How to make a Macbook 12 (2015) faster

Tom Gewecke wrote:

Booting from an external ssd might greatly improve performance, depending on what sort of drive it is currently using, but of course make it less portable.

All of the 12" Early 2015 Retina MacBooks had 256 GB or 512 GB of flash storage – i.e., they had SSDs.

The following Apple Community thread shows the results of a BlackMagic Disk Speed test where the SSD speed clocked in at 768.5 MB/s for reads and 422.8 MB/s for writes. 768.5 Mb/s = 6148 Mb/s, which is faster than USB 3.0 (5000 Mb/s before overhead) but not quite as fast as USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10000 Mb/s before overhead).

New 12" Retina MacBook SSD speeds too slo… - Apple Community

There could be a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility that battery with only 10o charge cycles over nearly a decade may not be original or authentic.

Consider posting an EtreCheck report for others here to examine and possibly make suggestions. Instructions: How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report - Apple Community

Hi,

There is no way to update your MacBook, RAM and storage are soldered on logic board and there is no expand ports except one USB-C port which supports for:

• • Charging
  • USB 3.1 Gen. 1 (up to 5 Gbps)
  • Native DisplayPort 1.2 video output
  • VGA output using USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter (sold separately)
  • HDMI video output using USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter (sold separately)

Good points are its weight and size, very light and very compact.

The Core-M processor had a reputation at the time as being a very weak processor – the tradeoff being that it did not use a lot of electrical power, and thus allowed for building a lightweight notebook with a fairly long battery life. Single-core CPU performance is about on par with that of a 27" Mid 2011 iMac, but the use of an SSD allowed this MacBook to start up faster than Macs that used mechanical hard drives.

I don't think there is much you can do to make the system faster. You can't expand the RAM or the internal SSD. You could add an external SSD, but unless the internal one is so full that lack of free space is causing problems, I suspect that any external one (connected by USB 3.1 Gen 2 or slower) will be slower than the built-in one. (You can't attach a Thunderbolt SSD or dock since USB-C ports on the 12" Retina MacBooks don't have Thunderbolt.)

You may want to get a lightweight, protective sleeve, and put the MacBook in it, when not in use.

That model is the one that introduced the infamous "butterfly-switch" keyboard, and the Force Touch trackpad (which doesn't really "click" - but mimics it, using haptic feedback). Once dirt gets trapped inside a "butterfly" switch, and interferes with the operation of the keyboard, it can be very hard to get that dirt out.

Booting from an external ssd might greatly improve performance, depending on what sort of drive it is currently using, but of course make it less portable.