How to resolve slow performance, update issues on Mac and iPad Pro?

Having installed and used the garbage "CleanMyMac" product, completely erase that Mac and reconfigure it from the ground up. Yes it is that bad.

Non-Apple "cleaning" products are scams that wreck perfectly good Macs.

Rule 1 of Macs is don't install junk.

John Galt wrote:

Having installed and used the garbage "CleanMyMac" product, completely erase that Mac and reconfigure it from the ground up. Yes it is that bad.

Non-Apple "cleaning" products are scams that wreck perfectly good Macs.

Rule 1 of Macs is don't install junk.

+1 on EtreCheck. It will also tell us exactly which "Mac" you have, information we do not have at the moment.

Model detalls here get you faster and more effective help. Believe me, you don't want us to start guessing about what model you have! Remember, iMacs have been in continuous production since 1998 in hundreds of variants having different known issues and troubleshooting steps.

I also suggest posting the issue with the iPad separately in this forum section:

iPad - Apple Community

The real iPad gurus hang out there.

Another problem is that your iMac's Fusion Drive is running low on Free Space.

To free up drive space, see > Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Best bet to free up a big chunk, is move your Photos, Music or Movie Library to an external hard drive.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support

You do not necessarily need to move all three Libraries.

Normally the larger Music or Movie Libraries is more than enough.

EACHMK wrote:

My Mac has been slow for a while now. I decided to start exploring to fix this.

I am at a loss what I can do to get my Mac working. Any suggestions?

EtreCheckPro is an excellent tool for revealing slowness and other problems.

Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

To be on the safe id you should make sure you have removed all of the CleanMyMac's supporting files. To do that 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 CMM software you'd do the following search(es): 

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Names contains macaw

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.

Also as den.thed has already mentioned your free space on your boot drive is dangerously low. I don't think you would be able to update to the latest version of Sequoia, 15.4.1, as the update file requires a minimum of 50 GB of space. With only 52 GB of free space it would not install.

It's generally recommended to try to maintain a minimum of 80-100 GB of free space to optimize system and application performance. Get an external drive, formatted APFS if SSD or Mac OS Extended (journaled) if it's an HDD and move files to it to free up 100 GB of space. Users often move their Photos and Music libraries to an external drive and run them from there (for optima use an SSD would be best for this).

To really speed up your iMac you could get an external SSD, clone your boot drive to it using Carbon Copy Cloner and boot and run from the external SSD. That would at least double to triple your operational speed.

If you go that route I recommend you contact Customer Support at OWC (MacSales.com) to see which of their several offerings would be best for your iMac model, work requirements and budget. OWC is considered to be the premier 3rd party hardware provider for Macs.

If your computer only has 8 GB of RAM, you're going to have problems. You'll need to limit the number of applications you have open at one time. I recommend keeping an eye on memory pressure in Activity Monitor. Once it starts to move into yellow, start closing out applications you're not using. You'll probably benefit from restarting more often than you'd need to if you had more RAM.

And stop worrying about caches. Those are working files the computer needs. If you start removing them, you're going to exacerbate your issues.

Any device may be slow if it has a lot of data.

If your iPhone or iPad won't update - Apple Support

article on freeing up storage Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Deleting it does not undo its damage. Erase the Mac.