2023 24-inch iMac running slow
My iMac is running slow, and I see the spinning beachball quite often. Tahoe 26.1, 24-in, 2023. What should I do?
iMac 24″, macOS 26.1
Question marked as
Thank you for the new report, that was suggested by my good colleague @ den.thed 👍
Below some are the findings
Your iMac hardware is fine. The real issues are:
1 - Carbonite is overwhelming your Mac
CarboniteDaemon is using 117% CPU
CarboniteStatus is using ~10% CPU
Both together are using almost ¾ of your available RAM.
2 - Your Mac only has 8 GB RAM, and Carbonite is using most of it.
This alone will cause constant beachballing, freezing, and slow apps.
Your Mac is out of RAM and using almost 7 GB of swap
Swap Used: 6.90 GB
This indicates RAM exhaustion, which forces macOS to use the SSD as temporary memory — causing slowness and spinning beachballs.
When your Mac runs out of available RAM, it moves some inactive data from RAM to the swap file on disk.
This frees up RAM for active apps and helps prevent slowdowns or crashes
3 - Your internal drive is low on space
You’re at 41 GB free, but macOS with 8 GB RAM performs much better with 70–100 GB free.
4 - Many background processes (Adobe, Carbonite, HP, Malwarebytes, Coupons utility, etc.)
Your Mac has hundreds of background agents.
Most are harmless, but combined they strain an 8 GB system.
What to do:
If you prefer to use Time Machine only (which you already have working), uninstalling Carbonite will immediately free resources.
5 - Reduce background apps / login items
These add up and drain RAM.
Recommended to disable from System Settings → Login Items:
Adobe Creative Cloud
Canon Extended Survey
HP Product Research
Coupons launcher
Menu World Time (if unused)
Skype ShareAgent (or remove it completely) Microsoft and discontinued Skype
6 - Free more disk space
You currently have:
41 GB free
macOS reports 77 GB “Available” (this includes purgeable space)
Purgeable Space is controlled by the Operating System and not the user
Get detailed information about a disk in Disk Utility on Mac
To stop beachballing you want at least 70 GB actually free, not purgeable.
33 replies
All yours my friend
Will be away for the foreseeable future unless things should change
I will do that. I really appreciate your help and extreme patience.
2023 24-inch iMac running slow