{"id":241319,"date":"2026-04-18T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/18\/mac-mini-slow-heres-how-i-fixed-mine\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:10:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T23:10:39","slug":"mac-mini-slow-heres-how-i-fixed-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/18\/mac-mini-slow-heres-how-i-fixed-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac mini slow? Here’s how I fixed mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mac mini slow? Here’s how I fixed mine<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/mac-felt-slow-how-i-fixed-it<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-18 03:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.cultofmac.com<\/a><\/p>\n

A year into owning an M4 Pro Mac mini, it began feeling slow. With dozens of Chrome tabs and numerous other apps running in the background, everything felt more sluggish than it should.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was already convinced I needed an upgrade. Turns out, I just needed to do a little spring cleaning.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I did to speed up my slow Mac mini.<\/p>\n

How I fixed my slow Mac mini<\/h2>\n

I typically use a Mac for five years before upgrading. However, my M1 Mac mini with 16GB of memory started stuttering when I had several heavy apps open in the background. Add in constant Bluetooth problems when connecting the computer to my Logitech MX Master 3s mouse, and I decided to upgrade in early 2025.<\/p>\n

With AI and some future-proofing in mind, the M4 Pro Mac mini with 24GB of memory felt like the right choice. (See Cult of Mac\u2019s review: Mac mini with M4 Pro is mightier and mini-er than ever.)<\/p>\n

My goal wasn\u2019t to run large language models locally, but to have enough headroom for Google\u2019s Chrome browser, ChatGPT, Claude and five or six other apps running smoothly in the background without lag.<\/p>\n

Felt great at first<\/h3>\n

For a few months, I was more than happy with the M4 Pro Mac mini. It was far from slow, and felt like a big leap over my M1 Mac mini (and even the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip). Apps opened significantly faster. I experienced no lag or stutter, irrespective of the number of apps running in the background.<\/p>\n

However, over a year later, that smoothness started to fade. There was no sudden drop in performance. But I started noticing slowdowns. Apps took longer to open. Switching between desktops caused dropped frames. And app switching took a second longer.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, some of the slowdown can be attributed to macOS Tahoe and its new Liquid Glass user interface. And while macOS Tahoe 26.4 seems to have made things smoother, things are still not as good as they should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Time for an upgrade? I thought so \u2026<\/h3>\n

At first, it felt like I had reached the limits of the M4…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mac mini slow? Here’s how I fixed mine https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/mac-felt-slow-how-i-fixed-it Publish Date: 2026-04-18 03:00:00 Source Domain:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/M4-Pro-Mac-mini_10.jpg.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[53,51],"class_list":["post-241319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-macintosh","tag-mac-mini","tag-macbook-pro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241321,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241319\/revisions\/241321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}