Constant slow-downs, freezes, spinning beachballs — help!
My 2015 iMac 27" has started behaving erratically within the last week, across multiple applications. I'll get the spinning beachball, for instance, in Messages while typing a message. Sometimes it resolves after a bit, sometimes it does not. Sometimes, Chrome takes forever to load a page. Sometimes that ends up with a spinning beachball, sometimes the page eventually loads. Mail messages will sometimes not pull up.
Once the erratic behavior starts, it usually results in the need for a forced reboot when I try to force-quit one of the misbehaving apps, which results in the dock freezing.
I've done a virus scan and run First Aid (no problems found). I deleted a screensaver app (Aerial) I thought might be causing a conflict. I turned off automatic backups on Time Machine because I noticed they were huge (6 gigs at only 41 percent complete).
I'm at the stage where I'm planning to wipe the machine, restore the software and restoring from a backup.
Any other steps I should take before doing that?
iMac 27″, macOS 12.5
