 2.4GHz, place your router away from appliances like a microwave or cordless phone.
Here are a few simple steps you can take to improve your Internet speed:
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- Analyze your Internet speed. For a quick check of current speed, find and access Network Utility via Spotlight. Select your WiFi connection under the Info tab, and check Link Speed. The tools like NetSpot ot WiFi Explorer will help you automate WiFi monitoring as well as track factors that impact Internet speed.
- Replace old cables. Ensure all your cables are in good condition. Clean dusty cables, replace those that are too loose or damaged, and double check whether the cables you use fit your network environment.
- Optimize your router/ISP’s settings. Check the current setup of your router and tweak DNS settings if necessary. Unfortunately, ISPs don’t always come with the DNS configs that perfectly match your environment.
- Scan your Mac for viruses. Sometimes, malicious programs and files on your computer can be the reason of poor Internet speed. Open CleanMyMac X > Malware Removal and the app will automatically make your Mac clean.
- Regularly update software and firmware. Access Software Update via the Apple menu and see whether you might have missed a macOS update. Outdated OS as well as installing the beta versions of the new macOS may hinder the quality of your Internet. If the operating system is fine, check for the new versions of your router’s firmware.
- Eliminate on-system interference. Make sure there are no “heavy” programs like virus scanners on your Mac — they may interfere with network performance.
- Check your filters. Low-quality filters are another source of damage for your WiFi infrastructure, so you might need to replace them.
- Fix external interference. The position of your router determines the Internet speed you get, especially if other devices located in your building rely on the same WiFi channel. We recommend to use NetSpot, an app for interference monitoring that shows you where to position a router.
- Use a cable. We know, it feels like a tip from the 90s, but WiFi is actually always a bit slower than the Internet you get when you plug in directly to the modem.
- Get a new modem. Very often, that’s the only fix that can help. Check with your ISP or test other providers to see whether you can get some extra speed.
- And yes, don’t do any of the above until you try a restart. Power cycling — which is turning off and on your modem — is what you should begin with. Sometimes, there’s no particular reason your Internet is slow. It’s just your modem needing a fresh start.
How to get better Internet speed
When you’re satisfied with your router and it’s in the best possible location, time to analyze your wireless network. The following solutions will not only help you run a speed test, but also understand how to improve Internet speed.
NetSpot will produce a full analysis of all the wifi networks within range of your home or office and highlight any problems. It produces a heat map of your home or office and highlights ‘dead spots’ where wifi signal strength is low or non-existent. It can also advise on the best placement for your wifi router, and really useful suggestions to troubleshoot your networks.
WiFi Explorer allows you to identify conflicts with other networks, identifies signal overlaps, and provides a graph of signal to noise ratio. By maximizing the signal v noise, you can improve signal performance and speed up downloads.
One possible cause of poor wifi performance is interference from other wifi networks in your street. WiFi Explorer and NetSpot analyze how fast Internet is by analyzing those networks and let you know if they are causing a problem.
If there are lots of routers in your neighbourhood using the 40MHz spectrum, known as wide band, it can cause congestion – wide band occupies seven channels, compared with five used by 20MHz networks.In this case, switching to the 20MHz band may actually increase Internet speed by reducing interference. To do that you’ll need to access your router’s admin page in a web browser. You’ll need to consult its manual, or look for a sticker on the bottom of the router, for an IP address, username and password.
How to increase download speed on a slow internet connection
- Turn off bandwidth-hogging apps and plugins.
If you haven’t been able to improve the speed of your home broadband or wifi network, or if you’re on mobile network, you can still download faster. TripMode allows you to control which applications can download data. That means you can reserve bandwidth for apps you want to use to download and therefore download faster. - Split the downloads in threads to maximize download speed.
To splitting the downloads in threads try to use Folx, one of the most popular download managers for macOS. It has features for downloading movies, archives, or big files that allows you to split downloads into separate streams enabling faster downloads. - Schedule downloads.
One way to speed up downloads is to schedule them for a time when your ISPs network is less busy. Peak times are usually early evening through to around midnight, so use Folx to schedule downloads for the early hours of the morning. Some ISPs also throttle bandwidth for some users during peak hours, so downloading when it’s less busy is a very good idea.
