My iMac is getting slow

[casperes1996]

Safari shows this on a lot of websites for no obvious reasons. I now have a Mac mini M1, my fastest machine ever, and this silly message still pops up. The website isn‘t slow or anything, just this meaningless message appears.

The website is not slow because the machine is capable. The message Safari shows generally does not take into account at all what machine you run. It is sort of Apple trying to shame website developers into better optimisation, not because the websites are necessarily slow, but because they could be way better

 

[petsk]

Open activity monitor, click on the CPU tab at the top, then sort by the % CPU column. Do this when your mac feels sluggish. Also check the Memory tab if you don’t have an app consuming more than 50% CPU.

 

[IowaLynn]

If a web site is sow to load, bad coding, excessive ads, JavaScript, embedded media, run away scripts or even some that never end looping.

And wifi issues are sometimes an issue.

All reasons to try an adbocker, a different browser (Brave, Firefox, Edge, hopefully not Chrome)

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

Using Safari for Facebook is fine. What that person references is likely Facebook's overly aggressive tracking and analytics used for their advertising business. They may have thought you were using a Facebook app of some sort but to my knowledge there is no official Facebook app on macOS other than Messenger.

32GB of memory is a bit overkill, 16 will be perfectly fine for you, and 8 probably isn't that constrained.

I would not use the numbers so much to check how much memory is "used" since it requires a lot of understanding about the way macOS manages memory (memory = RAM, yes) to interpret the numbers. Just look at how high the memory pressure graph is. If it's green and low it's good, if it goes up high more memory could help.

But as I've said, unless Facebook has recently become more intense to run for some reason (wouldn't know, only use Messenger) hardware won't slow down over time. If you could run everything you do sufficiently before and you cannot now the culprit is something you're likely unaware of running in the background; Where a clean system reinstall would get rid of anything like that.

Perhaps the clearing of caches and all that has helped your issue too, no way of saying without you just using it and seeing what happens.

What exactly is a clean system reinstall?

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

Though I will also add that you may want to upgrade your OS at some point too. High Sierra is no long supported and thus does not get security updates

I did upgrades when the Mac told me to. Now there are no more upgrades to do for now. On 'about this Mac' it says: macOS High Sierra version 10.13.6 (17G14042)
I have been doing the upgrades

 

[casperes1996]

What exactly is a clean system reinstall?

That would be booting the Mac in Internet Recovery or from a USB installer of the OS; Wiping the entire Fusion Drive clean, and reinstalling the entire system "like new"

I did upgrades when the Mac told me to. Now there are no more upgrades to do for now. On 'about this Mac' it says: macOS High Sierra version 10.13.6 (17G14042)
I have been doing the upgrades

You have done the updates, not upgrades. An analog to Windows, this is similar to fully updating Windows 7, but staying on Windows 7.

I believe High Sierra still upgraded the OS from the App Store, where you would download the newer system versions.
Since 10.13 there has been 10.14, 10.15 and most recently 11

 

[IowaLynn]

Regardless of the version of the pre-installed operating system, all "Tapered Edge" Aluminum iMac systems are capable of running the latest version of the macOS.

My iMac is getting slow

Hi everybody. So, I own an iMac and I have some doubts about a certain issue. The specifics of my iMac are: the retina,5k, 27 inch, 2017. macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6 3.8ghz, intel core i5 8gb memory. For some reason while doing very simple tasks on my iMac, it loads, when it shouldn't and...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

That would be booting the Mac in Internet Recovery or from a USB installer of the OS; Wiping the entire Fusion Drive clean, and reinstalling the entire system "like new"


You have done the updates, not upgrades. An analog to Windows, this is similar to fully updating Windows 7, but staying on Windows 7.

I believe High Sierra still upgraded the OS from the App Store, where you would download the newer system versions.
Since 10.13 there has been 10.14, 10.15 and most recently 11

Thanks for the assistance. I will look into App Store right now. In fact I am looking right now and can't find anything with upgrades.

 

[casperes1996]

Thanks for the assistance. I will look into App Store right now. In fact I am looking right now and can't find anything with upgrades.

Assuming you want the newest operating system, macOS 11 Big Sur, use this
Get macOS Big Sur

The link is straight from Apple

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

I was told to take screen shots. I will attach them now.

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

The last one that mentions first aid, I found a website that encouraged to do that, but am unsure of pressing continue, don't know much about it.

 

[IowaLynn]

You want to have two current backups before proceeding with either Disk Utility to verify/repair, and before installing a new OS.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I was told to take screen shots. I will attach them now.

There are nothings unusual in the screenshots of activities monitor. CPU usage, memory usage are in safe zone.
Then the last thing we can think about, and you can do, is de-fusion your hard drives.
128GB of SSD is enough for OS.
Move all of your data to the HDDs, that including all of the items shown on your desktop screen, do it manually and don't let the Mac do it for you. => Use finder to access the HDD parts, create folders on that volume, and move all files there.
The working mechanism of Fusion drives are: when you are occupying more than the capacity of the SSD part of the Fusion, Mac OS will try to re-organize your files, moving less accessed files to HDD part, and it do it all the time, obstructing the internet cache read/write process. Worst case scenario is the internet cache are on the HDD part.

Organize your file manually by moving all personal data (which is less accessed) to the HDD part will make the system smarter => smoother web surfing experience.

My iMac 2009 sometimes has only 4GB or RAM and 128GB SSD, but I don't experience any slugginess in light Word/Excel using, web surfing, video watching, etc, both in Catalina and Chrome, with 5,6 tabs opening.

