How do I "clean" my wife's 2014 MacBook Pro?

[TheBassBagwhan]

Hi everyone, first up ... I'm a PC user with limited Mac experience. But my wife uses a MacBook Pro 2014, 16GB Ram, for a LOT of photographic editing using Lightroom, plus she's a heavy user of Safari for internet surfing, Facebook, etc. Lately, it's gotten very sluggish and won't perform some functions (e.g. DeNoise in Lightroom) without taking a very long time. However, only 50% of a 500GB SSD has been used.

We've never performed any maintenance aside from updating the OS to the latest version. My understanding is that Macs shouldn't need any third-party "cleaning", but some research today suggests otherwise. I've looked at clearing caches and so on, and it seems a little more complicated than I'm willing to tackle without a third-party app doing it for me.

Can anyone recommend a process, app or even website that will help me clean up and re-tune this MacBook back to some kind of decluttered condition? I'm happy to pay for any reputable app that genuinely does the job. We live in a small country town where none of the local IT guys can claim good expertise with Mac OS, so they'll do little more than I can -- ask forums like this for advice. I'm surprised that Apple doesn't include its own cleaning function ... or does it?

We're looking at four years of constant use, surfing and photo editing ... you name it. Junk files, at least, must be checkers. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Graeme.

 

[MacPeasant123]

Hi there, nearly 3 years ago, my old 2012 MacBook Pro, which had been previously working ok, started constantly having the beachball (the circular multi-color ball) pop up and it was super slow, to the point that I couldn't stand it or really use it. I couldn't figure out why. Nothing I could do would fix it, including reverting to my Time Machine backup from a week earlier when it was still working fine, deleting lots of big movie files to free up the SSD drive space, etc.

In the end I bought a new 2020 Intel Mac that I'm typing this on.

After that, I took my old 2012 MacBook Pro to a repair technician and he said the battery was bad, swelling and replaced it, along with making other fixes. After that, my old Mac ran normally without the beachball. Then some time later, I read here on MacRumor forums that "Battery becoming dead will slow down your computer to a crawl," see:

Low CPU speed

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/low-cpu-speed.2349363/

So one possibility to check is if the battery on you wife's 2014 MacBook Pro is ok.

You can try Coconut Battery

coconutBattery 3.9 - by coconut-flavour.com

With coconutBattery you are always aware of your current battery health. It shows you live information about the battery in your Mac and iOS devices (iPhone, iPad)

www.coconut-flavour.com

or on the Mac App Store, try "Battery Health" (I use the first version) by FIPLAB Ltd and see if you can rule out a bad battery. If in the end you do believe the battery is the problem, then try to get it replaced.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Generally speaking, you don't need to "clean" a Mac. Most of the cleaning software advertised out there are garbage and I guarantee you most of the "research" you did involved hits from paid shills. A lot of tech sites have writers who aren't really all that tech savvy either.

There are only a couple pieces of maintenance tools worth keeping on hand. One, which is a freebie and basically a legend, is Onyx. It has a variety of cache cleaning and other maintenance tools that are handy and can clear up buggy behavior. It has helped me and tens of thousands of Mac users over the years. Typically, I find it helpful to run it after an update to macOS.

Another one I really like is TinkerTool System. It's not free (although its companion app, TinkerTool, is), but it is quite excellent and has a few tricks up its sleeve that aren't commonly found and a couple that I've not seen in any other tool.

Those are the only 2 maintenance tools I would recommend. Pretty much all the others are either complete garbage (MacKeeper) or obscenely overpriced (CleanMyMac X), and can cause performance problems themselves.

If you are having performance issues, you may need to look at other potential sources of the problem. "Cleaning" software, while can be useful, are not going to cure everything. Common sources of performance drains are antivirus software (largely unnecessary and most are well known causes of performance problems on Macs); commercial "cleaning" software that load up on startup to do "things" in the background. Outdated kernel extensions are another example. One great piece of software that might be able to provide insight to performance problems is EtreCheck. Run that, then take a look over the report it generates.

EDIT: one last thing. You mention your wife uses a 2014 MacBook. Assuming she has kept up-to-date with macOS all these years, then assuming she has always done in-place updates, that in itself can cause problems over time. macOS has changed a LOT over this time, especially under the hood, and sometimes it's best to make a backup (make two just to be safe!); then wipe the drive; reinstall the current version of macOS clean; then migrate the user data and apps back from the backup. This sometimes is the best and only solution and would actually be my strongest suggestion at this time if a clean reinstall has not been done since purchased.

 

[rocketbuc]

Onyx is definitely the way to go. Make sure you have a full backup before continuing.

How about the physical condition of the MacBook? I assume some of the slowness could also be attributed to a dust buildup inside the fans and the system getting hotter than before.

