So if you just wanted to clear some cache folders, then you could just select that. Tip: You can be more granular in your control too. In addition, OnyX lets us run some extra maintenance that can resolve quite a number of problems.
However, your Mac may not always be able to run these depending on how you use it. It has certain maintenance commands that it runs daily, weekly and monthly. Your Mac actually maintains itself very well.
Onyx is a free Mac utility that isn’t a troubleshooting or diagnostic tool per se, but privdes provides access to the types of maintenance OS X would usually perform at regular intervals or would otherwise require complicated Terminal commands. You can specify if you want to reinstall OS X, go online with Safari (yes, you can browse the web - useful if you need to make an appointment at the Genius Bar) and run Disk Utility. The recovery system is quite self explanatory and includes some easy to use functions.
Quite a lot! The recovery system can repair issues such as problems booting to a full reinstall of OS X. If you’ve run Disk Utility in the past and the Verify Disk option found some errors, the recovery system is how you’ll repair them. When your Mac is booted normally, it can’t do this - you’re using the volume! With the recovery system however, you’re no longer using your Mac’s normal volume so it can be unmounted so it can make repairs. To fix disk problems, it has to unmount the volume (partition).
You see, Disk Utility can only verify disks it’s running from. It’s exactly the same Disk Utility your Mac has, but it can do more. Within the recovery system, you have access to Disk Utility. The recovery system is extremely useful if your Mac is failing to boot This usually resolves most font issues - the fonts themselves are usually ok, but the cache becomes corrupt. Safe Mode disables all user-installed fonts (leaving only the system fonts) and clears the fonts cache. Fonts actually have quite a bit of overhead in OS X and even have their own dedicated cache. Corrupt looking fonts, fonts that just won’t load or worse - fonts that freeze your Mac when in use. If you spend a lot of time working with fonts, you’ve no doubt experienced issues at some point.
It’s logical to assume the printer driver did not play nice! The next step would be to undo that last installation (usually installers can be run again to uninstall or there’s a separate uninstaller application). Let’s say you installed a printer driver and as soon as you restarted, your Mac refused to boot. What Will it Fix?Īs we touched on before, Safe Mode is designed to resolve problems that prevent your Mac from working normally. If not, just restart and boot back to Safe Mode and then login. The automatic disk repair and clearing of various caches might have been enough to fix the issue. Once your Mac has (eventually) booted, you’ll see the OS X login window with the words “Safe boot” in bright red.Īt this point, it’s recommended to simply restart your Mac rather than login. Depending on your version of OS X, you may see the spinning gear change into a solid progress bar. Keep it held down past the chime, until you see the Apple logo and spinning gear. To boot into Safe Mode, restart your Mac while holding down the Shift key. Tip: More detailed information on Safe Mode is available over at Apple Support. Don’t expect to boot into Safe Mode and resume working, Safe Mode is there to fix problems.
It clears a variety of caches during boot and will not load a lot of software that OS X would normally load. To assist, it does a full disk check before anything else. This is because OS X assumes you’re booting Safe Mode because of a problem. Safe Mode always takes a long time to boot. Safe Mode boots OS X with the bare minimum - no additional software or extensions. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting step best suited if you’ve noticed that right after a new software installation or update, your Mac will no longer boot. Just as before, I’ll be including links to Apple support documents when available for further reading. They’re still quick and easy to do but they usually require a restart of your Mac. This second part of our tutorial will detail more in-depth fixes. However, always make sure you have a backup of your computer, not only in case a fix that’s performed causes your Mac to become unresponsive but it’s just a good idea in general! The Fix Listīefore we begin, all the fixes we’re showing you are perfectly safe as long as you enter them (or perform them) exactly as described. Tip: Before you get started with this tutorial, we recommend that you take a look at part-one of our tutorial on quick fixes.