Catalina 10.15.6 keeps crashing

I'm having the same issue. I thought it was related to Chrome (happens with Safari, MS Edge and Firefox) but the system locks up and my MacBook Pro 2014 screen goes black with a slight backlight and I have to hard reboot by pressing the power button. It all started after I upgraded to 10.15.6.

I have seen others reporting having the same issue.

I've the same issue with macOS 10.15.6 after installing Xcode 11.6 and its simulators.

I suspect Xcode 11.6 is the culprit for the watchdog kernel panic which occurs during shutdown and restart processes.

This problem has rendered my mac mini totally unusable as frequent kernel panics could potentially destroy my hard disk.

I do not have VMware installed, but do have Virtual Box.

Having a VM running on one of my laptops was accelerating the problem, but not causing it. Even laptops that updated to 10.15.6 that have no VM software running (nor installed) also had this issue (keychain seems to crash, asking you to login to everything again), but login won't work till you reboot.

Tried everything on this forum - only thing that worked was restoring 10.15.5.

I have recently purchased a mac mini 2018 and updated to 10.15.6 and the next day mac mini crashed. I am trying to revert back to the 10.15.5 without any success. I have still have a mac mini 2012 which had the same problem, however I had time machine backup so I reverted back to 10.15.5 and don’t have anymore crashed. If anybody know how I can downgrade to the previous version without using time machine please let me know.

Thanks for that clarification.

My only option is to stick with 10.15.5. Until I see positive reports that the problems are fixed. From this forum or Apple itself. It's a shame that Apple has never said anything to this problems.

I once had a hardware defect, mad memory chips, lead to kernel panics, too. And these crashes finally destroyed the hard drive. Not the drive itself, but the content was messed up. Lucky for me, in times when TimeMachine was already invented.

A kernel panic is for sure something you should avoid. Yes, journaling file system, but that helps not always.

That said, I still don't trust 10.15.6 and the supplemental update. For me the system crashed when 10.15.6 was installed. With and without running Fusion. During the night, when in idle. During the day when I was running Fusion.

Pretty worse. So I keep 10.15.5. Because I need the machine.

I upgraded to catalina 10.5.6 last week and my MacBook Air crashed this morning. I restarted it and was prompted to do a macOS Catalina 10.5.6 Supplemental Update, which I am currently in the process of downloading. I will not be happy if my Mac crashes after this update.

yeh installing doesn't make you crash... The crashes start happening when you're finally comfortable and you think you aren't going to crash.

Luckily my crashes were happening due to a faulty external hard drive being pinged by my mac.

Mac doesn't tell you what causes it to crash unless you can read their crash exports - which I never can understand where the problem begins and ends.

This release 10.15.6 is seriously bad. I installed this yesterday afternoon, 7/22, Now my system is crashing every 30 minutes, or so. You should pull this from production!

I had the office package while it was occurring. I actually had both and then I reinstalled the entire OS. But after reinstalling, I only downloaded office again if that helps

If you haven't yet run Etrecheck and post the results as described in my previous post

Update: on October 23 I got a message from Time Machine to make a new copy, replacing the other copies. After doing that I have had no problems. Keep my fingers crossed.

alekseyfromsan francisco wrote:

Nice try. If this software was endorsed by Apple, it would at least be on App Store and not on some poorly designed web site. I am sorry, I cannot complain about this post to ban you from the forum.

Ignorance is bliss I guess. Etrecheck was developed by a well known volunteer right here on these forums. High level volunteers have been recommending it for years as a troubleshooting tool. Another well known utility developed by a member here is also not in the App Store, Malwarebytes. And you want to ban a level 10 volunteer, someone who has been offering solid advice for many years (how do you think he got to level 10?)

I think we’re done here. Good luck in your troubleshooting because I don't think you’re going to get much more help with your attitude. Apple is not here. These forums are manned by volunteers, fellow users trying to help one another.

I got the same issue, experiencing crashes about every 10 minutes after the most recent update. I tried resetting nvram and SMC, and now am trying to apply the combo update, but the system crashes every time in the middle of it and now I can't even get into my system anymore (update loop).

Careful about this one! While writing this the system crashes another 2 times. I'm guessing so far no word from Apple?