5 Basic Maintenance Tasks For Your Mac

Gaius Parx — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:13:07 +0000

Routine maintenance helps to keep your Mac running smoothly, maintain optimal performance and reduce risk of computer problems. The following are our five recommendations:

1. Empty the Trash folder

When you delete a file, Mac moves it to the Trash folder. You can free up disk space on your Mac by periodically emptying the Trash folder. We recommend emptying the Trash folder at least once per month.

To empty Trash folder:

Ctrl click the Trash icon on the dock. Select “Empty Trash” from the menu.

Alternatively using Finder, either enter Shift-Command-Delete or select from menu Finder>Empty Trash…

2. Uninstall unused applications

You can free up hard disk space by uninstalling applications that you no longer use.

From Finder’s Application folder, drag the app icon to the Trash icon on the dock. Or you can select the app icon and then enter Command-Delete.

Alternatively, make use of an application such as AppDelete to do the task. There is no system wide uninstaller on Mac.

3. Remove unwanted Login items

Remove unwanted login items to improve your Mac’s startup time and save some system memory.

Select Accounts from System Preferences.

Click the lock icon to enable changes. System will prompt you to enter your login password.
Select the “Login items” tab to see the list of items/applications that system will open automatically when you log in.
Select the unwanted Login item and click the “-” icon below to remove it.

4. Monitor system volume hard disk space

Monitor your system volume hard disk space to avoid unnecessary problems. System volume by default is named “Macintosh HD”. To check available free space, select the “Macintosh HD” icon either from Finder or the Desktop, then enter Command-I to view the hard disk info.

There is no hard and fast rules on how much free space to make available. In general, we practice using 10G as a rough guideline. When hard disk space is low:

Try to empty Trash folder first
Search for video files and remove unwanted ones. Video files are normally the largest items on your hard disk.
Uninstall any applications that you no longer use
Archive unused documents to external hard disk

5. Setup daily Software Update schedule

Apple provides system and applications updates from time to time. These updates fix problems, add new features and resolves security issues. We recommend you to apply all updates to your Mac, unless you know why you do not need to.

You can manually check if there is any latest updates through OS X’s Software Upgrade and select the updates to install to your Mac. We however recommend you to automate this and setup to check for update daily:

Select Software Update from System Preferences.

Click the “Scheduled Check” tab.
Select “Daily” for Check for updates and tick the option to download important updates automatically.