Try these steps to clean up your old computer, and it may feel brand-new once again.
Step 1: Give it a quick dusting
Over time, dust can build up inside a computer, making it run hotter and feel slower. We have a detailed guide to cleaning laptops (and How-To Geek has one for desktops), but the gist is this: If you can, open up your computer — whether it’s a laptop, desktop, all-in-one, or mini PC — and use compressed air to blow out any dust you see, especially in vents and fans.
If you can’t open up your PC, carefully angle the compressed air to remove dust from vents and ports without blowing it deeper inside; alternatively, you can use a microfiber cloth or cotton swab. You can also clean crumbs and other particles from your keyboard with compressed air and give it a quick wipedown with a microfiber cloth. Easy-peasy!
Step 2: Tidy your files (and back them up!)
Computers run slower when their solid-state drives (SSDs) are nearly full. If it’s been a while since you tidied up your drive (or if you, like me, are a bit haphazard about your file management), this step might take a bit longer. Block out an hour and grab a nice mug of coffee or tea before you settle in.
On a Mac, open System Settings and navigate to General > Storage. You can click the “i” symbol next to each item for more information on what’s taking up space on your computer and shortcuts to delete files or other things you don’t need. (I do not need a 2.38 GB GarageBand Sound Library, thank you.) The Documents section here has tabs to highlight large files and downloads you may want to trash, and you can do a more thorough dive by opening the Finder in the File Browser tab. You can also remove unused apps in the Storage menu, though we’ll get to that in a couple of steps.
Step 3: Refresh the operating system
The quickest way to make your old computer feel new again is to reset the operating system to its initial state. I do it for my desktop PC every few years.
If your computer is fairly new, or if you’d prefer to manually clean up your apps one at a time, skip to the next step. But if your computer is more than three years old, if it’s acting funky, or if you’d like to save some time, resetting its OS will be faster, easier, and more effective than combing through several years’ worth of apps manually.
Before you reset Windows, go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps and make a list of which programs you use frequently. Also, confirm that you have access to your product keys for any essential software that requires them — in the next step, you’ll need to reinstall any apps you need that didn’t come with your computer.
To reset Windows, go to Settings > System > Recovery and click Reset PC. Choose Keep my files and Cloud download. This process will remove all your installed apps and return all your settings to their defaults, but it will keep all of your newly organized personal files. It will also download a fresh copy of Windows, including all the latest updates, in case your install has gotten goofed up over the years.
You probably don’t need to reset your Mac unless something isn’t acting right. If you do, first boot into macOS Recovery and then choose to reinstall macOS. Unlike a Windows reset, performing a reinstall on a Mac won’t remove any existing apps or files, so you’ll need to audit those in the next step.
This process will take a while — from 30 minutes to a couple of hours — but it doesn’t require any supervision. Set it up and go do something else for a while.
Step 4: Audit unused apps
Now it’s time to audit your apps. Removing unused software and games will make your computer feel faster by freeing up valuable drive space and reducing the number of apps running in the background at any given moment. You should remove anything you don’t use, whether it’s preinstalled bloatware or a program you installed years ago and have since forgotten about.
If you reset your Windows PC in the previous step, remember to download and reinstall any frequently used apps that the reset process deleted.
In Windows, go into Settings > Apps > Installed apps to view every program on your PC. Then, to remove anything you don’t need, click the item’s three-dot icon and choose Uninstall. If you’re not sure what an app is, search for it on Should I Remove It? for more info. (We don’t recommend installing the Should I Remove It? software, because it’s a bit bloated itself.
Macs don’t come with as much preinstalled bloatware as Windows PCs typically do, but it’s still a good idea to go through your apps and remove anything you previously installed that you no longer need. If you didn’t already do this earlier, you can remove apps by opening System Settings, navigating to General > Storage, clicking the “i” symbol next to Applications, and deleting apps you don’t use.
When you’re finished, we recommend restarting your computer to complete any lingering uninstall processes before you move on to the next step.
Step 5: Limit which apps launch on startup
The hardest parts are over! Now that you have only the apps you need, it’s time to select which ones you want to launch every time the computer starts up. Turning some startup apps off will make your computer boot faster, and it’ll feel faster with fewer programs running constantly in the background.
In Windows, you can see which apps launch automatically on startup by going to Settings > Apps > Startup. You should toggle most of them off — keep only those apps and features that you want running every single time you launch your computer, such as your password manager, backup software, or any software necessary for your peripherals. Specific apps such as Slack or Discord may not need to launch automatically every time you start your computer.
In macOS, open System Settings and go to General > Login Items & Extensions. Here you can remove items you don’t want automatically launching when you log in and trim those that you don’t want running in the background.
Step 6: Consider the humble browser extension
Next up, you should remove unused browser extensions and disable the ones you use only occasionally. Doing so can improve performance and sew up potential security holes.
Here’s how to navigate to your extensions in the most commonly used browsers:
- Chrome: Under the three-dot menu, go to Extensions > Manage extensions. Click the Remove button to uninstall unused extensions, and use the toggle to disable those you don’t need running all the time.
- Edge: Click the three-dot menu and then click Extensions. In the new window that appears, click Manage extensions. The Remove button uninstalls extensions, while the toggle disables them until you need them again.
- Safari: Click Safari in the menu bar and then choose Settings > Extensions. Here you can select extensions from the list and click Uninstall on the items you don’t need.
- Firefox: Click the puzzle piece in the upper-right corner and then choose Manage extensions. To uninstall unused extensions, click the three-dot menu next to the extension and select Remove. As in the other browsers, you can use the toggle to disable extensions.
If you use Windows, you should check your extensions in Edge even if you don’t use that browser regularly. Edge may have automatically imported everything from Chrome, even if you didn’t tell it to.
