MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma crashes frequently and randomly.

My MacBook M2 (Pro 13" 2022 release) has crashed once a day since the update to MacOS Sonoma, it's surprising that there hasn't been a patch update to fix this problem considering the amount of people that are vocalizing their concerns.

Usually upon opening the lid for the first time after having my computer on the charger overnight, I am prompted to re-enter my password, which tells me that it has been restarted. After logging in, I am greeted with a message stating that _windowserver has crashed, and I can submit a report to Apple or ignore.

This absolutely is not a hardware or application issue as I have had this computer since its release last year, and haven't begun to experience problems until this update.

This is ridiculous, if I could regress back to MacOS Ventura I would do it in a heartbeat.

I spoke to Apple support today. They know the issues. All of the suggestions above are just delayed smoke and mirrors. It is an OS issue and none of this will get fixed until they update Sonoma. It is their usual game.

I think apple had made an serious issue releasing this update we have over 500 users with macbooks and over 70% of them has issues that system keeps crashing some of them have had it with office not installed from app store some with different causes

There is an old joke about a guy who is proud of his new tailored suit, until a friend points out that one leg is riding high. The tailor says he needs to shift his weight to fix the problem which leads to a sleeve appearing off-balance, which the tailor insist now requires another shift of position. The joke goes on as long as you like, and ends with someone seeing the man walking down the street observing that he must have a really good tailor for making the suit fit so well given the man’s obvious severe physical disability. 

The original Mac had unprotected memory. A really simple app programming error could result in it eating away at the RAM, chomping through the display memory and the audio card until the computer would give that cheary sound that meant it was hosed and then it would reboot.

That was a long time ago. The adoption of the UNIX kernel protects the OS from rogue applications.

When multiple users apply the standard Apple OS upgrade and experience the same extreme behavior, this is Apple‘s fault. Users should not have to do anything to fix it, except install the patch Apple provides to remedy the mistake. Apple does extensive pre-release testing these days - we no longer have had to wait for word of safe versions. It's their hardware - the M1 is not "obsolete". It's their software. Somehow, this time Apple messed up making sure it plays well together.

2023 MacBook Pro 14" M2 Max - No change on Sonoma 14.2.1...

As soon as you turn on iCloud syncing and try and open a new window the finder crashes along with system settings.

I'm having to use my old 2015 MacBook Pro running Monterey 12.7.2., at least it works...

HEY APPLE - NEW STUFF IS USELESS UNLESS IT WORKS !!

Please sort it out, loosing patience on this one.

Happening here too on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air soon after Sonoma install. No unusual installed software. Twice when sitting in idle. Once just now when browsing a boring Safari page. The previous Mac OS has been so stable for so many years - this is disturbing! I'm glad not to be running some important real time app...

After frequent crashes immediately after installing Sonoma, I eventually wrote a zsh script to log uptime and the 'top' status (previously posted). Since it is a random amount of time before my machine will hang or crash, it is essentially unusable to do anything productive so all these times in the chart below are with the machine idle of user-level applications running: Reboot, login, do nothing but wait, crash, repeat. Average is 74 minutes. Well loaded MacBook 2019 Intel with no devices attached. Sometimes no WiFi either. Just a MacBook sitting there with Sonoma doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes until it crashes. Sure, it could be Dropbox or Adobe Creative Cloud doing stuff in the background but the machine was rock solid with Ventura and all these apps before the "upgrade".

I've had the same issue - doesn't seem to matter what software I'm running; the mouse/trackpad cursor freezes for a bit and then there's a crash. Definitely only started happening after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0, before that my MacBook Pro 16" 2023 (M2) has been very stable. (Happens 1-2x per day.) (Not sure, but I think it happens within 10-15 minutes of coming back from sleep?)

I appreciate @leroydouglas's suggestions, and I'll try some of them next, but it seems quite reasonable to be blaming this on Sonoma.

As a data point on this - I do have an antivirus program, BitDefender. Uninstalling that now.

After about 25 crashes, level 1 support recommended that I take my M1 chip iMac to the Apple Store for hardware diagnostics, which I did. Of course, they gave me the usual recommendation, format the hard disk, reinstall OS from scratch, and then restore from Time Machine. The hardware test passed with flying colors. So it must be the software. I mentioned to him, if the restore would re-load the software bug back into the OS and he just said that this process resolves these type of issues 99% of the time. Right after wards, my iMac crashed like 5 times the following day, so the Apple Store recommendation was useless and just scripted process.

I made an appointment with a senior advisor over the phone. He looked at the panic logs and we realized that the sleep/wake was causing all the crashes. So he recommended the settings below under Energy Saver:

Guess what? It has not crashed for 3+ days straight, which is a record for Sonoma. So try these settings before the OS re-install.

I found this thread because my week-old M3 iMac crashes twice a day. Brand new computer, brand new software, latest versions. Poor Apple having to field these complaints, when it's our fault. I upgraded from a late 2012 iMac that was running Catalina, and it never crashes. You can't get new software for Catalina, so you spend $3k on the latest, and it's worse. Tell me again how none of this is Apple's fault.

Yeah I am having this problem as well on my M1 14 inch 2021 running Sonoma 14.2.1 and the version immediately prior. It happens most frequently when watching video, whether in Apple TV (the image hangs to the extent where I can't even back out to view the Finder and get to Force Quit, so I have to restart), or just plain old Quicktime player.

I sometimes use an external monitor and one weird feature of the crashes is that sometimes the main monitor (my laptop's) remains frozen but I can continue working on the second monitor which is operating as a mirror. However it's a little slow if I do that, so I often end up having to restart anyway. Very buggy system.

My (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Intel, 2019) iMac's fans have been blowing hard since the Sonoma update. My 2017 (Intel) MacBook Pro started overheating and crashing regularly after one of the most recent Ventura updates and now I can't run half as many apps as the first Ventura updates.

My gut tells me this is a switchover to phase-out the old Intel chip computers and push the new operating system code that takes advantage of the new Apple chip computers -- but it seems the old Intel chips are running hot with the new code!

Well now this is interesting. After finding my M1 air crashed in sleep again, this time I copied the debugger message into Google.

panic(cpu 3 caller 0xfffffe00150fe6cc): skr.umd.com.apple.kpipe.utun7: skr 0x0xfffffe1c38c17600 sg 0x0xfffffe2aa25b9928 (idx 1) unable to satisfy mandatory allocation

Guess what popped up? Constant crash complaints from 2021!!!!!

How do I solve the "panic(cpu 0 caller 0x… - Apple Community

Mac shuts down constantly; panic (cpu 3 c… - Apple Community

No response to either.

I had to also use Google to remind me it was Lewis Carrol who said "curiouser and curiouser"

mhompesch1 wrote:

Sonoma keeps crashing frequently and randomly. Never had any such issue with Ventura. Issues started after installing Sonoma on my Mac Book Pro (Apple M1 Max, 16 inch). Clearly a buggy OS, all apps up to date.

Don't point at apps, please ...it's a Sonoma problem.

Not sure how you can you separate the two I do not know....

if it is not software then it is hardware, in that case take it in for assessment.

I have had very minor glitches with Sonoma, most have resolved them selves by shutting down and re-starting the Mac as the code settles in...

if you want to explore more in an effort to resolve your issue:

most common causes—

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

all known to cause issues on the macOS.

To trouble shoot further you can:

—A SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.

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

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

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

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

Apple! What the heck. iMacPro crashing since Sonoma upgrade, never crashed before, now crashes multiple times a day when waking from sleep. Great job testing! This company is to busy being a finance and media company vs. a computer company, very sad.