Turn on performance mode for macOS Server

Performance mode changes the system parameters of your Mac. These changes take better advantage of your hardware for demanding server applications.

If you need to run high-performance services on a Mac with macOS Server, you can turn on performance mode to dedicate additional system resources for server applications.

OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later

To turn on performance mode in OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later, use the nvram command to adjust the boot-args NVRAM variable. If you reset NVRAM, this setting is cleared.

This command displays the boot-args NVRAM variable. If you see serverperfmode=1, performance mode is already turned on.

nvram boot-args

If performance mode isn't already turned on, you can enable it by setting serverperfmode=1 in the boot-args NVRAM variable with this command:

sudo nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f 2-)"

To turn off performance mode, use this command:

sudo nvram boot-args="$(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | sed -e $'s/boot-args\t//;s/serverperfmode=1//')"

Earlier versions of macOS

To turn on performance mode in OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Mavericks, or OS X Yosemite, use the serverinfo command in Terminal.

To get the current mode, use the command:

serverinfo --perfmode

To turn on performance mode:

serverinfo --setperfmode 1

To turn off performance mode:

serverinfo --setperfmode 0

Learn more

If you're a developer, and want to learn more about how performance mode can optimize your system for server-specific applications, see the sysctl(3) manual page.