macOS Monterey For Dummies

Chapter 27

Ten Ways to Speed Up Your Mac Experience

This chapter is for speed demons only. At some time in their Mac lives, most users have wished that their machines would work faster — even if their Macs have multiple cores or processors. I can’t help you make your processors any faster, but here’s where I cover some ways to make your Mac at least seem faster. Better still, at least some of these tips won’t cost you one red cent.

The ten tips that follow have been finely tuned over the course of this book’s many editions, often in response to suggestions by readers or editors. If you think you have a great way to speed up your Mac, please send it to me at [e-mail]. If it’s awesome, I may include it in the next edition of this book (and give you full credit for thinking of it, of course)!

Use Those Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts (see Table 27-1 for a nice little list of the most useful ones) can make navigating your Mac a much faster experience compared with constantly using the mouse, offering these benefits:

• If you use keyboard shortcuts, your hands stay focused on the keyboard, reducing the amount of time that you remove your hand from the keyboard to fiddle with the mouse or trackpad.
• If you memorize keyboard shortcuts with your head, your fingers will memorize them, too.
• The more keyboard shortcuts you use, the faster you can do what you’re doing.

Trust me when I say that using the keyboard shortcuts for commands you use often will save ...