Severe lag and freezing after macOS Tahoe update on MacBook Pro M1

hdulc wrote:

Having the same problem. I ran EtrePro - here's what it reports - the major issues were No system uptime found and No operating system found. Huh?!?!?!

Any ideas?

<EtrePro Report.log>

@John Galt forgot to specifically mention to uninstall BitDefender as well, although it is implied from the rest of their post with the reference to Anti-Virus software. These types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve because they interfere with the normal operations of macOS.

I only recall seeing one reference to CMM/macpaw which either means you already tried to uninstall that software, but it left some bits behind, or you are using one of their other more limited apps. It is fairly common to see CMM not completely uninstall itself.

Once I see these types of apps, I end up only skimming the EtreCheck reports since it is impossible to assist until those apps are completely uninstalled.

If you continue to have issues, then please start your own new thread as suggested by @John Galt & include a new EtreCheck report after uninstalling CMM & BitDefender so your issue can get the attention it deserves.

And thanks for supplying the EtreCheck report. Always a good step when trying to troubleshoot a problem.

Please Apple, update Tahoe ASAP!

You have done the tech equivalent of walking into the doctor's office and asking patients in the waiting room to fix you. We are all other end users, and Apple cannot see bug reports here among the estimated tens of thousands of new posts every day.

If you are serious about Apple hearing you, you must use this for mac OS issues:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Thank You Big Time, Tony. I had the same problems after Tahoe and deleting Metadata/CoreSpotlight seems to have cured things. CoreSpotlight was always at the top of the activity list hogging all the resources.

Thanks again for the post.

Did you try the proposed solution of deleting the contents of

~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/

It seemed to have worked for several users.

You'll need to take a full backup of your system ideally on two different devices/targets just to be safe, then wipe it and reinstall the system from scratch. Apple never provides the option to downgrade because they assume they're always right and you'll never need to and they don't want to do the work to provide that feature. Luckily all M4 and earlier hardware will always be compatible with Sequoia or earlier OS's. But any new M5 hardware shipping over the next few months will only work with the garbage v26 OS's and they'll ship with that by default.

Forkingaround wrote:

I will admit I accidentally jumped on the bandwagon and did the Tahoe upgrade, when it first came out. ..... When I asked about reloading Sequia I was told they no longer have it. I was finally able to figure out how to create startup with Sequoia and started from scratch.

Yesterday I decided to take a chance and try again with Tahoe. Things are better-ish, but still going back to Sequia for now. Still having to many glitches, restarts, over heating you name it. At least this time I am prepared for the hassle of wiping and starting from scratch.

FYI, instead of jumping full into the upgrade, people should instead install the new OS to an external SSD & test things out. Follow the instructions in the following Apple article....there is a very critical detail to avoid using the Mac's DFU Port during the install process on an M-series Mac:

How to use an external storage device as a Mac startup disk - Apple Support

It is also possible to create a new APFS volume on the internal SSD & install the new OS there, but this requires at least 100GB+ of Free storage space just for the barebones macOS installation. Most people probably don't have enough Free space to install all their apps, much less migrate their data. Once the test is over, delete the new APFS volume & upgrade your original older macOS installation. FYI, ignore the "Available" storage value shown every where in macOS since "Available" is not synonymous with Free. The Free storage value is only shown in Disk Utility.

Also, for most people there is no reason to immediately jump into a new major OS upgrade. There are always problems at the launch of a new OS since companies just cannot wait until the bugs are ironed out since the Internet is available to push out fixes at any time....so what if things break for people. I won't upgrade until at least the x.1 or x.2 release at the earliest, and only after seeing if there are any wide spread issues & confirming all my third party apps & my workflows are all compatible with the new OS. Tahoe certainly has a lot of graphical/visual bugs for an OS which is so focused on its new visual look & style. That really says a lot about Apple releasing Tahoe like this.

And before anyone says anything about the cloud. I DO NOT USE THE CLOUD!!!!! It would be nice if Apple kept it easy to not use it without jumping through hoops to make sure it is all turned off. But that is a different rant for a different day.

FYI, I only use Contacts & Messages on my Mac so I do not log into my AppleID as such during setup or within the System Settings to avoid having everything activated & syncing automatically. I launch the Messages app & authenticate with my AppleID which only activates Messages. I agree everything should not be automatically enabled since there are potential privacy & security risks involved, but Apple these days is only about simple personal non-business use of their products.

I have the exact same issue with my Macbook Pro intel i7 model! After taking your advice and switching back to MacOS Sonoma 14 (even older version but still supported), the device feels so much better! Back when I was using Tahoe on this device it was practically unusable. Fully support your claim that it's now 1000% faster on older OS.

Same for me with M2. Initially it was BackgroundShortcutRunner hogging 95% of a CPU, and now after a reboot is Shortcuts - looks like shortcuts have issues ... and I never user them!

From which version did you upgrade?

FWIW I have not experienced this sort of slowdown.

Try playing back in QuickTime Player when booted in Safe Mode. Same problem?

I will admit I accidentally jumped on the bandwagon and did the Tahoe upgrade, when it first came out. Not only did it start over heating my Mac Pro, it would also randomly restart, lag, not open apps, not save and corrupted my external used for time machine, to name a few issues. Went to Genius they reinstalled Tahoe and thought all fixed. It wasn't. When I asked about reloading Sequia I was told they no longer have it. I was finally able to figure out how to create startup with Sequoia and started from scratch. Fortunately I was able to access a back up from a few days before corruption. Things are much better. My issue now is that my phone, iPad, and laptop are not talking to each other very nicely until all updates are complete.

Yesterday I decided to take a chance and try again with Tahoe. Things are better-ish, but still going back to Sequia for now. Still having to many glitches, restarts, over heating you name it. At least this time I am prepared for the hassle of wiping and starting from scratch. I did see that mid December there is possibly another update/ patch crossing my fingers and sending positive thoughts to the universe.

And before anyone says anything about the cloud. I DO NOT USE THE CLOUD!!!!! It would be nice if Apple kept it easy to not use it without jumping through hoops to make sure it is all turned off. But that is a different rant for a different day.

I too have the lag but only after updating to 26.1 last night. The finder is unusable. When saving a file, it takes a good 60 seconds for the desktop to respond to the app requesting it.

I just deleted the coreservices index and I am about to restart

I wanted to not that it took 2 min TO delete the folder.

Here we go... restarting

The worst MacOS release in 2 decades ( 2 x 10 = 20 years).

Laggy, ugly, slow, and glitchy. No you don't need to waste your time reinstalling the OS and restarting apps. None of that will help. There are deep performance and UI issues here and breakage of things Apple really didn't need to break. Nobody asked for this, the "new" Apple design team did this to you.

Same problem here. Looking at the interface and performance of some apps reminds me good old Windows Vista time :)

Solution from the top ranked reply didn't help me. However, following guide seem to work so far: https://macreports.com/macos-tahoe-26-overheating-on-macbook-m1-m4-intel/

Sorry to see you are having such a bad experience, but despite what this thread may lead you to believe this is not what a typical user is experiencing. Do the several troubleshooting steps that have been recommended and report back. I bet that in Safe Modeyou will not see these slowdowns and crashes.

Safe Mode is meant as a TEST. In many cases, but not always, problems that users are experiencing do not occur in Safe Mode. The point was never to suggest running in Safe Mode all the time. It was to suggest that IF problems disappeared in Safe Mode, that would indicate some third party modifications were likely the cause.