How to download torrents faster
Despite the negative publicity BitTorrent has had in recent years, there’s nothing illegal in using it or in downloading torrents. As long as the content you download isn’t protected by copyright or, if it is, you have permission from the rights owner to take it, you’ll be fine. What’s more, it’s totally safe to use selected third-party tools to increase upload speed on torrent.
Additionally to Folx download manager it is also a torrent client. It has several features to make torrent download faster.
- Check seeds and peers.
Folx has its own built-in torrent search engine, so you don’t need to use a web browser. When you search for torrents in Folx, it will display the number of available seeds for each result. The more seeds, the faster the download is likely to be, so choose a torrent with lots of seeds. - Limit upload speeds and speed up torrent downloads.
Torrent clients upload files as well as download them and so the bandwidth available for a torrent client like Folx is used for both. If you limit upload speeds, you can make download speeds faster. You can also limit download speeds for browsers on your Mac, making more bandwidth available for torrents. To limit upload and download speeds, open Preferences in Folx and click on the Smart Speed tab. Of course, if you want to improve upload speed, you can limit download speeds instead. - Check port number.
Many torrent clients use port numbers 6881-6889. ISPs know this and some of them throttle bandwidth to those ports, which can make download speeds slow. In Folx Preferences, in the Torrents tab, check the port number and make sure its outside that range. If the port is showing as ‘in use’ click ‘Randomize port’ to choose another. - Prioritize downloads.
If there’s one download you want more than the others that are downloading at the same time, right click on the other downloads and use the ‘Limit Speed’ option to cap their download bandwidth and increase torrent download speed for your file.
How to speed up Chrome downloads
There are a number of things you can do to boost up Google Chrome’s speed:
- Limit Extensions. Browser extensions can be very useful but they eat up memory and can be reason of getting slow download speed on browser.
- Don’t have lots of tabs open. Web pages in tabs use resources like memory and, if they auto-load, bandwidth too. Keeping tabs to a minimum will speed up your browser.
- Use a download manager extension. Folx has a smart browser extension that allows it to handle everything you download in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or any other browser. Using that can speed things up because Folx has features, like splitting files into streams, that are designed to make things faster.
- Avoid noname extensions that promise faster downloading
There are lots of Chrome extensions that promise to make the browser download faster. However, many of them don't work and causes Chrome run more slowly, don’t download the complete file, or, worse, are infected with malware. So, they are best avoided.
Downie does a similar job, even allowing you to down; pad 4K-resolution videos from streaming video and social media sites. Just copy and paste the URL for the video page into Downie or use its browser extension. Once you’ve downloaded the video, you can use Permute to convert it to any format you want.
Watch and download video at the same time
If you’re downloading videos from streaming sites, Elmedia Player can help. It has a built-in browser and download manager. Paste the URL for the video into the address bar in the downloader, then when it displays a list of all the files it’s found on the page, click Download next to the one that corresponds with the video file.
To view videos you’ve downloaded, click on the Downloads tab and press Play next to the one you want to watch.
If all else fails, check with your broadband provider
- Check whether your broadband provider has a fault
- Check whether wired instead of wireless can improve speed
Check that your broadband provider hasn’t reported a fault in your area by calling its helpline number.
Once you’ve ruled that out you need to find out whether the problem is your wireless network or is caused by your router failing to connect to the broadband network. If you have a Mac that has an Ethernet port or you have a USB to Ethernet adapter, connect it directly to an Ethernet port on your router to try speed up your Internet. If your download speed is much faster when connected by Ethernet, your wireless network may be the culprit.
Fortunately, there are lots of things you can do to troubleshoot and improve the speed of your wifi network.
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After using your Mac for a couple of years, you may find that your Macbook or iMac takes longer to start up, or gets the annoying beachball frequently. Yes, your Mac is getting and running slowly. In order to have a better performance, no matter you play the games or use some working apps, some users choose to cost plenty of money to buy a new Mac. However, some smart users are good at computer maintenance. They just use some simple ways to get their slow Mac back to shape. We would like to share some of the tips that you can use to fix Mac running slow and save your money from buying a new one.
1. Keep up with the new macOS
As the Apple engineers are working so hard on the new macOS, they definitely want to make your Mac running faster otherwise they may not have enough data to show at every year's conference. So why not keep your macOS updated? Just go to your App Store to update.
