M1 Ultra Mac Studio Severely Sluggish

1 - Suggest restarting in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.

2 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.

3 - Does the issue present in this mode ?

4 - If not - there could be something in the main User Account playing up. To further isolate this - Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of the Main User account and log into the dummy account and test again if the issue persists.

5 - If the issue is present in the dummy account - then, this appears to be a System Wide issue on the computer.

6 - The Etrecheck Application, if run, will help identify in more details where the possible issue is .

Please run Etrecheck post its report as the previous posters recommended.

Problems like these are nearly always due to software conflicts; that is especially likely if you migrated everything from a previous mac.

Download and install this app

https://etrecheck.com/upgrade

When the Mac is sluggish run the app so we can find more information about your installation.

It shows what is launched and other information and is very useful in finding causes of problems. After you first launch the app make sure you check Enable full disk access in the box in lower left.

After running the app use the app's Share feature “Copy” that pastes to clipboard. Then paste it in the text box for a reply in this forum click on the addition text icon. This is because the normal reply text box limits how much you can type.

o personal identifiable information is contained if the app output. The app was written for a person who is contributor to these Apple Support Communities