How to run the Blackmagic Disk Speed test on your Mac

Sometimes it’s not obvious, especially on a new computer, how well your storage is performing. Different models of the same product can even have vastly different storage speeds, as we’ve seen on the most recent MacBook Air models. If you’re running a Mac computer, and you’re curious how well the SSD is performing, there’s a very easy benchmark you can run called the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. Here’s how to run it.

How to run the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

• Open the App Store.
• Search for Blackmagic and click the download button next to the Disk Speed Test result.
• Once the program is downloaded, open it and click Speed Test Start.

The test will run continuously, and you’ll be able to see your read and write speeds. Read speeds measure how quickly your device can access files on its system; write speeds measure how quickly you can save items to the device.

You can change the size of the file that the application will use to test reading and writing in the Stress menu up top.

Your best bet to see if your Mac is getting a good score is to poke around reviews, which generally are testing devices right out of the box. If you’re testing an M2 device, you can check out what we got on our review units of the recent Air and Pro.