macOS Monterey takes 25+ minutes to boot

Same problem here with a Imac 5k late 2015 with a modified NMVe ( Evo 970 ).

Installed Monterrey 3 days ago and today when I had to restart it, it got sucked, I re-in stalled Monterrey and it still getting 15-20 min. to restart, which used to be no more than 30 secs. First I thought it was because of the modified NVMe but after getting in to this post, I see there are a lot of people having the same issue. As I keep my IMac on 24/7 I will wait for a solution.

went from a wonderful Big Sur install to Monterey and my awesome Mac mini became a sludge of a machine. I welcomed the .1 version follow up, assuming that there would be a fix, but I could not install it despite 10 days of trying. After five or 6 hours it stuck on “15 minutes left” and never finished. I let it go for several days once same result.

I took it to Apple and they took it up to the .1 release but it is a slow slug of a computer again. I don’t know what to do. I am considering having a private company wipe it and install Big Sur.

The same thing here with iMac 27, 2017 with Samsung T5 external drive. I had to bring it to Apple, they did reinstall on a new T5 external drive. It was OK for 2 days and now the same thing. Complete boot taks aorund 15 min. It looks like that I will be giving up on Mac and go to Windows 11.

I'm in the same situation. I have a Portable SSD T5 on which I installed my OS. It works well with Big Sur, but with Monterey it is too slot. Boot time > 30 minute.

Current solution is continue using Big Sur until Apple will fix Macos Monterey aka the worst Apple OS ever released.

I have Monterey working fine on my 2017 iMac. initial install but the moment I upgraded to 12.2.1 when my mac boots up nearly all apps show problems. Adobe apps fail with authentication issues. iCal gives connection issues and all browsers will fail to load web pages.

This appears to be issues connecting to the internet or server. Wireless shows connected but nothing is working. This lasts for a few minutes and I have to retry all until they work.

Looks to me that the load order of system services is out of sync.

I really hope that with the next update of Monterey this is fixed.

I have exactly this configuration (2015 4K iMac + T5 SSD) and my system works well with Big Sur. I tried Monterey for few weeks, but it is a terrible. My boot time was over 30 minutes. Eventually I decided to keep Big Sur until next major Macos (I hope that next time Apple will release a better OS).

Sorry, no antivirus, junkware, cleaning apps. Both macs have 16GB of RAM (doubled RAM on both with Crucial long ago). Both were screaming fast until Monterey stopped them cold in the tracks. Monterey was so bad that it could not even update to the next .1 Monterey version. It would go for several days of “15 minutes left”.

What a low quality update.

The BIG MISTAKE for me was updating to Big Sur from Catalina on iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019) w/ 1 TB Fusion Drive + 64 GB Memory. It went from < 30 sec. startup to 3-5 minutes+, but realistically it was 10-15 minutes before everything (macOS background, Desktop, apps,..etc) would settle down. I can hear the HDD working hard during that time.

I was also successful, twice, with performing a clean install of Big Sur on internal HDD and external SSD (also booting from it), but in both situations it reverted to the slow startup after migrating and manually transferring my user account and apps.

All I want is my iMac back to how it was before Big Sur, and to figure out what in my user account is causing it. I shouldn't have to deal with this. I spent two separate weekends trying to fix it (15+ hours alone with the last attempt).

I am planning to get the new iMac Pro, but worried this issue will carry over once I migrate to it.

The only positive from this is that startup has improved a little bit, and I was finally able to get my Mail "On My Mac" Mailbox Storage mailboxes to list alphabetically in sidebar after removing and reimporting mailboxes following years of unsuccessful attempts to fix it.

Could this be related to using non-Apple SSDs? I'm using a 2015 MBP with a Samsung 970 EVO. I've always taken pride in how well maintained my Mac is but, after upgrading to Monterey, boot time has gone from about 20 seconds to about 3 minutes. No obvious errors in Console logs or EtreCheck. Booting macOS just seems to hang mid-way for a few minutes. Very frustrating.

I've got a 2016 13" MacBook Pro without touchbar, and have upgraded it to a 1TB SSD from Fledging.

The SSD works brilliantly, but since installing Monterey last October, boot times are 10+ minutes.

Once it's booted, the laptop works brilliantly, but the boot time is SO frustrating.

Hopefully Apple will rectify this problem with the next major release this year, as so many people rely on 3rd party SSDs as Apple's own prices are bonkers for storage. I can live with my 10+min boot time, but it's annoying as heck. And when I've paid over £1000 for a laptop in the first place, I should be able to upgrade it without having huge decreases in experience.

The best thing we can do is open a bug in Apple's feedback website, pasting a link to this discussion. This problem affects many users, but only those using custom settings (external SSDs, etc). I do not think that Apple will do anything to fix it unless we have those tickets opened.

I doubt it. My 2016 MBP 13" Retina has a 1TB OWC SSD; my 2015 21.5" iMac Retina has a Samsung EVO 860 (yes I opened the case) and both boot very quickly:

The 2015 iMac in 22 to 25 second from cold to login in screen

2016 MBP is usually 5-8 seconds behind the iMac.

Yes, I time them both in testing for improvements