I installed Catalina 2 days ago and now my 2019 iMac is very slow, click to open an app, wait 4 or 5 seconds and nothing happens, then the spinning rainbow wheel of death appears for a few more seconds, then the app opens. This evens happens when opening System Preferences or Activity Monitor. I have restarted multiple times and the iMac has been left shut down for a few hours before restarting.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
Even after installing the Supplemental Update my iMac (5K, 27", 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 64GB DDR4, 3TB Fusion) is still incredibly slower than when I was on Mojave. I mean I used to open like 50 folders in the blink of an eye & now you can literally watch each one open because they take about 1sec each now. It's painfully slow. I even installed fresh with no 3rd party apps at all & it was still painfully slow. There are complaints all over the Internet about the speed. So far, everything I have tried has been futile. There is nothing in the Activity Monitor that's using abnormal CPU usage either making this issue even more odd. I hope they address & fix this soon.
This issue is happening with all Antivirus software packages. I had to uninstall WebRoot and was going to install another application until I read the majority have the same issues. Your antivirus will run forever without actually doing anything. This is being reported by WebRoot, Trend Micro, and many others. It all started with Catalina being updated. Total waste!!!!!!!!
Your computer will continue to run slow while having your antivirus active. I know this *****, but you are not alone right now with having that as your only option. You have no other choice but to shut it down. Mine would not allow me to do that and for some odd reason was saying I didn't have administrator rights to do it. I own the computer and I haven't changed any settings. You will have to go into safe mode by pressing the shift key after typing in your password to get it there. Then just drag your application to the waste bin to delete. Again, I know this *****, but I couldn't get mine to stop its endless loop and allow me to utilize my computer. I'm not officially without until Apple works with other software providers. Apple......you are an Ahat! for doing this to your consumers.
Yah, the old "SSD or more ram will fix it" advice. But it won't fix it. Even if it were to speed things up a bit, which I doubt, that still doesn't get at the core issue: There is something fundamentally flawed about the design of this OS version. The problem might be peculiar to certain CPUs or certain IO chips; if so, then the problem would affect older hardware very disproportionately. (Seems like Mac Mini with i5 CPU is suffering more than laptop with i7 CPU.) I don't know. What I do know is that there was a marked decline in responsiveness when Catalina was installed on my machine. And I'm not the only person reporting this. The spinning beachball is blocking progress way too often, for way too long. And this is happening while "Activity Monitor" shows load on disk is low, load on network is low, not much different about memory usage (versus pre Catalina). There do seem to be more incidences of processes hogging CPU, but this is not a necessary precondition for the spinning beach ball. In other words, whatever is causing the beach ball problem, it is not evident in the metrics of Activity Monitor.
Funny thing is..
When I purchased new iMac 2 weeks ago, Catalina was already installed as factory condition and my computer was working extremely fast, even with multiple programs open.
Then, after 2-3 days, I get an update notification to Catalina from Apple. I thought "why"?? update again to Catalina when my computer is already updated to Catalina. I thought this was little odd. I thought Apple might have added new features to this another Catalina update, so I updated it. Then, MY ALL OF MY DEVICES (MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iMac, Older iPad, Including Samsung Galaxy Tab) SLOWED DOWN EXTREMELY. I was like "Whoa!! what is going on!!!" I have been using MacBook Pro for a year and I open multiple programs at once and it never ever slowed down!!! I am definitely sure Apple sends a bug along with this update so that memory card or battery slows down greatly. This was their strategy with iPhones in previous years and Apple got sued and had to pay fines. For iMac, I am only using internet and no other programs open and it slowed down right after installing this new update !!! This is definitely a bug !!!
Thanks for your help. I don't know much about this sort of stuff but it doesn't look to me like I'm using much memory?
this is insanely slow..now stalled
iMac with Catalina
then after another 30 minutes..it even gets slower
plenty of disk space, memory and disk check ok...very strange, all since Catalina update
If Music is running in this mix see relevant post here. That will be likely cause.
Agree. You don't have a swap file active and memory pressure is in the green. Other place to check is disk tab for similar issues. You now need wiser minds than mine for this one!
Thanks for your help, it confirms that as far as I can see there is nothing going on o cause this go slow.
Partially resolved! After the last update the boot speed has come back to normal (28s for complete boot). The ssd remains slow, 2000 Mb/s of reading speed (instead of 2500 Mb/s with mojave).
I wish that was a viable fix for me, but alas, I'm not running any antivirus software. Thanks for the tip though regardless!
Same for me, only it started before Catalina. For me, it's an iCloud problem. When completely signed out, the iMac screams; when signed in, I scream. Apple engineers are working on it.
I'm so glad that this seems to be the issue, but alas, I use iCloud for all my business & personal information, so there's absolutely no way I can shut it off. I hope Apple fixes this soon.
TimGsy, glad it worked! Good luck and happy holidays!
iMac slow after Catalina instal.
