Your Mac isn’t slow. Something on it is.
Unslow traces a slow Mac to its cause — memory pressure, a disk too full to swap, an app stuck in Rosetta, a pile of background helpers — and helps you fix what can actually be fixed.
Overview
Checked just now. Every recommendation shows the reading behind it.
Memory
Warning
6.4 of 8 GB in use
Swap
2.6 GB
3.4 MB/s to disk
Startup disk
4.4 GB free
Aim for 24.5 GB
Recommendations
Startup disk is 98% full
macOS writes swap to the startup disk. With 4.4 GB left it can no longer move memory out of RAM.
14.95 GB of caches can be removed safely
Xcode build data, device support files and the npm cache. Their tools recreate them automatically.
7 auto-updaters are set to start with your Mac
Adobe, Google, Microsoft and Zoom. Switching them off saves login time, not RAM — Unslow says so.
Memory
6.4 GB
of 8 GB
Disk
4.4 GB
free
Top memory users
- Google Chrome+23 helpers3.53 GB
- Claude+4 helpers1.45 GB
- Xcode+2 helpers727 MB
Free RAM was never the goal
The memory-cleaner category depends on you believing empty memory is good and full memory is bad. Neither is true, and the numbers that matter are published by the kernel for anyone to read.
What a memory cleaner shows you
1.65 GB
available
“Available” isn’t a figure macOS publishes. It’s free memory and file cache, added together by the app.
What the kernel reports, same moment
64%Warning
- Swap used
- 2.6 GB
- Swap traffic
- 3.4 MB/s
- Compressed
- 2.70 GB
This is what macOS consults before it decides which of your apps to terminate.
macOS keeps RAM full on purpose
Unused memory does no work, so the system fills it with cache it can drop instantly. A high used figure is the system working correctly.
Free memory doesn't predict slowness
Pressure does, together with how fast the machine is swapping. Little free RAM and low pressure is fine. The reverse is not.
Cleaning makes it worse
Cleaners force macOS to throw its cache away to inflate the number. It rises for about a minute, and you pay it back in disk reads.
A full disk is a memory problem
macOS writes swap to the startup disk. Once it runs short of space, memory pressure stops meaning “a bit slower” and starts meaning stalls and force-quits. Unslow finds the space that’s safe to give back, and shows you the rest.
Startup disk
4.4 GBfree of 245 GB
- Xcode build dataRebuilt on the next build8.14 GB
- Xcode device supportCopied again when a device connects4.82 GB
- npm cacheFetched again when a project needs it1.88 GB
- Homebrew downloadsInstalled software is unaffected95 MB
Large files, with when you last opened them
Your own files, largest first. App data and document packages are measured but never listed, so a photo library is never offered up in pieces.
- VID_20251105_143413.mp4Downloads, modified a month ago2.19 GB
- VID_20260321_085028.mp4Downloads, modified a month ago1.18 GB
- Screen Recording 2026-06-15.movDesktop, opened 3 months ago605 MB
1.9 million files measured in 18 seconds on an M1.
Nothing is pre-selected
You tick every item yourself.
Everything goes to the Trash
Put anything back from Finder until you empty it.
Exact paths, exact sizes
Every item says where it lives and what it holds.
No “system junk”
Caches that rebuild within minutes aren’t worth clearing.
Specific causes, with the evidence
Unslow only reports what it can measure. Every finding has a Show evidence control that reveals the raw readings behind it, so you never have to take the app’s word for anything.
Apps stuck in Rosetta
Apps running as Intel code on Apple silicon, and whether a native build already sits unused inside the same binary.
What it costs you: CPU, launch time and extra memory for every translated app. No percentage is claimed, because it varies by app and can't be measured from outside it.
Background items
Third-party launch agents and daemons, grouped by the vendor that quietly installed them, each one reversible.
What it costs you: Login time and periodic wakeups. Not memory: these sit idle between runs, and the app says so.
Memory leaks
Apps whose memory climbs steadily for hours and never gives it back, told apart from busy apps that release it.
What it costs you: The measured growth, named and charted. Nothing is inferred.
Swap traffic
How fast memory is moving between RAM and disk — the thing you actually feel as a beachball — shown as a rate, not a verdict.
What it costs you: Nothing to fix directly. It tells you when the other findings are costing you right now.
39 points of menu bar. Or 9.
A monitor you resent for the space it takes gets uninstalled. The dot carries the pressure level by colour, and the number beside it is optional.
What it will and won't do
Most apps in this category would never print the second column. It’s here because the limits are the product: an instrument you can trust has to be one that tells you when there’s nothing to find.
Will
- Show the pressure reading the kernel itself uses, updated every second.
- Tell you when your startup disk is too full for macOS to swap into.
- Find the build caches and package downloads that rebuild themselves, with their exact paths.
- Name the app running under Rosetta, and whether a native build is already installed.
- Name the app that has grown 4 GB since this morning, with the chart that proves it.
- Show the raw readings behind every one of those claims.
Won't
- Free memory by cleaning, purging or compressing. That mechanism doesn't work.
- Delete a file outright, or tick one for you. Everything goes to the Trash first.
- Clear “system junk” — caches that rebuild within minutes of being cleared.
- Turn background items off in bulk. Some of them run your VPN.
- Force-quit anything, or touch Apple's own system agents.
- Report a saving it didn't measure.
One price. No subscription.
A monitor shouldn’t need a monthly fee to keep telling you the truth.
Unslow for Mac
$39once
One licence for your Mac, with every future update included.
Buy UnslowFor Apple silicon Macs on macOS 14 or later. 14-day refunds.
- Live memory and disk monitoring in the menu bar
- Safe cleanup of developer caches and downloads
- Large-file finder with last-opened dates
- Rosetta, background item and leak audits
- Evidence behind every finding
- Every future update, with no account
Why not the App Store?
Apple’s sandbox blocks the system calls this app uses to read other processes’ memory, so the diagnostics couldn’t run inside it. The download is signed and notarised by Apple instead, so macOS opens it like any other app.
Questions
Something else? Email us.
Not by running — be wary of anything that claims otherwise. It finds the specific things making your Mac slow: a disk too full to swap, a translated app, a leaking process, a pile of background helpers. Fixing those is what makes it faster, and the app helps you do each one safely.
Disk space is only half of it. A slow Mac is usually memory pressure, and pressure turns into stalls when the disk is too full to swap — so the app watches both and shows how they connect. On the storage side it only offers what it can name exactly, it never ticks anything for you, and everything goes to the Trash first.
Because the mechanism doesn't work. Cleaners force macOS to evict its file cache to inflate a free-memory number, and you pay it back in disk reads within a minute. We'd rather ship one fewer feature than one that makes things worse.
Memory monitoring and the audits need neither. Full Disk Access is optional: without it macOS hides the Trash, device backups and a few folders, and Unslow tells you its storage totals are incomplete rather than quietly under-reporting. Root daemons need admin to change, so they are reported but never touched.
About 30 MB and effectively no CPU at idle. It reads memory every second but walks the process list only every 30 seconds while you aren't looking at it. A monitor that shows up in its own top-processes list would be a bad joke.
They stop starting at login and stop waking on their schedule. Nothing is deleted, and every change can be reversed from the same list. Root daemons are never touched.
It needs a few hours of history per app before it will say anything, and it only calls something a leak when growth is both large and close to a straight line. A busy app that grows and gives memory back is not a leak, and the app is built not to call it one.
Unslow your Mac
Most slow Macs have something specific and fixable going on. Unslow tells you which one, shows you the reading behind it, and helps you fix it.
Buy for $39