Need for speed — How to squeeze every last drop out of macOS

A macOS performance tweaking guide for hardcore Android developers

No doubt that Mac = beauty + performance, but why do we always hear developers complaining the slowness of their Macs? macOS, just like any other products, is optimized for the majority of users. We, software developers, are the minority. The tools we use, the long hours of we spend on a Mac, and the speed we need are different from the general public.

There is a huge amount of Mac performance tuning tips available on the Internet. I’ve tried a few dozens of them. None satisfies my need for speed. That is, to run my Mac at the fastest possible speed, without spending a cent.

So I made the following tips by trial and error. Mostly error.

Disable swapping

macOS tends to swap memory to disk when there are still tons of free memory available. Swap, aka. virtual memory, is disk-based and thus it is terribly slow, even on a lightning fast SSD. Disabling swap is absolutely fine, as long as you keep the number of running applications low.

When swap is disabled, macOS will try to utilize as much free memory as possible and won’t complain at all until under extreme memory pressure. When it does under…