Mac desktop very slow response time. 2017 desktop OS Ventura

Your USB 3-equipped Mac with a hard disk can have improved system performance by connecting to an external solid-state drive (also known as an SSD).

An external SSD as your startup disk can give your Mac additional performance for system responsiveness, apps, startup, and more. An SSD will make your Mac 10 to 40 times faster for storage, and in turn, make your entire Mac faster and more capable.

To learn more, see Use an external SSD as your startup disk with your iMac or Mac mini - Apple Community. 

Another option is to replace this Mac with a new Apple Silicon Mac: Mac - Apple. You can also use Apple Trade-In to get credit towards a new Mac: Apple Trade In - Apple.

Jack

Hi there!

In order to start diagnosing your Mac, we first need to know some information about it. 

To start, using this Apple Support article as a guide, Get system information about your Mac, let us know what year your Mac is, the model, and what version of macOS you are currently using.

Next, please upload a screenshot of your Mac’s storage information. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities, then double-click the Disk Utility icon. (Disk Utility is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.) Alternatively, Click Launchpad in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the search field, then click the Disk Utility icon. Once Disk Utility is open, take a screenshot of the information it automatically opens to. By default, Disk Utility will open to your Mac’s startup disk, which is the volume we need information on. Next, select View > Show All Devices in Disk Utility and select the top-level, non-indented, disk entry. In most cases, this name will be one of the following:

• APPLE HDD…
• APPLE SSD…
• Fusion Drive

Then, take a screenshot of the newly selected entry. Upload all screenshots here. 

Next, it is recommended you Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac in order to identify any potential issues. Let us know the results of this test. 

Finally, list any anti-virus, anti-malware, cleaning, or VPN software you have installed. 

Jack

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

Sorry nothing standing out there other than...

5400 RPM Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 32 MB

Used RAM: 5.44 GB

Cached files: 2.52 GB

Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 - VRAM: 1536 MB

All leading to slowness, especially with new gargantuan OSes.

But something else may be wrong.

Thanks to Jack-19…

It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health. 

I understand your iMac is performing slower than it should. Please determine if the same problems occur in "Safe Mode": How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support.

Use the lettericon pinted to by the red arrow above,in a reply before you click on Post. :)