2. Clean up junk files
Your Mac is full of junk files, especially those staying inside your Apps, browsers, etc. These junk files will drag your Mac slow. That's the reason why you might have the spinning beachball when you open it. Check out the below list to know how much junk files your Mac can generate during your use. We have already shared you with How to Clean Up Junk Files on Mac . You may check it and follow the tips to remove them.
Application Junk Files - Some junk files are automatically generated while the application is being used. They can be removed without a second thought.
Mac Software Installer - The install packages of Mac apps will be of no use once installed. They can be removed to free up more space.
Language Files - Many applications on the Mac contains a large number of language files. To remove unused language files can free up more disk space.
System Log Files - The activity of the system applications and services is stored constantly, however numerous logs will drag your Mac down.
System Cache Files - System applications always generate a lot of cache files, which may slow down your Mac's overall performance.
Broken Login Items - In some cases, after an application or a service is removed, a broken link may still exist among the Login items. Removing broken links will save more resources on your Mac.
Mail Attachments - Too many old mail attachments make your email system burdensome. Removing the downloaded attachments can free up more space.
Leftovers - Some remnants may still left on your Mac even after the related applications are deleted. They are good-for-nothing.
Trash Cleanup - It helps you empty Trash folders of Mac's internal and external volumes for better performance.
iOS Photo Cache - After you sync photos by any iOS devices, there must be some photo caches left on your Mac, which just consume your space.
User Downloads - Some downloaded files may become useless. You can remove them if you confirm you don't need them anymore.
iOS Software Updates - The updates may become useless after you complete the updates. You can remove them to regain space.
Xcode Derived Data - For developers, there may be tons of intermediate build information and project index generated by Xcode. Cleaning up them can help you to free up some space.
iTunes Backups - iTunes backups will become outdated as the data on your device is changing constantly. You can easily clean up iTunes backups if you confirm they are outdated.
iOS Applications - iTunes backups the downloaded apps on Mac. Removing the backup files from iTunes won’t affect your device.
iTunes Broken Downloads - For many reasons, your Mac may store some incomplete iTunes download data. Deleting these data won't cause any problems.
iTunes Cache - iTunes music album artworks may take up gigabytes of space, and your Mac may get stuck with a growing number of artwork cache files. Removing the artwork cache files can free up more space.
Application Old Updates - Updates of the third party apps will not be deleted automatically after updated. Removing the outdated application updates can free up space for your Mac.
Xcode iOS Log - If Xcode is used to develop iOS apps, a significant amount of log files will be generated in the development process. Those Xcode iOS Log files can be removed to speed up your project.
Mac Localization Files - Your Mac's operating system comes with dozens of language files, most of which you'll never use. Deleting unneeded language files can help to save valuable disk space on your Mac.
3: Manage Startup & Login items on Mac
Another important reason your Mac is running slow is that you have installed too many apps on your Mac. These apps will start up automatically once your system boots. And what's worse, they are running behind and cause huge memory consumption. Then how can you run the app you need smoothly? Check out How to Manage Startup & Login Items on Mac . If needed, you should Uninstall Apps you don't need from Mac Completely.
4: Optimize your Mac memory or replace with large RAM
When you find that your Mac is getting slow, you may check out your Activity Monitor and find out which app is consuming the memory. You may learn to close it mannually. But for some users, their Mac has been so old. Their RAM is so small even for the basic apps running. Under this situation, we suggest you replace your RAM with a large one.
5: Spyware, Malware and adware messed up your Mac
Don't ever think that your macOS is always safe and is away from virus. Hackers attack any system. For them, it might be harder with macOS rather than windows. But they always find the way. Do you ever find that your default search engine has been changed into some unknown ones? Or your safari always gets annoying pop ups? And some apps change your system settings or you can’t even uninstall them? Yes, you are suffering with these adware, malware, spyware, etc. They messed up your system and dragged your Mac slow. You should know How to Remove Malware, Spyware, Adware and Virus from Mac.
Besides above, there are so many other ways you can use to fix Mac running slow. However, it’s important to know that Mac machine needs to be “lubricated” once in a while so it can work smoothly in a long run. Doing these optimization daily and manually would definitely waste lots of time. Why not use a professional app to handle all of those for you? Published by IObit, world’s top system utility and security software provider since 2004, MacBooster , as a one-stop Mac maintenance tool, is definitely your best choice. You can always use it to get your Mac tide and safe. Just try it now and fix your slow running Mac.
My Imac Is Running Slow
Mac Download Slow
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