MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma crashes frequently and randomly.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

A clean install followed by migrating only the user accounts will easily restore sanity.

When you say "migrating only the user accounts", does that mean I only have to move this folder back from the external SSD?

Same issue as everyone else. Upgraded my Mac with Apple M1 Pro to Sonoma, and now it's crashing at least once a day, sometimes more. It seems to occur when it's trying to wake up. Previously I had Ventura and no issues. I have added no new apps, so this is definitely an OS issue.

With so many "me too" replies, it is easy to get lost in here.

The point I am trying to make is that, although all may be similar, in that there crashes or instability after installing Sonoma, the reasons for each may be different.

For a lot of people, though, Sonoma is working fine. I dare say it is the least buggy .0 version that I have seen in years.

To the "it's happening on my 3 macs, so it must be Sonoma" I would like to note that most likely those three macs have pretty similar software installations, so whatever causes problems in one is very likely to cause it in the others.

Running Etrecheck and checking for old and possibly incompatible software may give clues.

Also, if one can, installing a clean system may help determine if indeed the OS is the problem.

I have so far only seen one case where crashes happened on fresh clean install, and that happened to be caused by a failing drive.

Having crashes or badly performing software is bad. But deciding from the start that it's Apple's fault and not doing troubleshooting is not going to help.

This is absolutely a Sonoma issue. Using MacBook Pro M1 max. No issues at all until installing Sonoma last week. I've talked to tech twice, shut down all background apps and start ups, shut down all apps, removed all USB devices and re-installed Sonoma. Even after all of that, if I leave the computer idle for an hour or two - it just shuts down.

The Panics logs (I've collected 11 so far) are all identical regards of apps on or off. This is the start of the log. You might check to see if there are similarities.

panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffe002ae643b4): DCPEXT0 PANIC - apt firmware: adisp.c:1323 piodma_control() --  - iomfb_mailbox(69)

apt firmware: adisp.c:1323 piodma_control() -- 

RTKit: RTKit-2413.1.1.release - Client: local-t600xdcp.release

!UUID: 4bcc7a73-3ced-3fd9-a1c7-3238cf8e94ac

Time: 0x0000006cdb5db1d7

Same issues on my end. Since upgrading to Sonoma, my Mac Studio Ultra M1 freezes up and crashes, and since its release, it's happened 4 or 5 times. It's extremely frustrating. Everything was fine under Ventura. I agree with others that this is Apple's fault. Please fix it.

Having written code gives me a good deal of sympathy for Apple here, especially with evidence that this problem is widely variable. Dillon's Mac dives 5-7 times a day. Mine goes under water about every 5 days. If it was affecting everyone's Mac like Dillon's, it would be top of Apple's radar.

All the more reason for everyone in this audience to report it through Apple's official channel, if you've not already done so. I've always wished chats like this qualified as "official", but realize it is difficult to keep up with them.

All these are about kernel panics. That is what they have in common.

All kernel panic reports look similar, but there is no indication as to whether the causes are related or not. You may find a lot more like these. A kernel panic is a kernel panic, and it may be caused by many different hardware or software issues.

My M1 Mini has crashed just about once a day after I started using Sonoma. Didn't occur prior to this.

One observation: it ALWAYS crashes when my computer's asleep, and ALWAYS many hours after I've stopped using it.

Not much of a computer wonk, but the above is correct.

mhompesch1 wrote:

Thanks much for the clarification, I hope it's helpful for many users that are on this thread.

Few words of caution: What works for you might not work for everyone who is experiencing this issue.

While this may qualify as a 'fix', it wouldn't qualify as a solution with a view on the underlying root cause (which most certainly is a buggy MacOS / Sonoma).

In no world (except for the Windows universe maybe...) should an operating system be crashing because it can't handle operational load or exceptions created by an app or a piece of hardware. By doing what you have done, you've obviously been able to eliminate factors that contributed to the load that Sonoma can't handle....but....you / no one should have to do that...and wouldn't have to, if Apple would not have released an OS that obviously has a quality problem.

Why is it that many of us (likely the vast majority of users) don't have any problems with Sonoma crashing?

I suppose it could be some obscure hardware configuration that only affects a tiny portion of the qualified Macs.

Complaining here won't identify that fact to Apple. You should be contacting Apple Support and hopefully they will collect enough information to isolate that obscure issue so that it can be fixed.

leex wrote:

I posted something 5 mins ago but god knows where it went. Anyway, the 14.2 seems to be even worse than what was previous, hard drives quitting and just had 2 crashes.

This is an effect of the recent changes in the forum. By default, replies are order by "Best" - which completely wrecks the thread. You can change it to sort by "Oldest" to restore chronological order. It can be done each time, but it can also be changed in your profile preferences, so if you are logged in to the forum, it will always sort chronologically.

I have a 2019 MacAir and had ongoing crashes daily; version 14.0 was the worst and 14.1 and 14.2 were only marginal improvement. About a week ago I switched the screen saver from the Sonoma back to Ventura view and haven't had a crash since. I have not loaded 14.2.1 and won't since now things at least don't crash. Sonoma is still slow and uses up way too much processor resources.

Regrets that I can't trust the system anymore.

I have turned off Time Machine, which has lessened the issue of other external disks unmounting (though not completely). There have been fewer crashes. This of course is a stupid solution Apple!

HOWEVER, Mail is now acting odd; it's open but I cannot do a thing, I have to restart it to get it to function. This may be connected to when it's used in split window view, not sure yet.

Also, the search function no longer works, I believe there may be a fix for these but quite frankly I am fed up of doctoring this not fit-for-purpose OS.

I hear you sfsmusique. If not done so yet, you can set your "Turn Display Off on Power Adapter" to never. This will prevent going to sleep automatically and therefore not have to reboot etc. Next up, you can (I have not tried it yet), downgrade you OS with instructions from here : https://macpaw.com/how-to/downgrade-macos-sonoma

Customers with Intel Macs should not have been able to install the Sonoma OS on their Macs. It happened to me by accident. I had no intention of upgrading to this system. My MacBook Pro, 2020, last-of-the-Intel chips laptop was running great. I don't know if it got pushed to my Mac with no effort on my part, or if I accidentally brushed the install button on the "You have updates" alert, but I didn't want this OS, and my MacBook Pro has been crashing almost every day since then. I could have lived without the AI autofill feature on my email, and various other things. This is a workhorse computer where I work on audio and video files, and this update has wreaked havoc on my productivity, constantly having to log back into all my resources and restart all my apps.