Turn on performance mode for macOS Server

This article applies only to Mac computers with an Intel processor.

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.

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//')"

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

Transitioning to or from performance mode requires a restart.

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.