You probably noticed that after you upgraded to OS X El Capitan, slow Mac started to become a trouble. Why does this happen? Well, we found out that El Capitan needs a lot more disk space and RAM to run quickly. The good news is, it's not just possible to speed up El Capitan — it's pretty simple.
The easiest way to get a faster Mac with El Capitan is to get a Mac cleaner. You can download CleanMyMac X for free and simply let the app do everything for you. Speeding up El Capitan with it will only take a few minutes. But if you want to do it manually, read on.
Go over each step to speed up El Capitan system.
1.Speed up your Mac's startup
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It starts at the very beginning. When you turn your Mac on, it typically launches a dozen apps at once. And you probably don't need most of them at that moment. This could be one of the reasons El Capitan running slow. To stop them from launching on startup, go to System Preferences, choose Users & Groups and then click your username. Check the unnecessary apps and click.
Don't worry, if you accidentally remove something useful, just add it back by clicking and choosing it from the Applications folder.
2.Major hard drive cleaning
One of the reasons a Mac gets slow is a full hard drive. To find out how cluttered yours is, click on the main Apple menu in the top left corner and choose About This Mac > Storage. If you see the top bar getting full, like in the screenshot below, it's time to clean up some space.
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It might take a while, so here's a piece of advice on how to approach it.
Arrange your files and folders by size to find the biggest. To do it: open Finder, click on All My Files in the left menu bar (if you don't see it there, press Command+Shift+F (?+?+F), and then click View in the top menu bar and select Show View Options. Now choose Sort by Size and Arrange by Size. Now all your files are arranged from the biggest to the smallest.
Arrange your files and folders by date. If you'd like to arrange them by date to find files you haven't opened in a while (maybe you forgot they were even there!), you can do this by following the steps above, and then changing arrange by Size, to arrange by Date Last Opened. Now click on Date Last Opened in the name of the column and you get a list starting with the oldest files you have. Don't forget to look at the file type distribution in the Storage tab. It might give you a hint on the folders that occupy the most space and need cleaning.
This process takes a while because your Mac can't arrange files by both size and date at once. However, there are apps that can, such as CleanMyMac X . It has a special module that looks exactly for large and old files and sorts them for you. You can delete the files you don't need directly from the app in just a few clicks.
3. Trim down your system
Trimming down your system includes cleaning cache and temporary files, and flushing DNS.
Cleaning cache files on El Capitan
Open a Finder window and select “Go to Folder” in the Go menu, at the top of the screen.
Type in ~/Library/Caches and hit “enter” to proceed to this folder. Important: remove the insides of these folders, but not the folders themselves.
Repeat 1 and 2, but replace ~/Library/Caches with /Library/Caches (simply lose the ~ symbol).
Restart your Mac. Yes, it's kind of a pain.
It's also much easier (and faster) with an app, you can take a look at how to clean caches on Mac OS X.
Flush DNS cache on OS X 10.11
When you flush the DNS cache, what you're doing is removing old cache entries that translate internet domain names (example.com) into IP addresses. You're going to need the Terminal for this. To open Terminal, open Spotlight and type in Terminal, or find it by clicking on the Applications folder and then clicking on Utilities.
You'll need to enter the admin password to execute the command.
4. Free up memory
Usually Macs are pretty handy with memory management, but sometimes you just have to give them a direction. Check out your memory usage in the Activity Monitor (find it with Spotlight) by clicking on the Memory tab.
If Physical Memory and Memory Used have nearly equal values, it means your Mac will start using Virtual Memory soon. Virtual Memory relies on your Mac's hard drive and is so slow that you don't want to get it involved. When you start running out of memory, just clean it manually with Terminal.
Open it as explained in the Step 3. Then, once opened, type in:
sudo purge
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Give your system a moment to process the command.
If you don't want to use the Activity Monitor or Terminal commands each time you need to free up some RAM, you can download CleanMyMac X and do it with just one click instead. After downloading CleanMyMac X, freeing up memory is… Well, free.
5. Use CleanMyMac X
You can go over each step to speed up El Capitan, or you can keep it fast with CleanMyMac X.
It will save you hours wasted on painfully boring tasks of searching and deleting useless files. With CleanMyMac X, you can clean your hard drive and system, run maintenance scripts, clear caches and histories, uninstall apps, and remove unused extensions — all from one place.
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So, you’ve decided to download an older version of Mac OS X. There are many reasons that could point you to this radical decision. To begin with, some of your apps may not be working properly (or simply crash) on newer operating systems. Also, you may have noticed your Mac’s performance went down right after the last update. Finally, if you want to run a parallel copy of Mac OS X on a virtual machine, you too will need a working installation file of an older Mac OS X. Further down we’ll explain where to get one and what problems you may face down the road.
A list of all Mac OS X versions
We’ll be repeatedly referring to these Apple OS versions below, so it’s good to know the basic macOS timeline.
Cheetah 10.0
Puma 10.1
Jaguar 10.2
Panther 10.3
Tiger 10.4
Leopard 10.5
Snow Leopard 10.6
Lion 10.7
Mountain Lion 10.8
Mavericks 10.9
Yosemite 10.10
El Capitan 10.11
Sierra 10.12
High Sierra 10.13
Mojave 10.14
Catalina 10.15
STEP 1. Prepare your Mac for installation
Given your Mac isn’t new and is filled with data, you will probably need enough free space on your Mac. This includes not just space for the OS itself but also space for other applications and your user data. One more argument is that the free space on your disk translates into virtual memory so your apps have “fuel” to operate on. The chart below tells you how much free space is needed.
