Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Occasional slow reaction to command

Hello FTM. Occasionally my MacPro 15 with retina screen will give me the spinning pinwheel and hesitate after relatively simple commands, i.e quit by right click on icon, quit by red ball "x" out, safari tab selection (<10 tabs open), etc. Recurrence seems more often after computer revives from sleep mode. Remedy to this point usually restart. Is there a need for malware/virus scan and as a new Mac user what is a recommended program. Thanks to all for any response. Sorry for excluding my current OS. OS X version 10.9.5, Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, Memory: 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3.

Sorry to hear you are having issues, Mike. A couple of things you could try:

1. Download and install the excellent freeware program Onyx. You can get it from here:

http://www.titanium.free.fr/onyx.html

Given that you are using OS 10.9.5, make sure to download version 2.8.8. Onyx is a solid program, has been around for a number of years, and has quite a few useful features. One that could help is "Repair Permissions".

2. Download and install the excellent freeware program Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. You can get it from here:

https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/

I have used it, and it does work.

3. If you have been making backups to an external device, and assuming you do not have a more robust disk maintenance/repair program like Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, you could boot your Mac to the (hidden) Recovery Partition and run Disk Utility from there to repair your internal drive. This link describes how to boot to that partition, and what it contains:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Hopefully, some (or all) of that will help resolve your issue.

What is the capacity of the hard drive and how much free space does it have?

I would add one more question for clarity.....is this a slow down across ALL applications or is it more specific to one (i.e., Safari)?

The reason I ask is that on one of my computers (a 2009 Mac Mini) also running 10.9.5, I've seen Safari v9.1 get all slow and corrupted in a very similar fashion to what you've described.....to the point that it affects the whole computer as well.

Yeah, I forgot to ask about the amount of free space left on the internal drive, and also if the slowdown is also occurring with other applications. That would be helpful to know.

From what I have read before, having at least "about" 15 to 20% of free space left is good, so cleaning unneeded stuff off a drive is important. In fact, performing periodic disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs (and of course backups) is definitely prudent, and helps to minimize issues.

As I understand it, the amount of free space is more important than percent. For example, a 1 TB drive with 10% free space has 100 GB free, whereas a 100 GB drive with the same percent has only 10 GB free. The extra free space can be utilized for swap files, if necessary, so bigger is better, regardless of percent.

Yeah, that sounds right. With most drives these days being of larger capacities, that had me thinking in terms of percentages.