Slow Mac after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0 OS

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• Update outdated apps that cause conflicts or errors with Sonoma.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]

Since updating to Sonoma I am constantly having programs freezing, Excel, Mail etc... my Mac not old either & fans blowing up a storm.... clearly it's a program issue but how to we navigate around it without me wanting to smash my computer to pieces every time it freezes & I loose documents/files because I have to Force Quit applications even though they are not listed as 'not responding'... so frustrating

I have the exact same problem that did not exist until I upgraded to Sonoma, 14.0. Speed, latency, the same as yours. My expectation is that it is the software. I think we have the same computer, and my performance had zero issues pre-Sonoma.

There is another discussion on noticeable system performance degradation following Sonoma installations in a private non-Apple forum I belong to of which I am forbidden from posting any links to. however unlike here, where the most casual reference to a (intentionally mispelled) dev bay duh pro gram whereupon the only single mention of such was "that (because of having one of my computers rendered unusable after upgrading to Slo-noma) I was not going to install it (the newest bay duh) yet on my laptop because I did not want to possibly be without a working computer". That single indirect reference was enough to have the Apple Support Community forum overlords or AI driven bots trained to police certain key words (I'm personally leaning toward the bot theory), imply I was in violation of my Apple Agreement, delete my entire post - which up until that one sentence was a rather exhaustive elaboration on my system's behavior and all the steps I had taken to remedy the slowdown to my iMac after upgrading to Slo-noma 14.0,

So to be clear, what has happened is that Information which might have been of benefit to users here was essentially censored from this forum because the very casual and vague mention of (intentionally misspelled) a "Bay duh pro gram" supposedly violated my agreement - and diverted me to the developer forums telling me to post there instead.

well, not only is that personally offensive, the very idea of how a lengthy post about my post macOS 14.0 issues and troubleshooting is even relevant or helpful on a developer forum where all the subject matter and discussion is about development topics concerning updates at least two releases beyond that with which the subject matter of my post dealt, is so devoid of intelligence, common sense or logic that, in memory of an absent friend I would dare label it "insanely' idiotic.

Anyhow,as I was saying - the local, private forum and user group I belong to won't allow me to post links but we are encouraged to share outside of the forum any information discussed that might be helpful or useful to others. the gist of the discussion speculates there are at least three separate issues or the convergence sometimes of issues, all of which are producing very noticeable performance issues with machines becoming bogged down, reports of multicore systems becoming crippled by system hangs. Even kernel panics have been reported on some computers. Even significant post upgrade issues are being reported on the M-Series versions as well. The high fan speeds, system hangs, lock-ups and procesx/processor churning seem most common in intel iMacs particularly 27' models seems be to related to a large number of initialization failures from the com.apple.distnoted.xpc.agent The new 24" M1 iMacs do not seem to be affected. One common denominator being discussed a lot for the M Series seems to be related to some driver incompatibilities and/or non-APFS and non-HSF+ drives and/or partitions present internally and eternally - as well as those who are using software abstraction layers to read/write extended non-native filesystems (like macfusion & fuse) or possibly had one of those knowingly installed previously or possibly unknowingly installed as necessary components as part of another software installation in the background. Using software to detect, identify and remove these or remnants such as Onyx has been reported to fix issues with some of those experiencing issues. Disconnecting, deleting, reformatting or converting drives and volumes to APFS is reported to have solved the issues for others. A couple members of our forum have dual boot or multi-boot systems with drives containing OS's dependent on filesystems which are not candidates for conversion or deletion. They have reported successful workarounds by cloning and virtualizing those OS's to run in QEMU, Fusion, Proxmox etc.--- which all seems a touch much to me. I am just going to either downgrade back to Ventura or do without my iMac until I learn there is an update which resolves the issues making it virtually unusable. I'll add that if this post gets deleted, it will be the end of my interest in participating further with any Apple Communiy Forums and though I've been a cult member fanboy since the late 1990's, given what seems to be a steady decline in everything from security, quality, innovation and customer service only outpaced by the agressive, predatory and deliberately shortened span of forced obsolescence and the appalling specter of corporate exploitation and greed, will likely become my complete abandonment of the entire company and brand.

Same problem seen here on a 21.5" iMac 2019. Started to extremely slow down over the recent few weeks, which means already before Sonoma with one of the last Ventura updates. Also slow in the guest account without nothing else running. No significant memory pressure in Activity Monitor is visible (normal at 20%) and no swapping in top or other tools. CPU and GPU usage is also mostly idle shown.

