Spinning ball issue on MacBook M2

fonsr wrote:

Hope you were able to access the report from EtreCheck you suggested I obtain. I sent it in "Additional Text."

Yes, I was able to access the report.

I see two main issues.

1) You are running critically low on Free storage space. 20GB of Free storage space is the absolute minimum needed by macOS just for very basic usage since that 20GB can disappear very quickly. If you completely run out of Free storage space, then bad things can happen and you won't be able to delete anything to make more room. The general rule of thumb is to keep at least 20% of Free storage space which for a 500GB drive is 100GB. The amount of Free space greatly depends on your workloads so that the Free space never goes below 20GB.

FYI, the "Available" storage space value shown everywhere within macOS is very misleading. The most important storage value is the Free space value which is only shown in Disk Utility. With macOS "Available" is not synonymous with Free.

2) The other potential issue is you are running low on memory since the Etrecheck report is showing your system has used about 2.5GB of Swap after only an hour of using the computer. This may still be Ok since the report does mention there is about 1.4GB of memory Available, but it does show that 8GB of system memory may not be enough for how you use this computer.

3) The report also shows you have written 620TB to this SSD which is a lot of data and has caused your SSD to lose about 20% of its life. Keep in mind most 500GB SSD warranties are good for about 600TB. Your SSD is fine and can likely withstand writing a lot more of data since most SSDs seem to be able to reach PBs of writes (1 PB is about 1,000 TB). This is more an FYI and not part of the problem.

The spinning beachball - impact: cursur will freeze for a few seconds;

when the ball shows (often), have to wait for it to finish. Tried sev

eral procedures. Ran Disk Aid on everything that showed up. Did fine e

xcept on “Data.” Said it could not complete that one due some problems

with data and I needed to back up my data.

This is probably the main problem with the performance issues. A corrupt file system can severely impact system performance and even cause system crashes.

Boot into Recovery Mode and run First Aid. Run First Aid several times if the errors remain. After several First Aid scans, if the errors & warnings remain, then you will need to erase the disk & restore from a backup so that the "Data" volume's file system is recreated. Even if the First Aid summary says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" & scroll through the report (the First Aid summary results are known to be inaccurate).

FYI, you should run First Aid on the hidden APFS Container as well. Within Disk Utility you may need to click on "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.

(Then what…? I have everything backing up to a time machine backup separate hard disk). I tried 

removing the hard drive from Spotilight Privach and then returning it.

Still had the problem - maybe because it takes a day or two to refres

h its search (?).

Unless Spotlight is the source of the issue, this will just exasperate the problem since Spotlight will be accessing the drive & using considerable system resources to reindex it. With a corrupt file system which already is likely causing your problems.....the performance issue has now likely gotten worse.

Tried to open in “Safe Mode,” but never could get that to work.

If you couldn't boot into Safe Mode, then you should be aware that M-series Macs no longer utilize any of the special startup keys associated with Intel Macs for decades. Here is an Apple article with instructions for accessing Safe Mode:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Continued...

As a last resort, I am thinking about doing a “cleaninstall,” but it sounds like a challenge. Any suggestions you have would be welcome.

With an M-series Mac you may be able to just utilize the "Erase All Contents & Settings" option which keeps macOS intact, but deletes everything else supposedly erasing the "Data" APFS volume which is the critical part for your case here unless the hidden Container also has file system corruption. If the hidden APFS Container also has corruption, then you will need to use a more drastic option of using Disk Utility to erase the disk & deleting the "Volume Group" as mentioned in the Apple article, or if you have access to another Mac running macOS 26.x (or possibly 15.x), then a DFU Firmware Restore is an option as it resets the internal SSD & pushes a clean version of macOS onto the internal SSD.

See the following Apple article for instructions......start at the Erase section:

Use the "Erase All Contents & Settings" option if the file system corruption is only on the "Data" volume, otherwise if the corruption is also on the Container, then use the other section "If you cannot use the Erase All Content & Settings".

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

If the corruption is only within a Time Machine backup APFS snapshot, then that issue will fix itself once the backup APFS snapshot is deleted. Usually TM backup snapshots will be deleted automatically in about 24-48 hours after the backup has been transferred to external media.

Edit: Also, in the future please break up your post into a few paragraphs to make it more readable. Formatting your post is essential for making it easier for contributors to read & understand your posts. If everything is packed into a huge single paragraph it makes if hard to read & many people will ignore it or at best skim it which means they may miss a critical item within it.

Run the third party app EtreCheck and post the complete report here so we can examine it for clues.

How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting an EtreCheck Report - Apple Community