How to speed up a laptop: the four things desktops do not have

Generic advice about slow computers applies to laptops too — startup programs, disk space, browser memory. But four causes are specific to portable machines, and they are the ones nobody checks, because a desktop never has them.

Start here. If none of these is your problem, the general advice is still waiting at the bottom.

1. It is holding back on purpose

A laptop plugged in at a desk all week is often still running the balanced power profile it shipped with, which caps clock speeds to protect a battery that is not being used.

Windows: Settings → System → Power & battery → Power mode → Best performance. macOS: System Settings → Battery → set Energy Mode to High Power where your model offers it, and turn off Low Power Mode.

This is a free change that some machines respond to dramatically.

2. It is too hot to go fast

Thin cases and small fans mean laptops throttle far sooner than desktops. The signature is a machine that is quick for the first twenty minutes and progressively slower after that.

Use it on a hard surface — beds, sofas and cushions block the intake vents underneath. Keep the underside clear of paper. On a machine more than two or three years old, dust in the heatsink is a real and common cause, and having it cleaned out is cheap.

No software setting overrides thermal limits. A processor that is slowing itself down to avoid damage is working correctly.

3. Your graphics are borrowing your memory

Most laptops use integrated graphics, which have no dedicated memory — they take a slice of system RAM instead. On an 8 GB machine, the amount available to your applications is meaningfully less than 8 GB.

You cannot change this, but it explains why laptops feel memory-starved earlier than the spec sheet suggests, and why freeing memory matters more here. The browser is where most of it goes: releasing what open tabs hold returns more on a laptop than the same action on a desktop with the same number of tabs.

4. The dock or the external display

Driving one or two external monitors through a USB-C dock is real work for integrated graphics, and it consumes some of that shared memory. Cheap docks can also negotiate poor connections that produce stutter unrelated to the laptop's speed.

If the machine is fine undocked and sluggish at the desk, you have found the cause. Test by unplugging everything and working on the built-in screen for ten minutes.

Then the usual list

Once power, heat and displays are ruled out, laptops slow down for the same reasons everything else does: too much held in memory, too many programs starting at login, and a drive with no room left.

For an older machine specifically, the full guide to reviving one covers what is worth upgrading and what is not — the short version being that an SSD transforms a laptop with a mechanical drive, and that many modern models solder their RAM down, so check before buying any.