MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma crashes frequently and randomly.

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.

To all of you take head what Nosferatum said! Also everybody with crashing download the free version of https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html and run that run to see if a old Intel program is serving up your install!

It might also be a hardware issue with your machine. There are a few similar results from M1 machines, such as here: M1 16" Pro regular kernel panic - always … - Apple Community

However, if you're lucky, Disk Repair will fix the problem. If not, then Apple Support may be your next call.

I've continued to try a variety of things to isolate the issue with the limited time I have available. My crash logging script is up to 17 crashes now (plus the dozen or so before I wrote the script). Min is 5 minutes from boot, Max is 45 minutes. Turned off WiFi. No difference. Created a fresh user account and logged into it. Same thing. Removed Sophos anti-virus. Same thing. Reset NVRAM and SMC. No change. This morning I added my crash logger to the apps that run at login and I noticed a few things that I don't use anymore enabled in the background so I turned them off (Skype, a Blue Jeans helper app and something from Rogue Amoeba). Thought that fixed it but it crashed after 3h57m. Progress, but this is incredibly painful to troubleshoot and makes getting anything done on this machine almost impossible.

• The crash report dialogue does not always appear. About 50% of the time?
• I've used Apple --> Shutdown and upon reboot a panel appeared "Your computer shut down because of a problem. Do you want to re-open applications that were running? [Cancel] [Open]" (wording is approximate). BUT (i) no it did not shut down because of a problem, I quit all apps and did a graceful and intentional shutdown and (ii) the panel was unresponsive: clicking on either option did nothing and I had to wait 60s for it to decide to proceed with the login process.
• I've saved the text of many crash logs to compare.
  • First line of the report is consistent: panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffff0216eff60): macOS watchdog detected
  • x86 Shutdown Cause is not (0xf5 and 0x16 are seen more often than other values)
•  log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h also shows some causes multiple times but others are one-offs.

Whatever is going on here needs Apple's attention -- in other posts it's suggested that Sonoma is fine, it's third party apps that are messing things up. Ventura handled those apps without issue. I did some heavy lifting with this machine for months without a crash. Machine crashed within minutes of the upgrade to Sonoma and it was idle (at least no user level apps open at all). If the root cause is a third party app, then Sonoma should be doing a much more graceful job of handling the exception. And Apple should at least acknowledge that there's something (seriously) wrong with Sonoma and that they're working on it. There are very knowledgeable customers who will be happy to provide additional info when requested. Well, maybe not "happy" but "willing to put even more effort into helping find the root cause so that they can have a usable machine once more."

SO....I started my computer in Safe Mode. It stopped crashing. Meaning, first, it's a software issue. And second, it's either Sonoma or some piece of software that isn't updated for Sonoma. Good times.

My hubby updated last week and started having this same problem. He has a MacBook Pro with Intel chip. I tried eight different things. Today I tried four more and one of them worked. Can't say which.

• I reset the PRAM
• I removed all automatic login items (he only had Dropbox). System settings>general>login items
• I turned off all apps allowed in the background. System settings>general>login items
• I deleted every deprecated app (the ones that have the circle and diagonal line across them)

We fixed this!

My hubby updated last week and started having this same problem. He has a MacBook Pro with Intel chip. I tried eight different things. Today I tried four more and one of them worked. Can't say which.

• I reset the PRAM
• I removed all automatic login items (he only had Dropbox as an automatic login item). System settings>general>login items
• I turned off all apps allowed in the background. System settings>general>login items
• I deleted every app that no longer works with Sonoma (the ones that have the circle and diagonal line across them)

This is my second reply to this thread because my first reply buried the lead--that we fixed it!

I've had similar issues with external disks disconnecting with Sonoma. I was using an external disk for Time Machine backups and it got so corrupted by random disconnections that I had to connect it to a Windows 10 laptop and use Diskpart to clean it before I could use it again on my Mac. No Mac would mount the corrupted disk so Disk Utility could wipe it.

It doesn't seem to matter whether I connect the external disk to one of the Thunderbird ports on the back, USB-C ports on the front of my Mac Studio or USB-C ports on the back of my Studio Display.

Currently downgraded to Ventura and backing up to an old Mac Mini so I can get some work done. Not quite the "fit it and forget it" reliability I've grown accustomed to.

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 installed 14.2 and there is some improvement, but still frequent crashes; now seem to be overnight. I also noticed some improvement by changing the screen saver from the OS Sonoma to the OS Ventura graphic. I'm not sure what this did, but it's a little better. But still a real operational problem. Plus Sonoma is much slower to load and run.

But what's the solution? How do I complain to the official channel?

Call Apple. https://getsupport.apple.com

I recommend signing up for theb eta updates program. The 3rd one worked for me.

Is there a way to officially raise the issue and ask Apple to resolve this ASAP?

Call Apple Support.

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

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.