---
id: performance-battery.why-does-storage-studio-work-faster-on-another-mac
url: https://storagestudio.us/faq/performance-battery/why-does-storage-studio-work-faster-on-another-mac
category: "Performance & battery"
subcategory: "Staying light on your Mac"
question: "Why does Storage Studio finish jobs faster on one Mac than another?"
alt_questions:
  - "Storage Studio slower on my older Mac"
  - "Why does profiling take longer on my laptop?"
  - "storage studio speed different macs"
  - "Why is indexing quick on my desktop but slow on my MacBook?"
short_answer: "Storage Studio's background budget follows each Mac's free resources, power and activity, so a plugged-in, idle, well-equipped Mac finishes sooner than a busy laptop on battery. Disk and network speed matter too."
tags: ["speed", "background work", "comparison"]
related: ["https://storagestudio.us/faq/performance-battery/what-is-extreme-performance-mode", "https://storagestudio.us/faq/performance-battery/when-does-automatic-choose-rich"]
applies_to: "all"
last_reviewed: 2026-10-01
---

# Why does Storage Studio finish jobs faster on one Mac than another?

Because its background budget follows how much each Mac has free, not a fixed amount. A desktop that's plugged in, mostly idle and has plenty of cores and memory gives Storage Studio more spare room — and Automatic may pick Rich there — so jobs finish sooner.

A laptop on battery, a Mac you're actively using, or one that's warm gets a deliberately smaller budget, so the same job is spread out over more time. Disk speed, the number of files and network speed for cloud work matter too.

If you'd like a job to finish faster, leave the Mac idle and plugged in, or choose [Extreme](https://storagestudio.us/faq/performance-battery/what-is-extreme-performance-mode) for a while.