How to Speed Up Mac Startup (Login Items, Cache, Snapshots)

You hit the power button, the Apple logo appears, the progress bar finishes, the desktop shows up — but the menu bar icons are still loading, the Dock is jumping, Slack is launching, Spotify is opening, and you’re sitting there for another 90 seconds before you can actually start working. The boot itself is fast on modern Macs. What’s slow is everything that auto-launches afterward.

Here’s how to figure out what’s stalling your startup and clean it all up.

Audit login items

This is the biggest single fix for slow startup on most Macs. Apps add themselves to login items aggressively, and most users never check.

1. System Settings > General > Login Items
2. Two sections: Open at Login (apps that launch and show in the Dock) and Allow in the Background (silent helpers and daemons)

In Open at Login, remove anything you don’t actually need launching when you boot. Common offenders:

• Spotify
• Discord
• Slack (if you don’t use it constantly)
• Steam, Epic, Battle.net
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Old VPN clients

In Allow in the Background, you’ll see a much longer list. This is where the real bloat hides — old apps you uninstalled left behind helpers, update agents, and sync daemons. Toggle off anything from apps you no longer use.

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Clean LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons

Macs run background services through LaunchAgents (per-user) and LaunchDaemons (system-wide). Apps install these to auto-start on boot or login. When you delete the app, the launch agents often stick around.

Look in:

• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
• /Library/LaunchAgents/
• /Library/LaunchDaemons/

Open these folders in Finder and check the .plist filenames. Anything for an app you’ve deleted can go to the Trash. Be careful — don’t delete files for apps you still use.

Sweep’s app uninstaller automatically finds and removes orphaned launch agents and daemons. Manually combing through these folders is tedious and easy to mess up.

Clear startup-relevant caches

macOS rebuilds several caches on boot. If they’re corrupted, boot times balloon as the system retries failed reads.

The font cache is a common culprit:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

Reboot after running. The Mac rebuilds the font cache on next boot, which takes about 30 seconds — but subsequent boots are faster.

The kernel extension cache occasionally needs rebuilding:

sudo kextcache -i /

Don’t run these casually — only if you have a confirmed slow-boot problem. Sweep handles cache rebuilds safely without Terminal.

Free up disk space

A full SSD slows everything, including boot. macOS uses free disk space for boot snapshots, swap, and intermediate caches. Once you’re under 10% free, even Apple Silicon Macs noticeably slow down.

Aim to keep at least 20% free. Quick wins:

• Empty Trash
• Clear Downloads of old installers and ZIPs
• Delete old Time Machine local snapshots (see below)
• Remove unused apps

Delete old APFS snapshots

macOS makes “local snapshots” of your drive before installing updates and during Time Machine backups. They’re useful — until they accumulate and eat 50+ GB.

List snapshots:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

Delete one (replace date with what you see in the listing):

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2024-12-01-120000

You can also clear all snapshots by turning Time Machine off briefly:

1. System Settings > General > Time Machine
2. Toggle Back Up Automatically off
3. Wait 60 seconds
4. Toggle back on

Sweep’s smart scan flags large APFS snapshots and lets you remove them with one click.

Turn off “Reopen windows when logging back in”

Every time you reboot, macOS by default tries to reopen the apps and windows you had open. If you had Chrome with 80 tabs and a few large Excel files, this can turn a 5-second login into a 90-second one.

Option 1 — turn it off permanently:

• When restarting/shutting down via Apple menu, uncheck Reopen windows when logging back in
• macOS remembers your choice

Option 2 — clear the list manually:

• The “windows to reopen” list is in ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.*.plist
• You can delete this file safely

Sign out of iCloud’s heaviest features (if you don’t use them)

iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, and Optimized Mac Storage all do background work right after login: syncing recent changes, downloading thumbnails, and verifying state. If you don’t use these on this particular Mac, they’re slowing your startup for no benefit.

System Settings > Apple ID, audit what you have on. Turn off:

• iCloud Drive (if you use Google Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive instead)
• iCloud Photos (if your photos live in another service)
• Mail / Notes / Reminders sync if you don’t use them on this device

Clear browser autostart

Even if your browser isn’t in Login Items, it can autostart if it was open at shutdown. Quitting browsers cleanly before shutdown prevents this. Or disable session restore in browser settings.

For Chrome: Settings > On startup > Open the New Tab page (instead of Continue where you left off).

For Safari: Safari > Settings > General > Safari opens with > A new window.

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Reset SMC and NVRAM (Intel Macs only)

If you’re on an Intel Mac with bafflingly slow boots that nothing else fixes, try:

• NVRAM reset: shut down, then power on while holding Cmd+Option+P+R for 20 seconds
• SMC reset: instructions vary by model — see Apple’s support page for your specific Mac

Apple Silicon Macs don’t have these resets — they’re handled automatically.

Update macOS

If you’ve been holding back from a current macOS, you might be missing meaningful boot performance fixes. Sonoma and Sequoia both shipped startup improvements compared to Ventura.

System Settings > General > Software Update and install the current version when you have time for the (~30 minute) update process.

A startup tune-up checklist

Run this once and your boot times will improve dramatically:

1. Audit Login Items, remove anything you don’t use
2. Audit “Allow in the Background”, same
3. Clean LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons (or use Sweep’s uninstaller)
4. Clear APFS snapshots
5. Free up at least 20% of your SSD
6. Disable “Reopen windows when logging back in”
7. Reboot and time it

Most Macs go from a 90-second usable-desktop time to under 20 seconds with this routine. The hardware was always quick. It’s just been waiting on a queue of background apps you didn’t know were starting.