How to Speed Up a Slow Mac After macOS 27 Golden Gate

A Mac running macOS 27 Golden Gate can feel sluggish for the first day or two after the update. Spotlight rebuilds its index, iCloud resyncs, Photos re-analyzes your library, and Apple Intelligence downloads its on-device models, all while you try to use the machine.

Most of that background work finishes without any input from you. If the slowdown sticks around, the steps below run from the quickest checks to the more involved fixes. Our older guide to speeding up a slow Mac covers general tips that apply to any macOS release.

Give Your Mac a Night Plugged In Before Changing Anything

Restart your Mac, then leave it connected to power and Wi-Fi for a few hours, ideally overnight. Spotlight indexing, Photos analysis, and Apple Intelligence model downloads all run faster when the Mac is idle and charging.

If the Mac feels normal the next morning, nothing else on this list is needed.

Spotlight and Photos Analysis Cause Most Post-Update CPU Spikes

Open Activity Monitor from Spotlight or Applications > Utilities.
Click the CPU tab and sort by % CPU.
Look for any process sitting near 100 percent for a long stretch.

The processes named mds_stores and mdworker handle Spotlight indexing. photoanalysisd and mediaanalysisd handle Photos analysis. All four run high after a major update and settle down on their own.

An unfamiliar process that stays pinned for hours is worth a closer look. Select it, click the info button, and check which app it belongs to. If it is a third-party app, quit it or update it. Our list of common macOS 27 problems covers other known culprits.

Memory Pressure Turns Yellow or Red When RAM Is the Bottleneck

Switch to the Memory tab in Activity Monitor and look at the Memory Pressure graph at the bottom. Green means the Mac has enough RAM for what you are running. Yellow or red means macOS is compressing memory and swapping to disk, which is when a Mac feels slow.

Quit apps you are not using, especially browsers with dozens of tabs.
Sort the Memory tab by Memory to see which app uses the most.
Restart any app that has grown far beyond its normal footprint.

Login Items and Browser Extensions Add Up Quickly

Open System Settings and go to General > Login Items & Extensions.
Review the apps under Open at Login and remove anything you do not need running all the time.
Scroll to Allow in the Background and switch off helpers for apps you no longer use.
Open your browser’s extensions page and disable or remove anything you do not recognize.

Old menu bar utilities, cloud sync tools, and VPN helpers are the usual offenders. Our list of settings to change after installing macOS 27 covers a few more worth reviewing.

A Nearly Full Drive Slows Down Every Mac

macOS needs free storage for swap files, caches, and temporary data. Keeping roughly 10 to 15 percent of your drive free helps avoid slowdowns.

Apple Intelligence takes a large chunk of storage on some machines, with its on-device models measured at 20GB to 30GB on Macs running macOS 27 Golden Gate. Our guide to freeing up storage on your Mac lists what is safe to clear.

To test whether Apple Intelligence is the cause, open System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and turn it off for a day. If the Mac speeds up, you have your answer.

Make Liquid Glass Less Transparent to Lighten the Load

Golden Gate adds a Liquid Glass transparency slider under System Settings > Appearance. Moving it toward the tinted end makes windows and menus more opaque, which improves legibility and can ease the load on older GPUs.

For a stronger effect, open System Settings > Accessibility > Display and turn on Reduce Transparency and Reduce Motion. Reduce Transparency switches translucency off completely, and Reduce Motion cuts back window animations.

Expect a modest gain, older and lower-memory Macs benefit most, while recent Macs with plenty of RAM may not notice a difference. You can switch any of these back at any time.

Install the Latest macOS 27 Update

Apple usually patches performance bugs in the first point releases after a major macOS launch. Open System Settings > General > Software Update and install anything listed. Also update your third-party apps, since older builds can misbehave on a new macOS version.

Also check out our guide for 10 things to do after installing macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Safe Mode and First Aid Clear Stuck Caches and Disk Errors

Safe Mode clears some system caches that rebuild automatically, and it can fix a slowdown that a normal restart does not.

Shut down your Mac completely.
Press and hold the power button until “Loading startup options” appears.
Select your startup disk, hold Shift, and click Continue in Safe Mode.
Once the Mac finishes starting up in Safe Mode, restart it normally.

After that, run First Aid on the startup disk.

Open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar.
Click First Aid, then Run.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does Spotlight take to index after updating to macOS 27?

It depends on how much data is on the drive. A Mac with a small library may finish in a few hours, while a Mac with hundreds of gigabytes of files and photos can take a day or two.

Should I reinstall macOS if my Mac is still slow after a week?

Work through storage, login items, and Safe Mode first. If the Mac is still slow after all of that, back up with Time Machine and contact Apple Support before you reinstall.

Is my Mac too old for macOS 27 Golden Gate?

Check Apple’s compatibility list for your model. A Mac that meets the requirements can still feel slower than it did on the previous release if it has limited RAM or a nearly full drive.