My solution to slow apps on Big Sur, MBP 2015

Hi,

Not a question but a solution to a common problem people are having with Big Sur upgrades.

I was having problems with Big Sur on a MacBook Pro early 2015 where iMessages, FaceTime and Fantastical 3 would take a long time launching and would often stop responding completely.

Searching the internet I tried al the standard solutions: reboot, reset NVRAM, reset SMC, sign out of iCloud and back in, running in Safemode, etc. Nothing worked. I ended up downgrading back to Catalina 10.15.7 which worked fine.

So this week I hopefully tried upgrading to the new Big Sur 11.1 but allas: same problems.

But this time I ran into some advise saying to make a new test user on the device to see if the problems persist. And lo and behold! With a blank testuser all the apps run smooth and don't freeze or crash. So apparently some old iCloud/AppleID setting are causing the problems.

With that info I've finally found a way to install Big Sur and getting it to run smoothly:

• do a complete clean install of Catalina 10.15.7 (via a bootable USB)
• DO NOT set up AppleID/iCloud at all
• do an upgrade to Big Sur 11.1
• DO NOT set up AppleID/iCloud during the upgrade
• once Big Sur is installed, check to see if everything works smoothly
• NOW DO set up AppleID/iCloud

With me everything ended up working smoothly. iMessages, FaceTime, everything works great now.

Next test is to make a Big Sur 11.1 bootable USB and skip the Catalina install altogether.

But the main thing is to not upgrade to Big Sur on a system that already has an AppleID/iCloud account set up.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Sander.