Slow Mac after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0 OS

The Biggest Slow-Down this computer will experience is because of the Drive

Rotational / Mechanical Drives, not matter how fast 7200 RPM they appear to be, will never perform at the speed of an ALL SSD Drive

Coupled with the Rotational Drive is the Fusion aspect, the 128 GB SSD Drive

In Apple's Magic, they can present to the User ( you ) what appears as a Single Drive.

None the least, having a Fusion Drive, it seems to not be performing to your Expectations.

There are ways to get around this Performance issue but would require a Reliable Enclosure and a Reliable SSD Drive for this enclosure

Then Install Sonoma on the the External SSD Drive and setup that drive as your Startup Drive

Above is predicated on you wanting to Extend the Useful Life of this computer

Steps to setup an External Drive are included in below link

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

As for Purchase of Enclosure and SSD Drive - one of my go to is https://eshop.macsales.com/

They may even have Specific Suggestion to match this Specific Computer

Hope all this is helpful and Yes , it is a real pleasure to try and assist 🇨🇦

Q -   disk0 - APPLE HDD ST2000DM001 2.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM) 

Q - disk1 - APPLE SSD SM0128L 121.33 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes) 

Q - disk1s2 [APFS Fusion Drive] 120.88 GB

Make sure your Paragon and NTFS software is the latest version and is compatible with Sonoma.

You are running on the minimum RAM and probably benefit from additional RAM. It won't help the boot speed or app launching speed as that is dependent on the speed of the drive. But it will improve heavy editing and let you have more apps open at one time and operate efficiently.

What could help the boot time, app launch time and document save time is getting an external SSD, cloning your system to it with Carbon Copy Cloner and running from the external drive.

If you decide to got that route I recommend you contact OWC (MacSales.com) customer support and see which of their offerings would best fit your Mac model, work requirement and budget. OWC is considered by most experienced users here to be the premier 3rd party supplier for Mac hardware.

This user tip describes how to clone an internal boot drive with Carbon Copy Cloner: Using Carbon Copy Cloner to create a boot… - Apple Community Since you don't have a silicon Mac the tip should work for you.

I am here to report my answer

After the update to sonoma my mac was slow but there was a storage issue. my application storage and icloud drive storage was saying it was using up 80% of my existing storage.

I used the tool cleanmymacx and discover the following behaviors

if I put it into desktop/document it will save another copy onto the icloud drive file location

which is here

/Library/application support/cloud drive

but when I delete the file from desktop/document, the iCloud drive file location doesn't delete it's copy

this becomes a problem since sometimes it may also save multiple copies of the same file

so if the file is large like 25 gigs

or if you open a large zip file there in desktop or documents

this will quickly use up all the storage

this also poses a secondary issue since if you use applications like zoom, it will store the meeting recording files there as well

this will quickly use up all your storage and your mac becomes slow

My recommended, move every file that doesn't need to be in desktop / documents, to the downloads folder

then after clean up your files with cleanmymacx

if you delete from

/Library/application support/cloud drive

it does not delete your local copy.

To avoid the question / answer and question answer scenario

Suggest the User start with Points 1 to 4 and then Test

Still having issues, move onto Steps 5 and 6 and Test Again

Still no resolve - move onto Step 7 and follow instructions therein 

1 - Restart in Safe Mode. This will perform a Disk Repair, clear cache files and only load Apple Software, extensions and fonts. The boot up will be slow and can take some time - Normal.

2 - Safe Mode will also eliminate Third Party Software, extensions and drivers from loading. It will only load the Minimum amount of Core Apple Processes to allow the the computer to function at a reduced Level of Performance 

3 - Does the issue present in this mode ?

4 - Sometimes a Safe Boot followed by a Normal Boot will just put things right.

5 - If not - there could be something in the main User Account playing up. To further isolate this - Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of the Main User account and log into the dummy account and test again if the issue persists.

6 - If the issue is present in the dummy account - then, this appears to be a System Wide issue on the computer.

7 - Download the Application Etrecheck directly from the Developer.

The Application is Not a " Silver Bullet " and is only a tool to examine the Hardware / Software used on this computer 

This is a Diagnostic Tool that makes no changes to the computer.

