Increase plotting and drawing speed in Grapher

If Grapher is performing slowly, there are a few suggestions you can follow to attempt to speed it up:

Reboot your computer
Your computer may have enough free available memory to perform the desired operation(s), but if it is fragmented over several blocks, then Grapher can only use the largest block of memory available. If you believe you have enough RAM, reboot the computer to defragment the memory, close down as many running applications as possible, and then try the operation(s) again.

Click File | Options and on the General page, set the Undo Levels to 0
Grapher may be holding memory for the number of Undo levels you have set. If you have the number of Undo levels set to 15, then Grapher has to hold the necessary memory to be able to undo the previous 15 actions. If they are actions that take a lot of memory, then Grapher has to hold onto the same amount of memory it took to perform the actions so it can undo them. Restarting Grapher resets the Undo actions so Grapher can release the memory it was holding. Another option is to set the number of Undo levels to 0 or some other smaller number, so Grapher can release some more memory.

Try the 64-bit version of Grapher on a 64-bit operating system
The 64-bit version allows for more memory to be available for Grapher. 

Turn off Auto Track Worksheets

Having this option turned on means that the data is re-read each time a change is made to the graph. This is useful if your data changes often, but can cause graphs with large data sets to slow the redrawing of the graph. When the Auto Track Worksheets option is not checked, you can update the data by clicking the Graph Tools | Worksheet | Reload command.

To turn off Auto Track Worksheets:

1. Click the File | Options command.
2. On the left side of the Options dialog, click on Plots.
3. On the right side of the dialog, uncheck the Auto track worksheets option.
4. Click OK.

Uncheck Auto Redraw

To improve plotting speed, you can also can uncheck Auto Redraw. This prevents the plot window from updating until you refresh the screen.

To uncheck Auto Redraw:

1. 1. Uncheck the View | Redraw | Auto Redraw command.
   2. To redraw the image, click the View | Redraw | Redraw command or hit F5 on your keyboard.

Updated March 2023