Most modern Macs have an SSD by default or as an option, but older Macs and some specific iMac models have HDDs. No amount of tweaking system files to save 3 gigs at the expense of system integrity is going to help you as much as deleting those twelve variations of Aunt Whatever wincing per one good version of her smiling at the camera.

Each time this happens here, it’s because of high load.įinally, the best optimization trick if you want to save space: learn to delete useless/deprecate/uninteresting data and boring pictures (those that you would keep “just in case” at the end of every photo session, that end up wasting your hdd…). This is fixed in Snow Leopard, thankfully.Ībout the Mini’s jaggy mouse: check for background processes or anything unusual about system usage. Each icon on the desktop is a window by itself, and each time you boot OS X will generate a preview again. Or you notice you use things like Expandrive too rarely to make it useful to start them as you log in.Īnother optimization for Leopard and earlier: either try to keep as few items on the desktop as possible, or use an app to hide it. Sometimes you uninstall an application but its helper app stays behind, for example. I have ruined a perfectly working install in the past, and so have others, by trying to save an extra gig or two with Monolingual…Īs per optimization tricks: a great one is to periodically check which apps are started by your account as you log in. Unless you absolutely need the free space, and you absolutely know which apps can benefit from Monolingual treatment without encountering future integrity errors, I’d suggest looking at other ways to save space.

Use Console to review logfiles for any unusual activity, such as a dead program calling for an unavailable resource every few seconds.Ĭurse Steve Jobs for making it all so damn pretty. Are you running anything you don’t need? Make sure iTunes is really off. Better yet, use a utility (again, Cocktail works) to reduce the frequency of the backups.

If you don’t need Time Machine, don’t use it. I find shadows helpful, despite their expense. Disable screensavers in favor of a dark screen. Turn off as much eye candy as you can stand: the genie minimize feature, for instance. It cleans up some big log files, which can make a difference, and does a nice job with permissions and other optimizations. Not really worth the trouble in terms of drive space.Ĭocktail is a great housekeeping app. Appzapper is a cool utility, but the pref files it finds are pretty tiny.

How to defrag a mac mini