How to Speed Up a Slow Laptop

Few things test patience like a laptop that takes ages to wake up, stutters when you switch windows or sounds like a hair dryer during a video call. The good news is that sluggishness usually has a handful of ordinary causes, and most of them can be dealt with in an afternoon. Work through the steps below roughly in order: the early ones are free and quick, the later ones take more effort or a little money.

Start by finding the bottleneck

Guessing wastes time. Both major desktop systems show you what is using the machine right now.

• On Windows, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and sort the Processes tab by CPU, Memory or Disk.
• On a Mac, open Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder and look at the CPU and Memory tabs.

If one program is pinned near the top all the time, you have a suspect. If memory is constantly almost full, you have too much open at once or too little memory for how you work. If the disk is busy while you do nothing, background tasks such as indexing or updates may be running.

Free fixes to try first

Restart properly

Many people close the lid for weeks at a time. A full restart clears memory, finishes pending updates and stops processes that have drifted out of control. It is the cheapest fix there is.

Trim startup programs

Apps love to launch themselves when you sign in. On Windows, open the Startup apps section in Settings or the Startup tab in Task Manager and disable anything you do not need straight away. On a Mac, check Login Items in System Settings. Chat tools, updaters and cloud helpers are common offenders; they will still work when you open them yourself.

Tame the browser

Modern browsers are often the heaviest program on a laptop. Each open tab uses memory, and extensions run in the background on every page. Close tabs you are not using, bookmark the ones you keep "for later", and remove extensions you no longer recognise. Most browsers have a built-in task manager that shows which tab or extension is the hungriest.

Make room on the drive

A drive that is almost full leaves the system little space for temporary files and updates. Empty the downloads folder, uninstall programs you have not opened in months and move large photo or video collections to an external drive. Windows has Storage Sense and macOS has a storage overview under General settings to help you find the biggest items.

Keep the software current

System and driver updates fix bugs that can slow a machine down, and security updates close holes that malware relies on. Install pending updates, then restart. While you are at it, run a scan with the security tool built into your system. Malware is not the most common cause of slowness, but it is worth ruling out.

Office software matters too. If you rely on an older suite that struggles on your current system, our piece on whether upgrading Office is worth it walks through the trade-offs.

Check heat and power settings

Laptops slow themselves down when they get too hot, to protect the processor. Dust in the vents, a soft surface such as a duvet blocking airflow, or a dried-out fan can all cause this. Use the laptop on a hard surface and, if you are comfortable doing so, clean the vents gently with compressed air while it is switched off.

Power settings also play a role. Battery-saving modes deliberately reduce performance. When you are plugged in and need speed, switch to a balanced or performance profile.

When an upgrade makes sense

If the laptop is still slow after all of this, hardware may be the limit. Two upgrades tend to make the biggest difference on older machines, provided the model allows them:

Many thin laptops have parts soldered to the board, so check the manufacturer's documentation before buying anything. If neither upgrade is possible, a clean reinstall of the operating system can still give an older machine a fresh start, but only after a complete backup. Our guide on backing up a computer covers how to do that safely.

A short checklist

1. Restart and install updates.
2. Find the heaviest program in Task Manager or Activity Monitor.
3. Disable unneeded startup apps.
4. Close tabs and remove unused extensions.
5. Free up drive space.
6. Check vents, surface and power mode.
7. Consider an SSD or memory upgrade if the model allows it.

Work through that list once and most laptops will feel noticeably livelier. Repeat the first few steps every couple of months and you may put off buying a new one for quite a while.