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What's the best macOS for a 2015 iMac?

I'm running a late 2015 iMac - 4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 on Monterey 12.6.9. I am having problems with my finder search function. I type one letter and I get the spinning disk of gloom. If I wait several minutes for it to stop, the results list is blank. Same thing if I search for an email in Mail. I've tried the plist fix and re-installing the OS. Am I running a OS that is too advanced for my iMac? Any idea how I can fix my search problems? I called Apple support and they said they don't support iMac this old. Referred me to a 3rd party, which I don't know how good any of them are. I would rather fix myself. I have a time machine disk going all the way to 2020. Help.

iMac 27″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Sep 20, 2023 3:32 AM

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16 replies

Sep 20, 2023 7:33 AM in response to Old-Soul

RE: "Am I running a OS that is too advanced for my iMac?"


I'm sure that Monterey loves RAM and fast startup disks. So let's do a quick review:


iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) - Technical Specifications


That machine would have shipped with at least 8 GB of RAM. Since it is a 27" iMac, the RAM is user-upgradable. The official limit is 32 GB, but the actual limit is 64 GB (as per MacTracker, Other World Computing, and Crucial).


If you think you don't have enough memory, you might want to use the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor (while doing the things you normally do) to see if it shows yellows and/or reds. But even if you have 8 GB of RAM now, that's enough that a simple Finder search in Monterey should not be causing the hangs you report. Looks to me like something is going on other than a "not enough RAM" problem.


The machine would have shipped with one of these drives:

  • a 1 or 3 TB 7200rpm SATA HDD,
  • a 1, 2, or 3 TB Fusion Drive, or
  • 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB of flash storage


If your drive is a pure hard drive, an external USB 3 SSD startup drive would definitely help you with overall performance. If it is a 1 TB Fusion Drive, I also think an external USB 3 SSD startup drive might be in order. (The 1 TB Fusion Drives for this model year included only a miserly 24 GB of flash storage.)


If you're lucky enough to have flash storage, it's faster than anything you could attach to the USB 3 ports. As for a 2 TB or 3 TB Fusion Drive, those included 128 GB of flash storage, which might be enough for their performance to hold up well even under Monterey.

Sep 20, 2023 7:41 AM in response to Old-Soul

Another thing to check: S.M.A.R.T. status.


If you go into About This Mac > System Report… and look under the NVMExpress and SATA sections, do you see any lines that say "S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing"?


Hard drives will sometimes give advanced warning of failure in this way. A failing hard drive might be throwing up errors in such a way that one moment, everything's running along normally; the next, everything just hangs.

Sep 20, 2023 8:02 AM in response to Old-Soul

Monterey should not really tax your iMac any more than Catalina or Big Sur.


It could be anything from a failing hard drive, to some third-party software that is messing things up.


To get a better idea of what is happening to the iMac without going back and forth playing 20 questions,

get and run EtreCheckPro from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html


Then if you need help decifering the iMac's EtreCheckPro report? Please post the report using the Add Text feature,

as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

Sep 22, 2023 8:03 AM in response to Old-Soul

Wow besides setting a new record and the slow Write speed 137 MB/s of your drive, you have a lot of third-party software processes running on that iMac.


Try starting up in Safe Mode (it could take awhile) and see how it runs for just the basic macOS tasks.

Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support


If that improves the performance, you need to start by pruning the unused third-party software.

If that does not improve the performance, then you most likely have a failing hard drive.

Oct 4, 2023 1:57 AM in response to den.thed

Sorry for the long time to reply. Running the program after deleting files/apps took even longer this time!

I have yet been able to boot into safe mode. I need to get a wired keyboard I think.

I was able to get into Apple diagnostics and it found no discrepancies.

I have a 8tb Time Capsule, with over 5tb free. Should I just wipe the Mac and reload everything new? Not including all the 3rd part software this time.(after a full back up)


What's the best macOS for a 2015 iMac?

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