Slow and Laggy 2011 Mac Mini

My Mac Mini is quite slow and laggy. I have to experience a lot of spin wheels even for the simplest of tasks such as right-clicking to copy or paste something.

• macOS 10.13.6
• 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
• 5 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
• Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB

I currently have 4 GB and 1 GB memory cards, however even with 2 x 4 GB cards I still experience the same problems.

It cannot handle more than 3 basic apps running at the same time. I usually have Safari, Mail, and the Music apps running all the time but if I decide to open anything else e.g. Photos, it becomes extremely slow forcing me to close one of the apps.

It also struggles with more than 6-7 Safari tabs depending on the webpages.

I often listen to a music playlist on YouTube and maybe after 15-17 songs, I have to close the tab and open a new one. It warns me about using significant energy and if I ignore it the device runs slow.

I am only using two extensions for Safari, Grammarly and AdGuard.

I am only performing the most basics of tasks on this device and it struggles to keep up with it.

I don’t want to buy another Mac, new or used. I am sure there is something that can be done to fix this issue.

I have these apps installed on my Mac which I believe are quite basic apps.

AdGuard for Safari, Android File Transfer, App Store, Automator, BitTorrent, Calculator, Calendar, Chess, Contacts, DaisyDisk, Dashboard, Dictionary, DVD Player, Express VPN, FaceTime, Font Book, GarageBand, Chrome, Grammarly, iBooks, Image Capture, iMovie, iMovie 9.0.8, Install OS X El Capitan, iPhoto, iTunes, Launchpad, Mail, Maps, Messages, Microsoft Silverlight, Mission Control, Notes, Numbers, Pages, Photo Booth, Photos, Preview, QuickTime Player, Reminders, Safari, Siri, Stickies, System Preferences, TextEdit, Time Machine, VLC,

Thank you for reading.

Cheers!