How to fix these 4 El Capitan problems

Posted on Thursday May 05, 2016

Apple's El Capitan OS has been out for awhile now and, at this point, most users are likely to have found a few kinks in its armor. While overall many users are likely to feel it's a positive update to their old OS, it is certainly not perfect. Here are some of the more annoying issues that pester El Capitan users and a few ways to fix these problems.

Application freeze

Worse than a brain freeze from a slushy, application freezes on your OS oftentimes last much longer and leave you frustrated watching the pinwheel of death spin on and on. For those once-PC users who've made the transition to Mac, your tried and true solution of pressing Control-Alt-Delete unfortunately doesn't apply here. Instead, you can try these two options when an app freezes.

1. Press and hold command > option, then hover over the problem-application on the dock, and hold down the left button on your mouse. Now navigate to Force Quit in the box that appears, and release your finger from the mouse.
2. If you can't access the dock, then press and hold command > option, then tap the escape key. A menu with the option to Force Quit any app that's running will appear. Simply select the app you'd like to quit and click Force Quit.

Mac is running slow

Almost every Mac user's system starts to run slow at some point in time. While sometimes you can just be patient and the problem will correct itself on its own, other times the slowness becomes a consistent nuisance at which point it's time to look closer at the issue. Usually the culprit has to do with the memory, which means you should check which applications or processes are using most of it. This is where the Activity Monitor comes in handy.

To find the Activity Monitor click on Finder > Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. Alternatively you can simply search for it with the Spotlight tool.

Once you've opened Activity Monitor, click on Memory. To see which applications are eating most of it, make sure the arrow next to Memory is pointed downward. Doing this will display apps in order from highest memory consumers at the top to lowest at the bottom. Now that you can easily see the biggest memory hogs, consider closing these apps.

Printing problems

No one likes waiting on an unresponsive printer. So if your printer is slow to respond or completely unresponsive, go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and select Print. Then press and hold ctrl, click on the problem printer and then Reset printing system. After you've done this, restart your Mac and Printer.

Slow Spotlight functionality

As handy as Spotlight is, some users have experienced a slowdown in the application after updating to El Capitan. One way to resolve this issue is to simply be patient, as usual the app just needs some time to do its job. However, if you're in a rush or the slowdown is a persistent problem, you can take matters into your own hands. Click System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, and then narrow down the areas Spotlight searches by unchecking them. For example, if there's no need for Spotlight to check the thousands of images stored on your hard drive, simply uncheck Images.

These four tips should help you resolve some common El Capitan issues that are known to give users headaches. If you'd like to learn more about optimizing your Mac OS or any of your other Apple products, don't hesitate to get in touch.