Can I delete these plist files?

My computer has been running slow and the fan is constantly running very fast. I'm unable to go to facetime due to the fact that it constantly says that my computer is overheating. I tried going on to the activity monitor to shut down the processors but still my fan is running and my computer is still acting slow. I started to look at plist files to see if there is anything that got downloaded that shouldn't be there but I'm not sure which plist are okay to delete. I took a picture of some of the files that I'm not sure about. Can I delete these?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 26, 2019 11:41 AM

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Posted on Jun 27, 2019 12:31 AM

The PLIST files themselves aren't doing anything, so a change of direction is in order. I would shut down and boot into Safe Boot Mode by holding the SHIFT key at power-on for 30 seconds. In Safe Boot I'd download https://malwarebytes.com and do a scan. A lot of times it's adware and such in the background that is causing your system to be running unwanted things.


After you do a scan and remove anything it finds I would go to > System Preferences and open the Users & Groups icon. Click on your user account and go to the Login Items tab. This will show you the legit programs (as opposed to adware, etc.) that is loading automatically at startup. Your Mac itself doesn't need anything here. Unless you recognize anything you want to specifically keep from starting automatically every time you can click it, and click the minus ("-") button below to remove it. This won't remove the app, you can still run the app if you want, it will just keep it from starting automatically every time whether you want it to or not.


Once you've done these simple steps to clean up your system you can restart normally and see how your system behaves. If it's still behaving badly you can post that here for more information as to additionally steps to figure out what is going on.


Specifically, the next step is to launch the Activity Monitor app and to see what is taking up the most CPU usage when everything is closed. The bottom graph on the CPU tab shows your IDLE and you should be well over 90%+ idle with everything closed on a fresh boot.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 27, 2019 12:31 AM in response to shylondon

The PLIST files themselves aren't doing anything, so a change of direction is in order. I would shut down and boot into Safe Boot Mode by holding the SHIFT key at power-on for 30 seconds. In Safe Boot I'd download https://malwarebytes.com and do a scan. A lot of times it's adware and such in the background that is causing your system to be running unwanted things.


After you do a scan and remove anything it finds I would go to > System Preferences and open the Users & Groups icon. Click on your user account and go to the Login Items tab. This will show you the legit programs (as opposed to adware, etc.) that is loading automatically at startup. Your Mac itself doesn't need anything here. Unless you recognize anything you want to specifically keep from starting automatically every time you can click it, and click the minus ("-") button below to remove it. This won't remove the app, you can still run the app if you want, it will just keep it from starting automatically every time whether you want it to or not.


Once you've done these simple steps to clean up your system you can restart normally and see how your system behaves. If it's still behaving badly you can post that here for more information as to additionally steps to figure out what is going on.


Specifically, the next step is to launch the Activity Monitor app and to see what is taking up the most CPU usage when everything is closed. The bottom graph on the CPU tab shows your IDLE and you should be well over 90%+ idle with everything closed on a fresh boot.

Jun 26, 2019 1:27 PM in response to shylondon

First you can Command + Q all the apps that are open (you may have closed the window, but unless you quit them, they run in the background. In general, any .plist can be deleted as the app will re-generate one as soon as you launch it again. Make sure you only do this in your User account > Library > Preferences. However, those generally do not cause a problem. Open apps do as well as any apps that are set to automatically sync, upload files to icloud, or automatically update in the background. Also, Chrome is a known resource hog.


Also, download and run Etrecheck and post the entire report here using the third icon from the right in the little tool bar. That'll give us an idea of your sytem.

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Can I delete these plist files?

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