MacBook Pro 2016 15inch Very slow when running Safari

Ensure you have a complete and current backup.

If you don't have a current backup, go create that Right Now.

See what DriveDx shows for the SSD.

There's a very large pile of stuff on that USB. Does performance change without all that USB baggage connected?

Clean up ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.grafana.plist

Adobe is mis-firing, so look for a patch for that.

Slack is not known for sipping resources, nor Docker, nor a hypervisor, nor Google apps including Chrome.

And if the VPN you have installed here is active when you're testing, disable that and test again.

MarkRiddoch wrote:

My 2016 MacBook has become very slow running Safari, and other browsers. There is no one particular website, it is very pronounced with meeting sites like Google Meet, Zoom etc. The load average becomes very high, over 150 at times and it becomes unable to manage windows, keep up with my typing, in fact just extremely slow and unusable. Looking at top there are no obvious processing take large amount of CPU, kernel_task and WindowServer are often at the top when this is happening. I usually end up shutting it down to get any sense form it, however it does not last long after a reboot before the cycle starts again.

To trouble shoot further you can:

—Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Takes noticeable longer to get to the login screen, does a 5 minute disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, etc.

Login and test. Reboot as normal. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

In Safe mode third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled, it removes malware, etc hampering smooth operation, however a reboot will put it back to normal mode.

This test will tell you if third party interference; extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-other-users-on-your-mac-mtusr001/mac

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

If no insight or resolve—you can get a good look at your System config. and reveal conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com

If you need help interpreting the report you can post it here in its entirety in the "Additional Text" box in the editing toolbar below, in your reply.

Please download and run EtreCheck, and share the report to the clipboard. Then open a new reply here and then press the button that looks like a printed page to get a text input box big enough to paste that hardware and software configuration report here.

Usual suspects are add-on VPN clients, add-on anti-malware, add-on cleaners, and suchlike.

It’s also possible that the Mac is simply overheating as (somewhat counterintuitively) the Mac can use a kernel task process to occupy a CPU to cool the Mac. This behavior tends to be more common when the Mac is driving an external display, though clogged fans and a hot environment such can also cause it.

You still have less than 10 percent free space on your 1TB SSD. SSD's do not like that:

disk1s1 - Macintosh HD - Data (APFS) [APFS Virtual drive] (Shared - 920.46 GB used) ⚠️

The runaway/heavy use items are shown here:

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (21) 70.48 % (Apple)

WindowServer 57.64 % (Apple)

EtreCheckPro 38.14 % (Etresoft, Inc.)

kernel_task 33.60 % (Apple)

Safari 22.20 % (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:

Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)

VirtualBoxVM 3.46 GB (Oracle America, Inc.)

com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (21) 2.04 GB (Apple)

Safari 388 MB (Apple)

Mail 320 MB (Apple)

EtreCheckPro 285 MB (Etresoft, Inc.)

WebKit is an underlying technology of Safari. Commonly it gets large in the presence anti-virus software or "cleaning" apps, but I do not see any. If you have Safari extensions, try disabling them and testing.

VirtualBox is certainly being piggy based on those numbers.

I'll assume you have a complete and current backup. If not, go create that Right Now. Data loss is Not Fun.

A system load of 115.65 is truly impressive. Low single digits is preferred.

No DriveDx data has been posted. The SSD speeds shown are poor. Whether this is a storage hardware problem or error, or something else? Have a backup, etc...

SSD is nearly full, as mentioned. macOS doesn't like full storage devices, as that can slow ongoing user and macOS activities.

Memory configuration isn't what I'd want when running memory-intensive software (Google apps, VirtualBox, etc) on a configuration, but that doesn't look to be the limit here.

There's seemingly a second LCD in use here, and those can heat up the graphics. Disconnect that and see if the load drops. And counterintuitively, macOS can deliberately occupy the processor core(s) to try to cool the system. But this case seems to involve a couple of very busy processes, one from Safari, and one from the display. Quit those, and disconnect the external LCD, and see if things cool off.

MarkRiddoch wrote:

Sadly I am down to very minimum things I need to work and still it fails to keep up with my slow typing.

An external USB3 or Thunderbolt SSD is an option, but not a very pretty nor a particularly portable one.

Add that, and migrate yoir internal storage contents to that, and boot from that.

But there’s just no good fix for under-configured memory and under-configured storage, short of replacement.

Um, no attachment was included?