Note, that it is recommended that you install OS on a clean drive. Next, you will need enough disk space available, for example, to create Recovery Partition. Here are some ideas to free up space on your drive:
Uninstall large unused apps
Empty Trash Bin and Downloads
Locate the biggest files on your computer:
Go to Finder > All My Files > Arrange by size Then you can move your space hoggers onto an external drive or a cloud storage. If you aren’t comfortable with cleaning the Mac manually, there are some nice automatic “room cleaners”. Our favorite is CleanMyMac as it’s most simple to use of all. It deletes system junk, old broken apps, and the rest of hidden junk on your drive.
Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.4 - 10.8 (free version)
Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.9 (free version)
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Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.10 - 10.14 (free version)
STEP 2. Get a copy of Mac OS X download
Normally, it is assumed that updating OS is a one-way road. That’s why going back to a past Apple OS version is problematic. The main challenge is to download the OS installation file itself, because your Mac may already be running a newer version. If you succeed in downloading the OS installation, your next step is to create a bootable USB or DVD and then reinstall the OS on your computer.
How to download older Mac OS X versions via the App Store
If you once had purchased an old version of Mac OS X from the App Store, open it and go to the Purchased tab. There you’ll find all the installers you can download. However, it doesn’t always work that way. The purchased section lists only those operating systems that you had downloaded in the past. But here is the path to check it:
Click the App Store icon.
Click Purchases in the top menu.
Scroll down to find the preferred OS X version.
Click Download.
This method allows you to download Mavericks and Yosemite by logging with your Apple ID — only if you previously downloaded them from the Mac App Store.
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Without App Store: Download Mac OS version as Apple Developer
If you are signed with an Apple Developer account, you can get access to products that are no longer listed on the App Store. If you desperately need a lower OS X version build, consider creating a new Developer account among other options. The membership cost is $99/year and provides a bunch of perks unavailable to ordinary users.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that if you visit developer.apple.com/downloads, you can only find 10.3-10.6 OS X operating systems there. Newer versions are not available because starting Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.7, the App Store has become the only source of updating Apple OS versions.
Purchase an older version of Mac operating system
You can purchase a boxed or email version of past Mac OS X directly from Apple. Both will cost you around $20. For the reason of being rather antiquated, Snow Leopard and earlier Apple versions can only be installed from DVD.
Buy a boxed edition of Snow Leopard 10.6 Get an email copy of Lion 10.7 Get an email copy of Mountain Lion 10.8
The email edition comes with a special download code you can use for the Mac App Store. Note, that to install the Lion or Mountain Lion, your Mac needs to be running Snow Leopard so you can install the newer OS on top of it.
How to get macOS El Capitan download
If you are wondering if you can run El Capitan on an older Mac, rejoice as it’s possible too. But before your Mac can run El Capitan it has to be updated to OS X 10.6.8. So, here are main steps you should take:
1. Install Snow Leopard from install DVD. 2. Update to 10.6.8 using Software Update. 3. Download El Capitan here.
“I can’t download an old version of Mac OS X”
If you have a newer Mac, there is no physical option to install Mac OS versions older than your current Mac model. For instance, if your MacBook was released in 2014, don’t expect it to run any OS released prior of that time, because older Apple OS versions simply do not include hardware drivers for your Mac.
But as it often happens, workarounds are possible. There is still a chance to download the installation file if you have an access to a Mac (or virtual machine) running that operating system. For example, to get an installer for Lion, you may ask a friend who has Lion-operated Mac or, once again, set up a virtual machine running Lion. Then you will need to prepare an external drive to download the installation file using OS X Utilities.
After you’ve completed the download, the installer should launch automatically, but you can click Cancel and copy the file you need. Below is the detailed instruction how to do it.
STEP 3. Install older OS X onto an external drive
The following method allows you to download Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks.
Start your Mac holding down Command + R.
Prepare a clean external drive (at least 10 GB of storage).
Within OS X Utilities, choose Reinstall OS X.
Select external drive as a source.
Enter your Apple ID.
Now the OS should start downloading automatically onto the external drive. After the download is complete, your Mac will prompt you to do a restart, but at this point, you should completely shut it down. Now that the installation file is “captured” onto your external drive, you can reinstall the OS, this time running the file on your Mac.
Boot your Mac from your standard drive.
Connect the external drive.
Go to external drive > OS X Install Data.
Locate InstallESD.dmg disk image file — this is the file you need to reinstall Lion OS X. The same steps are valid for Mountain Lion and Mavericks.
How to downgrade a Mac running later macOS versions
If your Mac runs macOS Sierra 10.12 or macOS High Sierra 10.13, it is possible to revert it to the previous system if you are not satisfied with the experience. You can do it either with Time Machine or by creating a bootable USB or external drive. Instruction to downgrade from macOS Sierra
Instruction to downgrade from macOS High Sierra
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Mojave
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Catalina
Before you do it, the best advice is to back your Mac up so your most important files stay intact. In addition to that, it makes sense to clean up your Mac from old system junk files and application leftovers. The easiest way to do it is to run CleanMyMac X on your machine (download it for free here).
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Visit your local Apple Store to download older OS X version
If none of the options to get older OS X worked, pay a visit to nearest local Apple Store. They should have image installations going back to OS Leopard and earlier. You can also ask their assistance to create a bootable USB drive with the installation file. So here you are. We hope this article has helped you to download an old version of Mac OS X. Below are a few more links you may find interesting.