My Mac is slow

Hey there!

First, I see that EtreCheck took 216 minutes! Normally, EtreCheck takes around 3-6 minutes. Its possible a hardware component in your Mac is failing, your macOS installation is damaged, or there's a third-party app causing issues. It may also be a combination of all three.

Before proceeding with troubleshooting, I want to ask what is the current startup disk? I see your Mac has an internal Apple 5400-rpm 1TB disk and an external SanDisk SSD that also has a copy of macOS on it. When you ran the report, what were you booted from? If the external SSD SanDisk is your CCC backup, try booting into it, and see how system performance is from that.

-Jack

You have a base model 21.5" iMac that has the glacially slow 5400 RPM HD which is a major bottleneck and then you made it worse by adding third party apps that put a stranglehold on Mac OS and are also 100% unnecessary. Your report shows "- This computer has multiple antivirus apps installed." Mac OS does not require nor does it benefit any anyway by adding any of the following third party types of apps:

• Antivirus
• Cleaning
• VPN
• Maintenance
• Security

Adding these has the exact opposite effect that users want, in that it makes Mac OS appear unstable, slow and does nothing that Mac OS cannot already do. Please uninstall CleanMyMac, ClamXAV per the developers uninstall instructions. In order to keep Mac OS secure simply keep it up-to-date and restart the Mac about 1x per week. Other than that please leave it alone and enjoy the computer.

Then what you need to do is to get an external SSD and convert over to that. However, this will cost about $250 +, money that you could consider towards buying a new Mac, all of which come with internal SSDs and are dramatically quicker than what you own. Just a thought, and don't feel like you have to get another iMac you can of course but you can also choose between a Mac Mini, Mac Studio, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro etc.... all would be a huge upgrade over your existing machine.

If you decide to get an external SSD I'd recommend the following:

• Instructions are in Setup external SSD as startup drive
• The following external SSD: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-sx

Thanks for the information on that external SSD! A recommended external SSD, sold from the Apple Store, is the LaCie Mobile SSD Secure USB-C Drive - Gray - Apple. You may want to try it out on your Mac if the SanDisk is unreliable or unable to boot your Mac.

-Jack

To start with your iMac is the slowest Mac Apple offered at the time of purchase: 8 GB RAM and a 5400 rpm drive.

First, 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 documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.  

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.  

My recommendation is to uninstall CleanMyMac and ClamX according to the developer's instructions. You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name.  For the two apps mentioned software you'd do the following search(es): 

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Name contains macpaw

3 - Name contains clamx

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.  

If you get warnings that the file can't be deleted because it is in use or used by another app boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and delete from there.

Note:  if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode.  This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will assure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

Known issue with the standard 1TB HDD option that shipped in 21.5”/4K iMacs. You will need to reinstall MacOS onto an SSD to effectively run Catalina or newer.

Installing CleanMyMac or 3rd party antivirus just makes a Mac running off an 1TB HDD even slower. Uninstall using the manufacturers uninstall instructions.

it looks like you already have a Sandisk Extreme 1TB SSD. You could make that your new boot drive if it isn’t already being used for something important.

see Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community