Lack of Speed

[NemoCarlson]

In the last 6 months or so I have noticed a significant slowing of all aspects of my mac, printing, downloading, rebooting, everything I do takes forever.
Is there anyway I can check if there is malware or if I have files that need to be deleted to free up space, or if it could be a battery? I have a terrabit of hard drive space and I have extra storage for photos and books etc in the cloud. Is this something I need to take in to an Apple store to check it out or are there some things I can try first?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

A few troubleshooting questions for you to see what we're dealing with:
-Which model Mac?
-Which version of OS X/macOS?
-Does it ever hard freeze requiring a restart?
-Do you have a current Time Machine or other backup of your data?

We'll go from there,

C