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My MacBook has become very slow recently and not because of any software update. But it just became suddenly slow. Logging in to my account takes 2 minutes and even opening a terminal window takes a while to load. Apps take a while to open and quit. I even tried to reinstall macOS without formatting my drive but my MacBook is still as slow as a snail.

PS. I have 24GB left on my 120GB drive.

EDIT: I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) with 8GB ram. I am using this MacBook for 3 years.

What ideas should I consider next?

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  • We need much more information than is provided, before it could be possible to answer this. What version of "macbook" is it (MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air)? Which year was it made? Which version of macOS is it? What spec is the machine? You say it has 24GB free - I assume this is storage. How much RAM does the machine have? Also ... what is the question? Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 4:42
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    It would help to know the CPU, memory, disk and network usage. Open Activity Monitor (located in /Applications/Utilities), select "All Processes" in the View menu, select CPU, sort by CPU usage and paste a screenshot of the five process on top to your answer. You can repeat the procedure for Memory, Disk and Network.
    – jaume
    Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 10:52
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    Boot into recovery mode and run disk utility, select the MacHD click on First Aid and see if it pops up any errors. I would also try a cleaning utility like Onyx. Try logging in as a different user that you newly created. Also try booting the Mac in Safe Mode and report on your results of these in the original question Commented Aug 17, 2018 at 12:50
  • What @SteveChambers said. Also, you want to isolate problems when doing diagnostics. For instance, install macOS on a USB drive/flash stick, if the problems go away, you may be having issues with your SSD. The next option would be to wipe and reinstall on the SSD to see if that fixes it. Finally, you do have a backup, correct?
    – Allan
    Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 18:44
  • Running macOS from a USB drive is normally much slower than from built-in SSD, so that won't really tell you if anything's wrong with the SSD...
    – nekomatic
    Commented Sep 7, 2018 at 13:29

2 Answers 2

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It looks like you have sufficient Disk space and RAM.

If your battery is EOL (died) or not holding charge...

Mac will cut the CPU clock speed to 1/2 of maximum that will impact all and any operations.

Install Intel Power gadget to verify your CPU, this is an example of normal speed CPU.

enter image description here

Use the Activity Monitor to see who is responsible. Here are my examples.

CPU

RAM

Disk

Notice the Disk activity as Data/Sec

Finally about the battery (check this on your computer)

battery

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  • Super answer - I appreciate seeing the knowledge you’re sharing here the past few days. You are totally right if the battery is failing or can’t supply peak current, the performance can be dramatically bad. Also intel tool gives you a very powerful set of data that MacOS doesn’t provide (AFAIK)
    – bmike
    Commented Sep 7, 2018 at 3:48
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While you have 24GB left for storage on your Mac, it might still be causing it to slow down... I would recommend trying to clean it up and remove any files or apps that you no longer need. If you have things like images taking up a lot of room, it may be time to try something like storing them online, that way if something ever happens to your Mac, they will still be safe.

The true test would be to back up all your files and apps to Time Machine and then erase the storage and install a clean OS. You could then be sure the storage and speed are perfect before adding your files back or know if you get it repaired, the speed will be fixed before you add your apps.

The free space would be a concern if you had a traditional HDD - but with SSD, they have spare capacity and don’t slow down as they fill until you are really close to 2 GB free in my experience.

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  • With 8GB RAM the disk should not play a role unless extremely large amounts of data is handled (Read/Write), under normal operating conditions the Read/Write is only some kb/sec.
    – Ruskes
    Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 21:35

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