 

[panjandrum]

I haven't read the entire thread to see if this has already been suggested, but when the HDD portion of a fusion drive begins to fail it's often not immediately obvious as it would be if you just had an HDD. The symptom I see most commonly is sudden poor performance, often worsening significantly over weeks or months. Very long 'rainbow wheel of death' pauses, followed by short amounts of time where the machine appears to function more or less normally. I've seen a LOT of 2015 iMacs with failed HDDs already, and while a 2017 drive failure would mean you were a bit unlucky, it's certainly not all that unusual. Often I just switch them over to an external SSD as the performance that way is fine and it's much cheaper due to the labor-intensive process of getting to the internal storage (technically it's not as fast as an internal SSD, but in real-life use for most people there is very little difference). Anyway, be sure you maintain good backups in case that's what is going on. I personally recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner. If you end up having to get the internal drive replaced definitely get it replaced with an SSD.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I usually have quite a few pages opened on the internet etc"

That could have A LOT to do with it.

Old habits that refuse to die with me:
- when I'm not using an application, I quit it.
- when I'm not reading a web page, I close it.
...And my Macs have always run quite well.

Having said that...
You need to evaluate the speed of your internal fusion drive.
Download the FREE "Blackmagic Speed Test" from the App Store.
Run it and post your read/write speeds here.

The 2tb fusion drive should run better than a 1tb would (with the tiny SSD portion), but I'm thinking that if you save lots of stuff, even the 128gb SSD portion will start to "fill up", passing off to the platter-based hard drive, which is MUCH slower.

If I wanted to speed up an iMac like yours, I'd probably spring for an EXTERNAL SSD before prying the iMac open (with all the hazards that entails).

Since you have USBc ports that support USB3.1 gen2, that's the drive I'd be looking for. These yield read speeds up around 800MBps or better.

The Samsung t7 is an example.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Also, and I don't know why this is happening but often as I use facebook, it shows up on the screen this warning: "this webpage is using significant memory. Closing it may improve the responsiveness of your Mac"
why does this happen just by using facebook and how? is it normal? Do other people get the same thing happen to them? please advise.

Happens with me too.

 

[ThrowerGB]

You say you have a Fusion drive. That virtual drive consists of a physical SSD buffer or cache mated with a physical spinning hard disk drive.

• If the SSD buffer is too small, it will be continually reading and writing to the hard drive, which could slow things down. You probably need to look at the Activity Monitor tabs for hard drive I/O, and memory to see if this is the case. Either way, (as others in this thread have said) you'll get much better performance with an external SSD connected via Thunderbolt. I use a Samsung Portable SSD X5 to store Music, Photos and Video. It seem just as fast as my internal SSD.
• I can't remember the year of the iMac I had prior to the 2017 I have now, It had a Fusion drive. I got rid of it because the SSD buffer part of the Fusion drive started showing errors. I can't remember how I saw those errors, but possibly in Disk Utility. I figured it would be better to replace the older iMac with the latest 2017 model. When I upgraded, I opted for an internal SSD, simply because it was going to be much faster than the Fusion drive. Apple introduced the Fusion drive as an interim way of getting better HD I/O as an interim till internal SSD drives got cheap enough for users to go in that direction. As I understand it, SSD drives are more reliable these days than the earlier ones were.

 

[glenthompson]

Also worth getting the trial of DriveDx to check on the health of both drives. Free to use for a limited time.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Also worth getting the trial of DriveDx to check on the health of both drives. Free to use for a limited time.

Now that you say this, I think I used a third party app too.

 

[Newbie67]

I put an external NVME drive on my late 2015 iMac and its like a brand new computer now! Previoulsy the internal fusion drive was frustratingly slow with age. Now I get 1100 mb/s drive speeds and really quick boots. Well worth the research and effort.

 

[Phil77354]

. . . Download the FREE "Blackmagic Speed Test" from the App Store. . .

Following this discussion, I'm thinking of doing some checks with my own equipment.

The App store lists two different applications, both from the company Blackmagic Design Inc.:

- Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
- Blackmagic RAW Speed Test

Not sure which is suitable for general disk speed checks, or what the difference is between these two applications. Do you know, or can you recommend one vs the other?

 

[ClaireTaylor]

1. Free disk space
2. Quit an app that is not compatible with your mac

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

Hi everybody, Thank you all for you insights and contributions. I will run an apple diagnostics, will this reveal to me if I have a problem with what you are all saying about the fusion drive and SSD.
I will also back up my Mac with time machine and take it for a service. Someone here said about getting an external SSD, to increase speed, I will look into this. Is it something that you buy from an apple shop? I will have to look into this.
I just downloaded the black magic speed test, Im not certain how it runs, I let it go for a bit then I pressed the start button again. This is the result I got. Btw, I have no idea in interpreting what all this means...

 

[Pinkly Smooth]

Something that I suspect could be the reason why my iMac is slowing down is because I was told that smoking is not good for the iMac, as the smoke damages the area where the iMac in the back has air ports, whatever they are called.I've been smoking in my room for some time where my iMac is. I don't know if that is the cause of it. having said that, I don't think it is, because anyone who owns an iMac knows that in the back where the system gets air, it is behind and covered by the stand that holds it up and I doubt that this is the reason. having said that, I will take my iMac to an engineer, and hopefully he can tell me if my iMac has been damaged by smoke. cheers.

 

[Phil77354]

Something that I suspect could be the reason why my iMac is slowing down is because I was told that smoking is not good for the iMac, as the smoke damages the area where the iMac in the back has air ports, whatever they are called.I've been smoking in my room for some time where my iMac is. I don't know if that is the cause of it. having said that, I don't think it is, because anyone who owns an iMac knows that in the back where the system gets air, it is behind and covered by the stand that holds it up and I doubt that this is the reason. having said that, I will take my iMac to an engineer, and hopefully he can tell me if my iMac has been damaged by smoke. cheers.

I doubt very much that this has anything to do with it.