Will Reformatting My MacBook Pro Help Speed It Up?

Sometimes resetting the PRAM and NVRAM on your Mac by restarting while holding down the keys Command/Option/P/R can resolve issues related to settings and other problems.

Reset NVRAM or PRAM on Your Mac

If your Mac has issues related to settings stored in NVRAM or PRAM, resetting it might help. NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) is a small amount of memory that your Mac uses to store certain settings and access them quickly. PRAM (Parameter RAM) stores similar information, and the steps for resetting NVRAM and PRAM are the same.

Settings that can be stored in NVRAM include sound volume, display resolution, startup-disk selection, time zone, and recent kernel panic information. The settings stored in NVRAM depend on your Mac and the devices you are using with your Mac.

If you experience issues related to these settings or others, resetting NVRAM might help. For example, if your Mac starts up from a disk other than the one selected in Startup Disk preferences, or a question mark icon briefly appears before your Mac starts up, you might need to reset NVRAM.

For more information and instructions, please see Reset NVRAM or PRAM on Your Mac.

Reformatting and Speed Boosts

If “resetting” Mac means power down and power on, it is unlikely to provide a significant speed boost. Power cycling will only kill all running processes and get the OS back to its boot state prior to any running apps.

If “resetting” means to reformat your HDD and reload MacOS, then the answer is: it depends. If you had lots of apps that were included in the startup or LaunchAgents from various 3rd party suppliers, you might see a speed boost. In general, your Mac runs faster when it is doing less processing both in the background and foreground.

ActivityManager shows hundreds of processes running in the background, and the majority of these you are probably unaware of or don’t know how they help you. However, there are some very good 3rd party apps that can help streamline your Mac. If you are seriously concerned about speed, I suggest reading some reviews and perhaps downloading and trying one of them.

Other Speed Optimization Tips

Here’s an old article that’s still relevant: How to Speed Up Mac — 16 Tips to Improve MacBook Performance.

By following these tips and being mindful of the apps you run and the settings you use, you can significantly improve the performance of your MacBook Pro.

Best of luck!