imac spinning ball
I keep getting a colored spinning ball on my iMac no matter what app I'm in. It delays me and I can't continue when I have it.
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.6
First, just so you know you've got the slowest Mac Apple offered at the time of purchase: 8 GB RAM and a 5400 rpm hard drive. It doesn't take much to slow it further and you've done that with installing CleanMyMac which is considered by most around here to be akin to malware.
There is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac. This user tip describes what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.
There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs. There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.
Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear. They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware. Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.
There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it. The free version is more than adequate for most users.
So uninstall CleanMyMac according to the developer's instructions.
The report finds your drive speeds rather slow:
Write speed: 43 MB/s
Read speed: 43 MB/s
You can't upgrade the memory but there is something you can do about the drive's speed. You could get an external SSD, clone your boot drive to it, and boot and run from it. Typical read and write speeds from such a drive are around 10x faster, both in read and write, than what you're experiencing now.
If you decide to go that route I recommend contacting OWC (MacSales.com) Customer Support and have them recommend which of the many options they offer would be best for your particular iMac and your budget.
