# Mac Running or Booting Slow? On M-Chips Check Storage First Source: https://sadaghian.com/en/blog/macbook-slow-storage-full/ Language: en Description: M1-M5 MacBook slow or booting slowly? Most common cause: SSD almost full. How to check storage and swap – and clean up for free with OnyX and Mole. Full site: https://sadaghian.com/llms-full.txt · Index: https://sadaghian.com/llms.txt ## MacBook With M-Chip Slow? Your Storage Is Probably Almost Full By Sadaghian Team • August 2, 2026 **Your M1–M5 MacBook stutters, boots slowly or keeps showing the beachball?** The most common cause we see in the workshop is surprisingly mundane: the SSD is almost full. Apple Silicon Macs barely slow down with age – but a crammed drive visibly drags them down, including slow boots. The good news: in most cases you can fix this yourself, with built-in tools and two free utilities. ### Why Does a Full Drive Slow the Mac Down? M-chip Macs share their working memory with the system (unified memory). When RAM runs short, macOS continuously swaps memory out to the SSD – and that requires **free space on the SSD**. When the drive is nearly full, exactly this swapping mechanism gets squeezed: the system stalls, apps launch slowly, boot times stretch. On top of that, the SSD itself performs worse when it has hardly any free space left. As a rule of thumb, keep **at least 10–15% of your storage free** – more on small SSDs (256 GB). ### Step 1: Check Your Storage - Open **System Settings → General → Storage**. You will see how full the SSD is and which categories occupy the space. - In **Activity Monitor** (Applications → Utilities), the "Memory" tab shows **"Swap Used"** at the bottom. Several gigabytes of swap combined with a nearly full SSD is the classic picture of a throttled M-Mac. ### Step 2: The Usual Space Hogs - **Downloads folder** – installers and old ZIPs pile up unnoticed. - **Old iPhone/iPad backups** – select the device under "Locations" in Finder and delete outdated backups. - **Mail attachments and Messages history** – years of chat attachments often occupy tens of gigabytes. - **Photos library** – check whether "Optimize Mac Storage" is enabled in Photos settings. - **Leftovers from uninstalled apps** – dragging apps to the Trash leaves caches and support files behind. And afterwards: **empty the Trash** – nothing is really deleted until it is gone from there too. ### Step 3: Clean Out Your Login Items Everything listed under **System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions** launches automatically at every boot – each line costs startup time and keeps running in the background afterwards. Over the years, updaters, helpers and long-forgotten apps pile up there. Remove everything you do not use daily with the minus button, and go through the **"Allow in the Background"** list as well. A sluggish boot very often has its second cause right here – directly after full storage. ### Two Free Tools We Recommend You do not need to buy anything for a thorough cleanup – two free programs cover almost everything: - **[OnyX](https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html)** (Titanium Software): the classic with a graphical interface. Clears system and app caches, runs maintenance scripts and rebuilds databases. Important: download exactly the version matching your macOS release – the website maps them clearly. - **[Mole](https://github.com/tw93/Mole)** (open source on GitHub): a terminal tool for those who like it thorough. Installed once with `brew install mole`, `mo clean` clears deep-seated caches and `mo uninstall` removes apps along with all leftover files. **Back up first:** create a Time Machine backup before any major cleanup, and download both tools only from the official sources linked above. ### Does More RAM Help? On M-chips the working memory is part of the chip package and **cannot be upgraded** – so the fix is freeing up storage, and choosing RAM and SSD more generously with your next purchase. The 8 GB base models in particular swap heavily in everyday use and therefore react most sensitively to a full SSD. ### If It Is Not the Storage If plenty of space is free and the MacBook is still slow, check **Activity Monitor** (CPU tab): a single process under constant heavy load points to a software problem. After a macOS update or a data migration, Spotlight may also index for a day or two – that resolves itself. If the machine stays sluggish after that, we are happy to take a look: the [error analysis is free](/en/#macbook-repair), and you get a concrete diagnosis instead of a guess. ### A Diagnosis Instead of a Gut Feeling **In Hamburg:** bring your device to our workshop in Altona – [free error analysis](/en/#macbook-repair), concrete findings. **Outside Hamburg:** the [shipping form on emonis](https://emonis.com/einsenden) gets you a prepaid DHL label right away – shipping both ways is free.