Ventura slow "user switching"

maestro71,

Thank you for keeping us posted.

To help you in isolating the issue, let’s test if the issue persists on a newly created user account. 

1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Users & Groups  in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
2. Click the Add Account button below the list of users on the right (you may be asked to enter your password.)
3. Click the New Account pop-up menu, then choose a type of user.
4. Enter a full name for the new user. An account name is generated automatically. To use a different account name, enter it now—you can’t change it later.
5. Enter a password for the user, then enter it again to verify. Enter a password hint to help the user remember their password.
6. Click Create User.

You can use the article below as a reference.

Add a user or group on Mac

Also, try to boot into safe mode, then restart your device and boot normally.

Safe mode does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility.

Performing this step may help resolve the issue, or further isolate the issue.

Below is an article to help guide you through the process.

How to use safe mode on your Mac

Take care!

Salutations maestro71, 

We’re going to recommend taking the steps from the following article if your Mac is running slowly. If your Mac runs slowly

• Your computer’s startup disk may not have enough free disk space. To make disk space available, you can move files to another disk or an external storage device, then delete files you no longer need on the startup disk. macOS can also help you optimize storage by storing files in the cloud and helping you identify files you no longer need. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click General in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down). Click Storage on the right, then click the storage recommendations you want to use.

• An app you’re using may require more memory than your Mac has easily available. You can use Activity Monitor to see how much memory your Mac and apps are using. See View memory usage in Activity Monitor. Also see the documentation that came with the app to find out its system requirements.

• Quit any app that isn’t compatible with your Mac. For example, an app may require a different processor or graphics card. See the documentation that came with the app for information about its system requirements.

• To see what processor your computer has, choose Apple menu > System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then click About on the right.

• To see which graphics card your computer has, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click General in the sidebar. Click About on the right, then click System Report. Click Graphics/Displays to see the name of the graphics card installed your computer.

• Quit any apps you’re not using.

• If you have problems with your disk, use Disk Utility to verify and try and fix any issues.

Thanks. 

I experience the same problem on a 16" 2,4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 with 64 GByte RAM. The switching takes between 3 and 8 seconds, where in Monterey it took fractions of a second.

The issue persists even with only a browser, a terminal, and a light-weight text editor open, i.e., most RAM free and the only process using the CPU actively is Microsoft Onedrive "Looking for Changes" :-)

The computer is otherwise fast and response as always.

Another detail is that the touch id that was enabled for both accounts before the upgrade is no longer working, i.e., I have to authenticate with the password each time. I have no idea why, as touch id works perfectly when the screen is locked. BTW - there is 0 delay in locking and unlocking the screen.

Same issue on my 14-inch M1 Pro MBP. I noticed this problem right when I installed the first public release of Ventura on basically a new machine. I tried clean re-install back then, but it did not help and I could not live with it (and other bugs it had), so the after couple of days I switched back to Monterey - problem solved. Well now I thought Ventura 13.3. should be already fine and I unfortunately installed the update..... It isn't fine, the switching between users takes ages again.

So I can only confirm that the advices to try different users, new user accounts, even erase everything and do clean installation do not work.

What I just realized, though, is that it only happens when I switch to another user using the "fast user switching" functionality, which means switching the user using the icon in the menu bar (next to battery, etc.) or in the control center. When I switch the user in a different way, such as going to the lock screen and then changing users or even signing out and changing users, the delay is gone. Can anyone confirm?

Good afternoon,

I have recently encountered similar issues. We recently updated to 13.3.1 and now 13.3.1a from an earlier version of Ventura, I think 13.1 but I am not sure. We are using a Mac Studio Ultra M1.

As soon as we updated, this caused fast user switching to stop working. When I try to fast user change, the screen goes black for 8-10 seconds, and the original login screen appears like when you boot up. This is different; previously, when we would fast change, it would switch immediately to log in for that user only. Also, we have found that now it is logging out of the current user, whereas before, the user was not logged out. Switching back to the first user, everything starts as though there was no previous session.

Typically when using fast user change, it would keep a checkmark next to any other user that was logged in. Now there is only a checkmark next to the current user, building on my belief that it is currently logging out and not switching.

This is causing a vast workflow problem because multiple users use one machine. Without fast switching, we can not access our shared data and are looking to return to the previous version where this worked. While we do not want to go backward in software, we can not operate shared data currently without the fast user switching working. Is there any timeline for getting it operational?

Thanks for any ideas or help anyone has. Have a great day, and I hope this gets fixed soon.

Best,

Anthony

I guess the problem is because they force True Tone on lock screen, so there's a delay for that transition (even if you're already has True Tone on)

If you turn off True Tone and fast switching, you can see the color change during this delay.

It sucks that there's no way to completely disable True Tone.

Nice catch! Can confirm the same pattern, from menu bar it’s slow as ****, but if I simply lock the screen then switch user there it is instantaneous. Noticed a comment below yours that mentions the root cause of the issue having to do with True Tone. I plan to investigate that next.

Well, I’m happily stumped, but upset I didn’t find a conclusive fix because I changed two variables without thinking about it.

First, I tried to do a “slow switch user” by locking one user and then switch to my other from the Lock Screen and as others reported that gave me a super quick switching user experience.

Then after reading these last few comments I tried to find a way to disable True Tone from a system wide plist type solution and it led me to seeing it relied on the ambient sensor in some way. I couldn’t find a plist directly related to True Tone (didn’t search all that hard) but found one for the ambient sensor store quickly so I tried renaming the ambient sensor plist to something else, created a copy, removed everything in the new copy between <plist…> and </plist>, and then gave it the original plait’s file name. Basically, I just deleted the contents of the ambient sensor plist file, but kept the original around just in case; however, I realized later I accidentally left the “copy” at the end of the stripped down plist’s file name that was put there automatically when I used duplicates to create it, so ultimately I really just deleted the original plist, in essence.

Anyway, I couldn’t force a problem again after this using the fast switch from the menu bar again. It seems completely fixed.

I have replace the original ambient sensor plist back to its correct file name with all its settings in tact.

I have rebooted, and opened up 15 apps in both accounts and switch back and forth super super using the menu bar fast switch option.

My issue is now that I can’t replace my faulty fast switching anymore, I can’t truly determine what fixed it. It could be that simply doing a slow user switch fixed the issue for future fast user switches. It could be that deleting the ambient sensor plist and doing some use switching with it deleted (either fast or slow or both) fixes the issue forever even after putting the plist back.

I simply can’t tell, maybe it was a ridiculous combination of changing both of those exact two variables in that order.

1. After experiencing a lagging fast switch from the menu bar, do a slow user switch from the Lock Screen.

2. Delete the ambient sensor plist file.

3. Execute various fast user switches from the menu bar to ensure the lag is gone.

4. Put Back the ambient sensor plist file.

5. Restart your Mac.

6. Verify that fast user switch is forever fixed.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I do expect after writing all this up, that I’ll find out in a day or two, it goes back to lagging and this was all for nothing, but if so I’ll update and it felt worth it to denote my process and experience ASAP while it was fresh in my head!

the plist in question is:

PS. YMMV, don’t do this, don’t delete plist, etc etc etc.

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iokit.AmbientLightSensor.plist

why is it slow? because Apple is only interested in your money.Once they have that, the rest doesn't matter. I bought a mac after many years with windows, regret every day since. The only good thing on a mac is Bootcamp where I run windows.