Beachballing and Imac running slow

You've installed what most of the experienced contributors to these forums consider akin to malware: CleanMyMac. 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   

Uninstall it according to the developer's instructions. When done You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name and the developer's name in the file name.  For CMM software you'd do the following search(es): 

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Name contains macpaw

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.

You have several things working against you.

1. You purchase the base model with a really slow 5400 rpm Hard Drive and only 8GB of RAM.
2. You have install CleanMyMac X on you iMac, which does nothing but slow down your iMac.
3. You upgraded macOS and there are background processes working on your Photos Library.

1) To improve the overall performance, your best bet is to get and run from an external SSD.

see > https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/55907-using-an-external-drive-as-your-startup-drive-part-1/

and > https://www.harddrivefailurerecovery.net/an-external-ssd-can-help-speed-up-your-old-imac/

2) You do not need AV-ware or Clean-ware on a Mac and CMM is considered junk-ware by 99.9% of the

experienced users around these parts. Best bet here, is to uninstall CCM as per the developers instructions,

then startup in Safe Mode followed by a normal restart.

3) If you have a large Photos Library, then it could take a day or so before the background "photoanalysisd

and photolibraryd" processes complete. Best bet here, is to just leave the iMac on for a couple of days, until

those complete and the activity subsides.

Robertg522 wrote:

Thank you very much for your response. I am going to get an external SSD to run from.

What is CCM or CMM?

CMM is the CleanMyMac junk-ware, that you need to uninstall from your iMac.

I don't understand your third suggestion about the photo library. Please explain.

Those are back ground processes that Photos does after a macOS upgrade, that can make your iMac feel slower for a day or so.

Any 'ultra fast' flash drive promising 100+ MB/s or faster write speeds will work well, but for best results stick with true SSDs. Avoid SSDs with extras like finger print scanners or hardware encryption... if you want encryption let MacOS handle that.

Personally I've had good results with Crucial SSDs, but others have advocated for SanDisk drives or OWC enclosures. All things being equal skip Samsung... there has recently been a string of Samsung SSD performance issues posted. I'd also suggest a clean install followed by Migration Assistant for data transfer instead of cloning the HDD to an SSD.

These are excellent candidates for external SSDs: Envoy Pro EX with USB 3 or USB C

If your machine has Thunderbolt 3 ports this one would be even faster: OWC Envoy Pro EX

Both have capacities up to 4 GB. I have 6 of the OWC SSDs in various enclosures and drive docks.

CMM=CleanMyMac