MacBook Air Running super slow after Catalina update

My MacBook Air(13-inch, Early 2015) 8GB RAM is running macOS Catalina 10.15.2. Now the mac is Super Slow and booting time is consistently 90 seconds +.

Every app that I open the rainbow cursor comes up.

I cannot multi-task, open multiple tabs on chrome else it hangs and slows down. The Netflix, YouTube and any video I am playing is running with a slight lag and it is not smooth as it was previously.

I have done resetting the SMC and PRAM reset and still no improvement.

How can I improve the performance?


Step one is to open Activity Monitor and check if your drive is IO bound.

Activity Monitor showing iOPS

Next, once you're sure you're not waiting for storage to do work (by letting Spotlight and iCloud and all the expected programs to finish their work), then look at which programs are taking energy and finally look at the CPU to see what processes are busy.

After a day or two post install and letting the system clean up, it should be substantially faster or you should be able to razor focus on specific apps that are tripping up your Mac. We're seeing excellent performance after upgrading to Mojave and now Catalina across the board on our fleet of Macs. Comment or ask a follow on question if you need more help with pinpointing your blocking process or app.