The application is free or paid from added features. 

The Report will Not Reveal Any Personal Information. 

Post back the Full Report - copy and paste - >>>> using the Additional Text Icon ( 3rd Icon to last ) <<<<

The slowness on the start up is at least in part related to the fact that this mac has a "Fusion Drive".

Also:

Configuration profiles found - This computer may have configuration profiles installed.

Is this a personal or work machine? Configuration profiles are usually used only in machines managed by a corporation or school, and not in personal macs.

For a more detailed report, you should grant Etrecheck "Full Disk Access" in System Settings->Privacy and Security, and then run a new report, after checking "Allow Full Drive Access" in Etrecheck->Settings->Privacy.

You should upgrade the RAM. It's criminal to only have 8GB. The new OS may be occupying a little more memory, but I've had an iMac and upgraded from 8GB to 24 and it was a night and day difference. I agree with the owl that the drive may be a slowdown, but it isn't as much of an issue when you have ample memory. The problem of non-SSD is exacerbated when you don't have enough memory because the comp writes and reads from the drive to make up for not having enough RAM.

I have a 2019 imac after the Sonoma download the spinning wheel of death was the result. So slow!!! . So slow I went back to my 2011 Imac .

After reading most of the forums for fixes ??

I have just installed 32gig of memory up from 8gig .

Seems to have improved the speed of things greatly.

im not a computer person, have very little interest on whats going on under the hood.

Not the easiest thing to do , replace the memory on 2019 Imac . But some very good step by step videos on line.

I did replace Apple Mail with ThunderBird. That helped.

Anyway hope this might help .

Check System settings > login items > disable and delete all that's there.

Also get rid of all 3rd party modifier apps, VPNs, antivirus apps.

I also faced this issue, I have read in this guide ( Why is Mac so Slow After MacOS Sonoma 14.0 Update: Solved in 6 steps ) that if you were on the old macOS version, everything might run smoother but since you know that macOS 14.0 Sonoma update will have the latest features and will consume more space too, so you do these things:

• Close too many apps or processes running in the background, consuming CPU and memory resources. You can use Activity Monitor to check and quit the ones you don't need.
• Close Startup Apps that launch automatically because this can be the main culprit of slow mac after the update.
• Empty your Trash bin
• Close too many browser tabs and extensions open, they can affect the performance and speed of your Mac. You can close the tabs that you are not using or switch to a lighter browser like Safari or Firefox.
• Update outdated apps that cause conflicts or errors with Sonoma. You can check the compatibility of your apps from the Software Update menu and uninstall the ones that are not working properly.

If you follow these steps, your Mac will run faster and smoother after the Sonoma update ( now my macbook is running smoothly after these steps ). If you are not sure how to do them, you can refer to the guide I mentioned and follow the instructions. I hope this will help you improve your Mac performance and avoid lagging.

[Edited by Moderator]

Download the free Onyx and do it's 'Maintenance tab and do all the check boxes and let the program reboot your Mac!

I faced this same problem, i changed my hard drive to a SSD drive and resolved the problem. I think it's the fusion drive + legacy 7200 rpm drives that slow the booting and opening of apps, including safari.

Hope this helps.

I solved the issue on my system. Turns out it was F-Secure Security Suite, which I get free with my cable company subscription. Now I just need to find a different anti virus that doesn't cause this issue.

Hi I have the same imac downloaded Sonoma and experienced extremely slow response to anything .

Try a lot of the work arounds on this and other forums not much changed.

I did dump apple mail for thunderbird which helped but now I cant email from T/B . (to be worked through)

So I have upgraded my memory from 8 gig to 32 gig not an easy task , but v good walk throughs on utube.

It has done the trick !!! I can now get back to work.

You have to make a bootable usb installer of MacOS Ventura, boot to it, format your boot drive with it. Obviously you need good backups, my last Time Machine before Sonoma (Big Sur in my case) was a month old, I restored from it after and moved the files that changed during that month which I manually copied to my Synology NAS (External drive works too).

If you don’t have a Time Machine backup, or still have one from before Sonoma? It’s gets more tricky to backup your files.

Create a bootable installer - Apple Support

Thank you, rebooting in safe mode and then in normal mode solved the problem.