That's why I suspect a cause here in the macOS-internal memory compression or general virtual memory system. Maybe related to new security features, which would also explain why not much is published yet about this by Apple.

Or could anyone here already solve it on Sonoma?

Same — updated and it instantly became sluggish and started to heat up like crazy... haven't heard my fans spin like this in a while.. now its every day... MBP i7 2.6 Ghz, 1TB (mostly empty), 32GB Ram.. Zero problems running previous OS.. even wiped my computer and started from scratch - noticeable lag and heat. Something tells me Sonoma is Apple's way of saying support for intel Macs is about to end.

In the night, my computer updated with might, 🌙🌌👩🏻‍💻

But then it lagged, causing quite a fright. 😱🐢📉

"Should I reboot or simply shut down?" 🔄🤔

In the tech world's sea, I feel like I'll drown. 🌊💾

Skipped safe mode for a quick, easy fix, 🔐💨

Now it's slow as molasses, full of tricks. 🍯🎩

"Does yours do the same?" I wonder aloud,🗣️👀

Tech troubles shared, feeling part of a crowd. 🤝

In our world where updates dance and twirl,💻💫

l ask for your advice, give it a whirl! 🔄🚀

Let's laugh at these digital quirks and woes, 🤣🤣📲

In our journey through bytes and binary codes! 🌐

After completing the Sonoma update, I noticed my computer began to lag, despite the update process appearing smooth. I realized I hadn't tried rebooting or entering safe mode, as I initially opted for a simple power cycle or shutdown. I'm interested to see if you're encountering similar issues on your end and whether logging off and trying safe mode might resolve them. Hope it works in your end. Let me know if any of these approaches prove effective for you.

Same remarks. After a few weeks of frustration, I switched back to Ventura. Very satisfied since then

My nightmare finally ended after several days of shear torture from my Ventura to Sonoma 14.1.1 update to my Intel-based MacPro. Everything is now running very smoothly. If you're interested, I went into detail about what I did here. That link tells the whole story but briefly...

• Have only one monitor active (turn off/unplug any other monitors),
• Forget and re-pair any Bluetooth items,
• Unplug/disable Wacom tablet,
• Quit and prevent from starting up the Bartender app,
• Startup in Recovery Mode and run Disk Utility First Aid on what would be the normal startup volume,
• While still in Recovery Mode, reinstall the version of Sonoma you just installed,
• Startup in Safe Mode and restart normally,
• Run MacPilot (Maintenance tab) and MacCleanse (Cleanup tab, click on Scan) to perform under-the-hood Unix stuff and clear out useless caches, and
• Finally, just let your Mac sit and run continuously because there's a whole lotta processes running that seem to be slowing everything down but eventually (in my case, after 4 days) settles down.

I believe much of the slowness is related to display, graphics, UX/UI items that call upon Metal. (Just a guess.)

Hi All

Thats it for me and Sonoma and my new mac, I have an old 2012 imac running Hi Serria I think?? it has all I need apart from security updates.. Even typing this theres a lag. I have little interest looking under the hood trying to fix things that should work!!!! My password app dosnt work i have years of notes there im terrified of losing , my desk top folders have disappeared to icloud .

IM sitting here trying to work watching the spinning wheel and its not consistent sometimes its opens and other times it just sits there spinning .

So its back to 2012 where my printer works , pages open and hopefully restrict icloud.

oh and apple mail works without trying to download 40,000 emails going back to 2012 , i dumped apple mail for Thunder bird which helped . There you go a tip !!!

Sorry but I have just had it with Apple we shouldnt have to spend hours looking for forums for fixes.

Adding RAM, contrary to the opinion of one person, does not solve driver level problems of Sonoma with non-Apple Silicon. Adding RAM helps performance if, you don’t have enough to begin with, that’s all it does. I’ve got 32GB, and RAM was never my problem. Now RAM helps if you were short, but more RAM and Ventura is a much smarter move.

To reiterate, Sonoma has a very different kernel than Ventura. Intel/AMD (video) drivers do not like the new kernel. It’s just that simple. You can run an Intel machine on Sonoma, it just doesn’t work well. Really poor battery life on my machine and really poor performance. I’m a systems engineer for a living, already ripped this thing down to the process level and examined it. The kernel itself is eating my cpu time not to mention the new cloud sync processes, which are also pretty heavy.

After struggling with the Sonoma update , my imac is now slow , watching the spinning wheel , freezing screen .

l now run my 2011 iMac side by side when Sonoma freezes.

l think it’s a deliberate from apple to stop 3rd party’s apps running.

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.