If you have a large photo library, the reindexing and scanning of images for the facial recognition feature can put a serious hurt on overall performance. To remove the startup drive and allow indexing to continue, select it from the Privacy tab and click the minus (-) button.Īnother app that can cause a temporary slowdown as it performs its own index and scan is the Photos app.

I highly recommend that you remove the startup drive from the privacy list as soon as possible to ensure that all of the Mac’s search functions will work correctly. You should only add the startup drive to the privacy list as a temporary measure. The startup drive will be added to the Spotlight privacy list and indexing for the drive will stop. You’ll be asked if you really want to prevent Spotlight from searching in Macintosh HD. In the list that opens, use the sidebar to select your Mac (it will be listed under Devices), and then select the startup drive, usually named Macintosh HD. In the Spotlight window, select the Privacy tab.Ĭlick the plus (+) button in the bottom left corner of the window. Launch System Preferences, and select the Spotlight Preference Pane. If you can’t wait for the indexing to be done, you can disable indexing using these instructions:

Once the indexing is finished, your Mac’s performance should return to normal. Thankfully, this is only a temporary problem. Spotlight needs to build an accurate index of the files on your Mac so that search results are fast and correct. (Adding a drive to Spotlight’s Privacy tab prevents it from indexing the volume.) The indexing process can really slow things down after an upgrade since the startup drive had a lot of information changed on it. One of the perennial performance hits that occurs after a Mac operating system upgrade is Spotlight indexing the startup drive, or for that matter, any new drive(s) you may have added recently. If you’re experiencing speed issues after installing macOS High Sierra, give these tips a try. Luckily, such problems are usually temporary or easy to fix. In most cases, performance remains about the same, with any efficiencies in the new OS offset by new features that take more than their fair share of your Mac’s resources.īut sometimes after installing a new OS, your Mac may seem to have had its performance rug pulled out from under it. Most of the time, upgrading to a new version of the Mac operating system doesn’t bring performance increases.

You just upgraded to macOS High Sierra and you’re amazed at the overall performance improvement you’re experiencing on your Mac.

Update from el capitan to high sierra