With over $10 billion being made in Apple Mac sales alone in 2021, you can easily see how they have a huge corner of the technology market.

With this large market share comes a lot of IT issues, and you will want to resolve them yourself first before trying out the Applecare service. Although how do you perform your own Apple-related IT support without help from Apple tech support?

The following are ten top tips for troubleshooting Apple products yourself. With a little luck, you can avoid calling Apple customer care and instead resolve the issue on your own.

1. Clear a Bloated Startup Drive

If you have had a Mac for a long time, it might be time to clear out that startup drive it has, otherwise the system will start to slow down.

Over time, even the drive you do not use for personal storage can start to become overrun with files that are only needed once. On top of this, the startup drive is often used for the "Applications" and "Downloads" folders.

You can see a breakdown of how much space your Mac has left in this drive. To do this, you can click on "About This Mac" in the Apple menu, then click on the Storage tab.

If it still turns out that the drive remains bloated after deleting items, you might need to empty your Trash folder. To do this, Control-click on the Trash icon in the Dock and select "Empty Trash". After activating this, the Trash should empty.

2. Force-Quit Applications

If an app has stopped working, but will not close, you will want to force it to quit.

To do this, press Command, Option, and Escape together on the keyboard. This will open up a window with which you can select the application and select "Force Quit." If the application keeps freezing in this way, you might want to look into the root cause of the issue.

3. Launch in Safe Mode

It might be that one of your installed applications that launches on startup is causing issues. To discover if this is true, you can always try to load up the Mac in Safe Mode.

To do this, hold down the power button when launching or restarting instead of letting go. This will give you the startup options for your Mac. When you select your startup partition, hold the shift key and click on "Continue in Safe Mode."

4. Make Sure macOS Is Updated

It might be that your applications expect you to have a more up-to-date macOS than you have.

To upgrade your Mac's operating system, open your System Preferences and click on the icon labeled "Software Update." After following the instructions on-screen, you should have the latest version of macOS. You can then tick that off as a potential source of problems.

5. Reactivate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

If you are having trouble with the Internet, it might be that your WiFi or Bluetooth is not working properly.

You can click on the Switches icon on the right of your menu bar to access your Mac's Control Center. From here, you can turn off and on your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi by clicking their icons.

If this does not work, you might have a larger problem. Although remember, the issue might not be on the Mac's end.

6. Reboot Your Mac

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" has become something of a meme, but it is a valid way of resolving many issues with devices such as a Mac.

To restart your machine and see if that solves the problem, all you need to do is click on the Apple menu and select "Restart" or "Shut Down." This should resolve the issue, but if not it is time to look into larger problems.

7. Recover With a macOS Recovery Partition

Sometimes everything goes to pot. In that situation, you want to either restore your Mac to factory settings or recover to an old partition.

If you have set up a recovery partition, then what you should do is hold down the power button when turning on the Mac. When the startup options appear, select "Options" and then click on "Continue." This will start the recovery process for you.

8. Reset the SMC and Settings Memory

All Macs have a System Management Controller (SMC). This is a piece of the Mac's settings that controls many parts of the device, including its ability to charge its battery and cool itself down. If you are having issues with the battery, or any inbuilt part of the Mac, look to see if this is the issue by restarting the SMC.

In general, this is often done by restarting the Mac itself, although if you have an Intel-based Mac, you might need to follow different steps.

9. Start a New Account

The problems that you are facing with your Mac might not be related to the software or hardware. It may instead be a problem with your account and your account settings.

One way to find out if this is the case is to create a whole new macOS user account. To do this, open the Apple menu and select "System Preferences." You must then select "Users & Groups" and click on the padlock in the menu to unlock the ability to edit these.

Follow the instructions in this section to create a new account. This should be a clean slate that allows you to see if your settings are what is getting in the way of you having a stress-free experience.

10. Restore to Factory Settings

A last-ditch effort to resolve the situation is to restart your Mac to factory settings.

After backing up your files (which we recommend), open System Preferences from the Apple menu. From here, select the "System Preferences" menu and then select "Erase All Content and Settings." After this, follow the instructions on-screen to reset your device.

This cannot be undone. So, make sure that you want to go "all scorched earth" before you commit to it.

More Apple-Related IT Support

With the above advice, you should be able to resolve any Apple-related IT support issues that you have. If you still need Apple support, though, and do not know where to look, you should know that we are ready and raring to go.

Our experts are waiting for you to get in contact, where we will be able to diagnose and resolve your issue with the minimum of fuss. All you need to do is give us a call and we will help you out.

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