Tips to Speed Up Reboot & Start Up Time in Mac OS X

We are all impressed with the smooth running of the Apple Mac OS X as we compare with the contemporary Windows OS like Vista or Windows 7. However, there are times when your Mac might be slowing down as you put in more stuffs in your hard drive and work the system hard. That is perhaps a good time to evaluate where the bottleneck could be and clear it.

In this post I’ll be sharing tips I found useful in speeding up the Mac

The first place I always like to start when I’m experiencing undesirable performance is with my hardware configuration. With each generation of Mac OS X, Apple increases most of the system requirements and for good reason. Because applications are hungry for memory so they can perform more complicated tasks and often take up more space. Coincidentally, memory and hard drive space are often the culprit for systemic slowdown.



Upgrade to an SSD or Faster Hard Disk
A Solid State Storage (SSD) disk will massively improve your startup times, because your Mac can read files and data from the disk much more quickly compared with a traditional magnetic disk. The random access time for an SSD is typically around 0.1 milliseconds, whereas for a hard drive it’s 5-10 milliseconds because the disk has to physically spin to locate the data. The MacBook Air already comes equipped with a fast SSD and boasts one of the fastest boot times of any modern computer. SSD disks aren’t cheap, but they are certainly a good investment to improve you Mac’s overall performance.


An alternative and cheaper option is to upgrade your Mac’s default hard disk (likely a 5,400 rpm model) to a much faster 7,200 rpm unit, which allows your computer to load applications and the operating system more quickly. A hard disk upgrade isn’t a particularly easy task for novice users, but it will lead to a noticeable speed increase when starting and during daily use.

Remove Unwanted Startup Items and Fonts
Besides login items which run when every time you login to your Mac, there are system wide startup applications and daemons which run when the system boots (before you actually login). These items can be found in the folder /Macintosh HD/Library/StartupItems/
This folder is usually hidden so the best way to view it is to use SHIFT + COMMAND + G from Finder and just type in the path above. Move any of the items which you feel are unnecessary or might be causing problems out of this folder, reboot and check to see whether the startup time has improved. Remember not to delete them in case you need to copy them back later on and, are absolutely sure they are not critical applications.


Another option which can improve startup time is to remove problematic or unnecessary fonts that may be installed on your Mac.
Open Font Book from the Applications folder or using Spotlight

1. Highlight any extraneous or problematic fonts
2. Right-click and select Remove <font> or Remove <font> Family
3. However, be very careful not to remove essential system fonts because menus and other items may not display properly.

Remove Unwanted Login Items

Removing unnecessary Login Items can make a significant difference in boot time simply because there are less actions for the Mac to complete before the computer is ready to use. Login Items can be helper daemons, menu bar items, or full blown apps, get rid of anything you don’t need to automatically start or that you don’t use often.

1. Open System Preferences and click on “Users & Groups”
2. Click on the user account you regularly boot with, then click the “Login Items” tab
3. Select items from the list you do not need to launch on login and click the [-] minus button to remove them one by one

Use Automatic Login and Disable Reopen Windows

In Mac OS X, the default behaviour is to show the login screen when the computer has booted up. This can be quite useful, but if there’s only one user it presents yet another step in the process of booting up before you get to the desktop. To skip the login screen and login automatically as any of the users on the system:

1. Open System Preferences and choose Users & Groups
2. Click Login Options on the left hand side
3. Choose the user account to automatically login from the drop-down box labelled Automatic login

When you’ve set automatic login your Mac will boot up and show the desktop automatically. One of the nice options in Mac OS X Lion is the ability to reopen any windows that you had open when logging back in. While this is a useful feature, it also slows the whole process down. To turn it off, the easiest method is to uncheck Reopen windows when logging back in which appears on the shutdown window.

Disconnect Unused External Drives & Devices

Some external hard drives are extremely slow, and every time you reboot they have to spin up and be accessed again. The easiest solution is to simply disconnect any unused external drives and to eject any discs from the Mac that aren’t going to be used. Stupidly simple, but this alone can easily shave 10-15 seconds off boot time.

Upgrade your memory

Two gigabytes of memory is really the least amount of memory you can get away with under any modern version of Mac OS X; however, if you are at all like me and push your Mac pretty hard, then you should consider upgrading your memory. The more you add, the less likely you will be to experience performance issues.

Cleaning Up The Hard Drive

Mac operating system actually utilizes whatever free space you have on your hard drive as ‘virtual memory’, which plays a significant role in the performance. In other words, the more data you have in your hard drive, the lesser the amount of memory you would have for the smooth running of your applications. The obvious solution to a slow-running Mac operating system is to free up hard drive space to make room for the ‘virtual memory’.

I’m sure you know where to begin when you’re cleaning up your hard drive, such as emptying your Trash, removing rarely used applications, etc. Alternatively, you can also remove languages that you don’t use through programs like Monolingual. This would save at least several hundred megabytes of disk space. It may not be much, but why waste resources?