Check the battery usage list, pick the top two non‑essential apps and turn off both ‘allow background activity’ and ‘auto-start’ for them. This tiny tweak hits the real power hogs instead of dimming your screen or turning your phone into a brick.

Turn off background refresh for every app you do not use daily, then restart the phone and give it 10 minutes on Wi‑Fi and charging. This single change often frees up hidden system strain so your phone feels faster without touching your photos at all.

Set a fixed “Active hours” window that actually matches your real schedule, then create a simple reminder to restart once a week on your own terms before you walk away from the PC. This turns surprise restarts into a quick weekly routine and dramatically cuts the risk of losing work.

Skip the paid cleaners and do one focused 20 minute session: open your Downloads folder and sort by size, delete anything you know you do not need, then empty the Trash, and finally review only the ‘Login Items’ list so you turn off any apps you do not recognize or use daily. Set a calendar reminder to repeat this once a month instead of waiting until the Mac feels unusable.

Before you paste anything, pause and ask yourself one simple rule: ‘Would I be okay if this text ended up in a company training presentation with my name removed?’ If the answer is no, strip out names, dates, addresses and any numbers that look like logins or IDs, then replace them with short labels like [CLIENT], [PROJECT] or [AMOUNT] before sending the prompt.

Instead of turning everything off at once, pick your top three most used apps and your three least trusted apps. For the trusted ones, keep the microphone allowed but switch to ‘Only while using the app’; for the less trusted ones, set the microphone to ‘Ask every time’ for a week so you learn exactly when they try to listen, then uninstall or replace anything that nags you too often.