 

[TheBassBagwhan]

Thanks everyone, some great and very helpful replies. The battery is definitely bad ... it won't run for more than 10-15 minutes on a full charge before dying. I would never have thought it would be a problem when the AC adapter was connected. Plus, I've often been next to her and thought, "Why is the fan cutting in?" I reckon the overheating is an issue.
So ... none of the Cleaning apps -- thanks for that. I'll do the Onyx thing and EtreCheck. Tinker Tool too, but a priority is obviously getting a new battery. Brilliant! Great advice and help. Cheers!

 

[Fishrrman]

At 9 years old, perhaps it's time for your wife to start shopping for a replacement.

Either new or from Apple's online refurbished store.

I've read here on macrumors that the 2023 MBP's are about to hit the refurb pages...

 

[ignatius345]

Hi everyone, first up ... I'm a PC user with limited Mac experience. But my wife uses a MacBook Pro 2014, 16GB Ram, for a LOT of photographic editing using Lightroom, plus she's a heavy user of Safari for internet surfing, Facebook, etc. Lately, it's gotten very sluggish and won't perform some functions (e.g. DeNoise in Lightroom) without taking a very long time. However, only 50% of a 500GB SSD has been used.

Quick troubleshooting step: create a brand new "vanilla" user account* and log into it, see if the slowness persists. If it does, it's hardware or maybe something generally in the system. If the new account runs smoothly, it may be something specific to her user account.

* System Preferences > Users & Groups > create a new user account. Restart, log into ONLY that account. Don't bother tying it to an Apple ID, just log in and start playing around in it, see what happens.

 

[TheBassBagwhan]

Yes, there is a bit of thinking that way ...

I'll try the vanilla account too, cheers!

 

[BlackBun]

Generally speaking, you don't need to "clean" a Mac. Most of the cleaning software advertised out there are garbage and I guarantee you most of the "research" you did involved hits from paid shills. A lot of tech sites have writers who aren't really all that tech savvy either.

There are only a couple pieces of maintenance tools worth keeping on hand. One, which is a freebie and basically a legend, is Onyx. It has a variety of cache cleaning and other maintenance tools that are handy and can clear up buggy behavior. It has helped me and tens of thousands of Mac users over the years. Typically, I find it helpful to run it after an update to macOS.

Another one I really like is TinkerTool System. It's not free (although it's companion app, TinkerTool, is), but it is quite excellent and has a few tricks up its sleeve that aren't commonly found and a couple that I've not seen in any other tool.

Those are the only 2 maintenance tools I would recommend. Pretty much all the others are either complete garbage (MacKeeper) or obscenely overpriced (CleanMyMac X), and can cause performance problems themselves.

If you are having performance issues, you may need to look at other potential sources of the problem. "Cleaning" software, while can be useful, are not going to cure everything. Common sources of performance drains are antivirus software (largely unnecessary and most are well known causes of performance problems on Macs); commercial "cleaning" software that load up on startup to do "things" in the background. Outdated kernel extensions are another example. One great piece of software that might be able to provide insight to performance problems is EtreCheck. Run that, then take a look over the report it generates.

EDIT: one last thing. You mention your wife uses a 2014 MacBook. Assuming she has kept up-to-date with macOS all these years, then assuming she has always done in-place updates, that in itself can cause problems over time. macOS has changed a LOT over this time, especially under the hood, and sometimes it's best to make a backup (make two just to be safe!); then wipe the drive; reinstall the current version of macOS clean; then migrate the user data and apps back from the backup. This sometimes is the best and only solution and would actually be my strongest suggestion at this time if a clean reinstall has not been done since purchased.

Just looked at the Onyx homepage and only because I’ve read this thread. Being a cynic (and they’re not born) it says the software is free. How do the developers earn their keep?

 

[Big Bad D]

Just looked at the Onyx homepage and only because I’ve read this thread. Being a cynic (and they’re not born) it says the software is free. How do the developers earn their keep?

Onyx is indeed free (donationware) and well supported for many years and MacOS versions. I don’t have any issue with developers earning fair money for their products and updates, but agreed and a big thanks to developers that are kind enough to offer their time and services for free.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Onyx is indeed free (donationware) and well supported for many years and MacOS versions. I don’t have any issue with developers earning fair money for their products and updates, but agreed and a big thanks to developers that are kind enough to offer their time and services for free.

Indeed. Onyx has been around for a VERY long time and if there was anything nefarious going on, it would have been uncovered by the community at large long by now. I'm sure the developer of the software has a gig doing other things and this is more of a side hobby, but certainly one we all benefit from and really he may even learn some things about the underpinnings of each new macOS release as he updates Onyx that can be applied to whatever he does otherwise. What the app itself does is probably not terribly complicated. I'm pretty sure everything is basically a script that anyone could do on their own using Terminal, but he's wrapped it up in a nice package. And since that package was developed long ago, just minor tweaks are needed to account for changes with each macOS release. I've been stingy in the past with software, but I've donated to this developer even though I have a paid version of TinkerTool System because I do find it somewhat more convenient to use and it has really bailed me out a few times.