Also consider using an ad blocker, which can make web pages load faster, especially on older, lower-performance PCs. Blocking ads also offers the bonuses of making websites look cleaner and making your browsing experience more secure.
Step 7: Enable automatic updates and update your drivers
Now you need to make sure that your operating system is current and that you have automatic updates enabled so you don’t have to think about it going forward. This helps keep your computer secure, and the updates can also fix bugs, improve performance, and add new features.
On a Mac, open System Settings and then click General > Software updates to install any outstanding updates. Also in this menu, you can click the “i” symbol next to Automatic Updates and toggle on all the options to keep your operating system and apps automatically updated.
In Windows 11, go to Settings > Windows Update and then select Check for updates. Download and install any updates that are currently outstanding. Windows 11 is already set to automatically download and install updates, but you can go to Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options and set your active hours so that Windows Update doesn’t run during your workday. Then open the Microsoft Store, click the portrait in the top-right corner, select Store Settings, and make sure the App updates toggle is enabled.
If you have a Windows PC, you should also check for driver updates to keep all your hardware in working order. Go to Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Optional updates. There you’ll find drivers to install for specific devices. Windows Update should take care of most drivers, but you may also want to check for and run any updates available in the app provided by your computer manufacturer — Dell SupportAssist, Lenovo Vantage, MyAsus, HP Support Assistant, or the like — to ensure that your PC continues to run smoothly.
If you have a gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card, you can also update your graphics drivers using the Nvidia App, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, or Intel Arc Control.
Even though future OS updates should download and install automatically, you may need to reboot your computer now and again to complete the update process. Be sure to do so when it asks!
Step 8: Turn off features you’re not using
You may also be able to improve performance, reclaim storage, and reduce visual clutter by turning off operating system features you’re not using.
Here are a few quick and easy ways to tidy up Windows 11. Follow these steps to remove the ads from your lock screen, desktop, and Settings app:
- Go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Under “Personalize your lock screen,” select Picture to get access to the option to uncheck Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen. Also uncheck Suggest widgets for your lock screen.
- Go to Settings > Privacy & security > General to disable personalized ads, turn off suggested content in the Settings app, and more. (I personally toggle them all off.)
To minimize the nags and pop-ups, tweak these settings:
- You can turn off feedback notifications by going to Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback and setting “Feedback frequency” to Never.
- Go to Settings > System > Notifications, scroll all the way down, and click Additional settings. Uncheck all the boxes there to reduce the number of times your computer bloops at you about Game Pass and disable future full-screen “Finish setting up your PC” nags.
- If you don’t use OneDrive, you can uninstall it by going to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps, scrolling down to Microsoft OneDrive, selecting the three dots to the right, and clicking Remove. This should stop the OneDrive and Windows Backup notifications. (But you should still back up your computer some other way.)
Clean up your taskbar, search menu, and Start menu with these changes:
- Right-click the Taskbar at the bottom and select Taskbar settings. There you can turn off Widgets and customize how much space Search takes up. You can unpin taskbar shortcuts you’re not using by right-clicking the icon and selecting Unpin from taskbar.
- Click Settings > Privacy & security > Search, and then toggle Show search highlights off to remove a bunch of clutter from the search menu.
- Go to Settings > Personalization > Start and disable Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more and Show account-related notifications. You can also disable Show mobile device in Start if you don’t connect your phone to your PC, and you can toggle Recommended files and Show websites from your browsing history according to your preference. You can also customize the ratio of pinned apps to recommended apps and recently opened files.
- In the Start menu, you can right-click apps you don’t use and select Uninstall to remove them. You can also select Unpin from Start for any apps you don’t want pinned there.
In macOS, if you don’t use GarageBand (and you didn’t do this in a previous step), you can free up a couple gigabytes of storage by opening System Settings and going to General > Storage > Music Creation > Remove GarageBand Sound Library. And if you have a Mac with 8 GB of memory or a relatively small SSD, you may be able to improve your computer’s performance by disabling Apple Intelligence if you don’t want to use any of those features. Apple’s documentation says that the on-device models take up about 7 GB of storage and that those models “will be removed from your device” if you disable Apple Intelligence. We weren’t able to free up storage this way in our testing, but it’s worth a shot if you aren’t using the features anyway. To disable it, open System Settings, click Apple Intelligence & Siri, and toggle off Apple Intelligence.
Step 9: Customize the look of your PC, as a little treat
You did the hard part! Now for the fun part: making your computer look uniquely your own.
In Windows, you can customize your desktop background and lock screen by going to Settings > Personalization > Background and Lock screen, respectively, and selecting an image or creating a slideshow. And under Personalization > Colors you can select Light or Dark mode and choose fun accent colors for windows and menus.
On a Mac, you can change your wallpaper by opening System Settings and clicking Wallpaper. There you can select from Apple’s options — some of which change depending on the time of day — or add your own. You can also go to System Settings > Wallpaper and click Screen Saver on the right of the desktop preview image to choose from Apple’s screen saver options or add your own by choosing Custom and then scrolling down to select Other > Photos and then clicking Options to select a folder of photos you’d like to cycle through. To choose Light or Dark mode and change the accent color, go to Appearance within System Settings.
You can’t go wrong with photos of family or pets, but if you’re looking for some artistic inspiration, my favorites are these 1970s NASA space colony illustrations.
If you’ve followed all of our guidance, and your laptop is still slow to boot up, it might be time for a new computer. We have a range of picks for every task and budget, backed by hundreds of hours of research and testing, in our guide to the best laptops.
— by Kimber Streams. Max Eddy contributed reporting. This article was edited by Signe Brewster and Caitlin McGarry. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/how-to-clean-up-your-computer/
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