MacBook Pro keeps freezing after Big Sur Update

Yes

I have this problem too

MacBook Pro 2015 i7 core and 16g RAM.

Priot to update no problem. Since upgrade to Big Sur and started getting the spinning rainbow and MacBook freezing on a regular basis. Went to Apple support who suggest reinstalling. I did a basic reinstall and the same problem. So I did a full reinstall with a full wipe of the hard drive and did not restore from time machine as my storage is all cloud, now a few days later the problem is starting again.

I have the same issue. Late 2013 Macbook Pro OS 11.1 installed a week ago and now freezes after an hour or so of use. Normally I am using Pages or Chrome at the time of the freeze. Only a force restart will get back my usability. This never occurred prior to the Big Sur update. I have removed Memory Clean RAM manager. I have no Microsoft products. The only balls I have in use may be FCPX, Whatsapp, Zoom, InstaStudio, Chrome, Quickbooks, Dashlane.

When it freezes the mouse cursor can still move but clicking will not work. Force Quitting Esc+Alt+Cmd does not allow me to go to Force Quit , but won't allow a selected app to force quit. None show as "not responding".

Thank you. Pretty much the same for me. I thought it was chrome. Removed it but same happens. It went to an Apple approved repair centre. They bench tested it and found no hardware errors. I got it home and found the same within 30 minutes. This is very painful and only happened since big sur.

Update: I have completely downgraded my Mac to Catalina. No freezing. This is totally a Big Sur problem. Apple how do I fix this. I have a powerful machine and now I am stuck on Catalina. Any suggestions?

Hello Mvballegoy,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. It sounds like you're having trouble with your Mac freezing after upgrading to macOS Big Sur. We are happy to share information that may help.

First, try starting up in safe mode to see if the issue occurs while in safe mode: How to use safe mode on your Mac.

You may also want to test the issue when logged into another user account to see if your Mac freezes then as well: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac.

If you're still experiencing this, please reply with whether or not you notice this while using a particular app.

Take care.

A temporary fix that Apple support gave me was to reset my SMC. It seems to help. After I re-installed Big Sur, my computer was useless and frozen completely for several hours until I reset my SMC. Here's the link to the how-to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295. Now I'm only having a couple of freezes a day and I do this every time after I have to force shut down. Still looking for a more permanent fix.

My Macbook seems to be getting worse. 3 consecutive crashes. Runaway activity followed by instant black screen and 10 seconds of increasing fan speed then auto power down. When I restarted the mac it didn't want to start and showed the "battery needs charging connect to mains" icon... which I did and once restarted the battery showed 40% charge... so clearly there is some power issue going on at the crash moment. Never experienced this before Big Sur.

I did look in console for the the 3 consecutive crash reports: 35 pages of text for each crash: This bit stood out:

I think I've found an actual solution. I had these EXACT symptoms but I think I've found the answer. Simply reinstall Big Sur without wiping your drive. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive - you just upgraded Big Sur, why install it again? But that's what I ended up doing.

To be precise, I did this, but I doubt you need to do all these steps. I think the key step was the last one: reinstalling Big Sur on top of an existing installation WITHOUT wiping your drive.

Upgraded Catalina to Big Sur. Started experiencing the freezing after anywhere from 10-80 minutes. The freezing was ONLY in Apple apps - Safari, Messages, Calendar, etc. Other apps (Chrome, etc.) still worked fine. All the same symptoms others have reported.

I decided to start over and install Big Sur from a wiped drive, then used Migration Assistant to import my old settings from a backup drive. But even after doing that, it continued to freeze up.

Finally I decided to try rebooting in Recovery Mode (hold Command-R down while booting), then reinstalled Big Sur: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/reinstall-macos-mchlp1599/mac

This does NOT wipe your data or programs - just reinstalls Big Sur.

Everything is still there, all my programs and files and settings - but after working on it for hours, leaving it on overnight, opening it again - no freezing (so far, knock on wood).

Somehow reinstalling Big Sur, even though it shouldn't have "done anything", fixed whatever it is causing these freezes.

It's disappointing that Apple hasn't addressed this problem more seriously and really investigated this. I hope someone at Apple Support sees this post and is able to tell users having the problem to try this.

I have the new Mac Mini M1 Chip. When it arrived it was something wrong and I decided to formatting the disk and the problem begun. After trying several things and reinstalling Big Sur for 10 times, this solution helped me at the first try. Hope helps you.

1. shut down your computer
2. hold the power button until the "options" icon shows
3. select the "options" icon
4. when next screen loads, select menu item to launch terminal
5. in terminal type "resetpassword" and hit enter
6. when a reset password box appears, select menu item to erase Mac (is in the menu)
7. in new pop up confirm option to erase Mac.
8. once erased, exit back to recover
9. reinstall the operating system (without formatting disk again)
10. once installed, create the user normally. this fix works on the first try.

I've seen these problems before—and I'm experiencing it now! The problem is that the kernel is doing some that is very high-priority and it is blocking all other processes until it finishes. On my computer I have set the clock in the upper-right corner to count seconds, and when it stops I know that the mac is freezing again.

There are two causes I have identified:

1. The Mac has compressed the memory of the program you want to work with and it is decompressing. This should only freeze the process in question, but it seems to freeze them all.
2. The Mac has run out of cleared flash memory on the SSD and it is proactively clearing it (or purging and then clearing). Again, this should only impact the process in question, but it seems to be turning off interrupts in the process.

It's very annoying. I wish Apple would fix it.

Hi Imirosav,

Most of us have tried those fixes but to no avail. I am not so sure they are addressing the issue we are collectively reporting. 1, 2, 3,4 and 6 and 7 are routines most of us have done that has no benefit. 5 - I am unsure about that suggestion - delete the preferences?

Imirosav - what problems were you experiencing before your fix, and what one of those suggestions worked for you?

1. Start with the good old system restart. Shut your Mac computer down, wait for a few seconds and then switch it on again.
2. Another thing that might help is to disconnect all peripheral devices and check if you are still experiencing the Big Sur Freezing issue.
3. A possible fix is to reset PRAM and NVRAM in your Mac and see if the issue persists.
4. Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) could be another soultion to your problem.
5. Reset the sound preferences and the Startup Disk. Sometimes, these preferences might be causing system issues.
6. Launch the computer in Safe Mode and see if you are experiencing the same Big Sur Freezing issue this way. Then, restart the Mac computer normally.
7. Check your Mac with Apple Hardware Test to detect if there are hardware issues that you don’t know of.

FYI, I uninstalled two pieces of software and Big Sur has (famous last words) become stable, at least with an uptime of three days and counting - previously it would crash at least once a day, sometimes more.

• AVIRA antivirus (free version)
• Pulse Secure VPN

looking in Disk Utility now / show all volumes/mine looks like this now. When the Apple tech support opened this (sorry I don't have a screenshot of that) she said that the OS was not installed on the correct disk/partition and this was causing the problem and I recall that there were more "disk/containers" showing. Her advice was to completely format and reinstall from scratch which I did. I have all my docs etc in the cloud so it was no issue

Photos and Mail are apps that shows the most sluggishness. In Mail I can scroll down the list of mails and the preview pane will not refresh quickly enough. I can scroll down 10 or so emails in the list before the preview refreshes. If I stop scrolling it will take 2 seconds before the preview is visible. This is without running other apps.

In activity monitor, with Mail the only app open this is the view

My Macboork on OS 11.1.2 was racing with fans on full again, running Chrome and Mail.. and little else. Plenty of free RAM but clearly swapping and compression going on. This never happened with Catalina. Anyone know what Big Sur is doing to create such abnormal behaviour in memory?