So I've been using an m1 Macbook Air for the past year and there is one issue that I've tried fixing over and over again but couldn't find the right fix for. After a fresh installation, everything seems to open almost instantly but about a month down the line and things starts taking forever to open. I've confirmed all apps running the native apple silicon version and I'm on the latest version of macos available.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.4
I understand that after a few weeks to a month after rebooting your Mac, apps start taking a long time to open. Restarting your Mac tends to fix it for a while, but eventually things begin to slow down again.
Problems that manifest over such a long period of time can be difficult and time-consuming to diagnose. Macs with mature operating systems running equally mature apps will run for months on end with no need to restart them, but the M1 is still a fairly new processor and developers are still learning how to perfect their code. You might try using Activity Monitor to determine if one or more open apps or processes are responsible: Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support.
The best you may be able to accomplish is to identify the problematic apps or processes, after which you can decide whether to report your concerns to their respective developers (including Apple if you determine it's a macOS app or process), or to wait for them to update their products.
Needless to say, if you are using, or have used at any time in the past, any non-Apple "anti-virus", "cleaning", or "Internet security" products including "banking security", anything at all in that broad category of utterly useless garbage, don't. A lot of things won't work if you do.
I would like to add that it is not the apps that are slow. Its just that their launch times have increased. And no, there are no major tasks running in the background when this happens. The thing that I don't seem to get is everything opens nice and fast(about 1-2 bounces) for a month and then out of nowhere things start taking long times to open. BTW I ran etrecheck and here's the report
Almost all of the apps tend to load slow after a month. VLC, qview, Affinity apps etc to name a few. And I'm running the latest native apple silicon version available for all of them. And yes I do use folx and neat download manager.
Sure. Activity Monitor shows you all the tasks a Mac is doing at any particular time. The time to examine it is when you are experiencing the slowness you describe. Most likely, you will find a process (an app, or a task) that is occupying an inordinate amount of CPU. You can sort the %CPU column to easily reveal the most demanding tasks.
Leave Activity Monitor open in the background so that you can refer to it when your Mac becomes slow. Of course Activity Monitor itself accounts for some CPU activity just like everything else, so you must also take its presence into account.
... and do you even think that this has something to do with this and not with macos or m1 chip itself?
It doesn't really matter. There isn't anything you can do about either one. If it helps though, it is my experience the M1 chip is blazingly fast — much faster than the Intel CPUs Apple has been using for a long time.
Your experience is unusual. Without additional information I can only guess what the problem may be, and since it takes so long to manifest troubleshooting is certain to be time-consuming and tedious.
At your option, consider using EtreCheck Pro and posting its report in a reply to this Discussion. To learn how to do that, please refer to Old Toad's excellent illustrated description linked in this recent Discussion (that link will take you directly to those instructions).
It may reveal some clues that can accelerate your troubleshooting efforts.
Please post its report here, not there, otherwise I won't see it.
Any clues that can be found are likely to be revealed in Activity Monitor: Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support
I had issues with VLC qview and affinity photo which were installed at the same time about a month ago. The problem manifested so I reinstalled these apps and they are working fine AS OF NOW. Now here's what I want you to know, I reinstalled chrome back a month ago a little after the above mentioned apps and here it is again. Chrome is taking too long to open and this is what my activity monitor looks like
I don't leave my mac on all the time. The strange part is that there's no app in particular that open slowly, its basically all the apps that I have installed. The only thing that fixes this temporarily is reinstallation. But again that's only temporary. And by that I mean about a month. Anything on your mind that could be causing it? Thanks for the reply.
I'm new to mac. Can you please give me a brief idea of what should I look for in activity monitor. I did run activity monitor and did not find any unnecessary tasks and do you even think that this has something to do with this and not with macos or m1 chip itself?
Nothing obvious stands out. If you are going to find a likely culprit, you will need to identify it using Activity Monitor at the time that problem manifests. The fact it takes at least a few weeks to happen obviously hinders troubleshooting efforts.
By that time, it's more than likely another macOS update will be released. Of course then you'll need another few weeks to determine if it's fixed.
Try using the CPU tab instead.
Whereas Energy will readily identify energy-intensive processes over a given period of time, the CPU tab is more appropriate to identify apps or processes monopolizing the CPU at any given moment.
Checked. No processes are taking major cpu power. I don't have much apps installed and I deleted the antivirus that I was using. Again its not the computer that's slow, its something that is causing the apps to launch slow even after a fresh reboot.
Sure. The idea is to "catch it in the act" when your Mac is performing poorly. Leave Activity Monitor open and running in the background, with its %CPU column selected. When apps start to launch slowly or perform poorly, see if you can examine the Activity Monitor window to identify any process or app that appears to be dominating the CPU. Any single app or process occupying greater than (approximately) 50% CPU time is most likely going to manifest in objectionably slow performance.
That CPU-demanding task may be kernel_task or windowserver, each of which hints at possible causes that may justify additional troubleshooting. Or, it may something else. Hopefully it will be obvious.
Haven't checked that so don't know for sure but I didn't see any other task occupying as much power as those tasks. But strangely this whole slowing down thing only happens to apps that are about a month old. Newer apps seem to open almost instantly.
What apps are they? It's quite likely they need to be updated to keep up with recent macOS versions.
These are among the few I am unfamiliar with:
Folx Schedule Helper (Electronic Team, Inc. - installed 2021-11-11)
NeatDownloadManager (Javad Motallebi - installed 2021-07-18)
LaunchHelper (App Store - installed 2021-07-26)
If you know what they are and you are certain you need them that's perfectly ok, but the reason I suggest looking into those few is that most so-called "helpers" or "managers" are known to cause trouble.
If the behaviour of third party apps is questionable the appropriate response is to uninstall them. You can always install them again, after making a determination regarding their effect on performance.
Apps slow to open on m1 mac
