Slow Mac after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0 OS

Hi l had all these problems on my 2019 iMac after Sonoma up date.

so slow just about unusable.

tried all the work around suggestions in the end l have increased the memory from 8gig to 32gig . This seems have fixed all the issues with the Sonoma .

So for me increasing the memory worked.

Hope this helps

Why don't you update to Sonoma 14.2.1?

Try uninstalling SoundSiphon. It worked on my brother's Mac that was exhibiting the same sound and freezing issues.

milind37 wrote:

There is no one as such who manages my computer. Mine is a small business and I use it for that purpose. The use is email in Mail app, MS Office, Web browsing on safari and so on. No special softwares being used. Not in sharing with anyone in LAN. It is rather not connected to the LAN.

Ok, so what are those configuration profiles? Did you install them?

Go to System Settings, and search for Profiles if you are unsure.

After discussing my issue of the colorful beachball turn - endless and renders the onenote software non functional, word slow, excel slow etc - and having had contact with both Microsoft and Apple all the way to the highest support, the conclusion, for now, is to create a backup and reinstall your computer completely and hope that solves the problem. As I am travelling I will do that later and will post the result.

I just want to interject here. I have 2 macs. One is a 2020 27" iMac with a 256 GB Apple SSD, The other is a 2017 13" MacBook Pro (2 Thunderbolt - no touchbar model). I did a clean install on the iMac and did an install on the Macbook Pro using OCLP (OpenCore Legacy Patcher v1.20) with Sonoma 14.2. For those of you scratching your heads or otherwise unfamiliar with OCLP, it is simply a Python App that allows macOS Big Sur and up to install on unsupported Macs. It does not change or alter Apple's macOS code and simply adds the kexts, frameworks and so on that Apple drops when the release a new version of macOS because (I'm guessing) Apple wants to force their perfectly good systems into obsoleteness so drive demand for new sexier systems that cost as much as a used car. Apple likes to say that the features and demands of the newer OS are beyond what the hardware they dropped support for can run efficiently. I have to question that serioiusly after a buddy showed be he is running the latest macOS Ventura of a 24" 2007 iMac. Granted, he added an SSD, maxed out the RAM to 6GB and spent $15.00 for a compatible Penryn CPU from AliExpress - but it runs like a dream. And for that matter my unsupported MacBook Pro is running Sonoma 14.2 like a boss from the very first boot. It's a very stark comparison to what is happening on my fully Sonoma Supported iMac. Everything is so s-l-o-o-w it's pretty much unusable. Even start-up and shut down are painfully slow and my iMac fan . . . that I have never heard before, is spinning at what has to be a top maxed out speed that can be heard across the room. I have cleared the NVRAM several times (1 chime, 2 chimes, 3 chimes) no change. I have reset the SMC and the NVRAM, no change. I wiped the SSD with a lengthy secure erase and reinstalled Sonoma. . . same lackluster performance and very loud fan. I have checked the logs in console and sifted through all the processes in Activity Monitor and ran Etercheck on the iMac. I see a very high CPU usage across all 6 cores but nothing . . . NOTHIING showing in Activity Monitor consuming that much CPU. So all I can say is there is CLEARLY an issue with something in Sonoma that is not playing nice with certain hardwareOh, and my buddy just picked up a 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro, used OCLP and installed Sonoma and it's running smoothly on a 10 year old MacBook Unibody with 16 GB RAM that stiill has a DVDRW+ drive!!! So what in the heck is up here?

[Edited by Moderator]

I've been looking at this from a whole-perspective and more recently kernel perspective, with what data is publicly available and the performance regression appears to follow Darwin 21.x kernel, present in both iOS17 and Sonoma builds.

Now memory isolation? Plausible, that was my first thought, however memory isolation in Windows-world doesn't come with either the performance regression or battery life loss I've seen upgrading from a fully-patched iOS16 (at the time) or fully patched Ventura (now) to Sonoma and this is hitting both my iPhones SEs (latest) which don't use Intel but rather Apple's own ARM which I suspect with Apple's aggressive security posture they've hardware mitigated memory needs (Spectre/Meltdown) well before they implement memory isolation, but I could be wrong.

I actually think based off some of the symptoms, we're seeing kernel based-performance regression that could be in part due to lesser support for drivers ala AMD video at least in my case in Darwin 21.x as I noted performance regressions only in certain websites, not all of them using Safari. The other culprit? I should've gotten a screenshot but was intent to revert my machine to Ventura (which resolved my performance headaches, and poor battery life); there's a HUGE amount of CPU time going to Apple's cloud sync processes in the background in Sonoma. That's gonna hurt yah on battery life, assuming they're occurring on battery and not just plugged into the AC adapter (again, didn't check, but it's notable in my process history).

In my experience in IT though? This is kernel-based performance regression in any event from the broad symptoms across the OS being degraded and my battery life itself taking a steep hit, be it from poor driver integration with Darwin 21.x vs 20.x, which Apple's going to prioritize Apple Silicon on newer kernels, or, memory isolation which impacts everything (highly probably but not a sole-culprit I feel here), or increased cloud sync activities not occurring on AC adapter. If I had to bet? All the above. Why? Newer Apple Silicon is so power efficient compared to Intel, Apple may feel cloud sync processes can occur on battery now, not just AC as they have traditionally in the iOS world, but may have taken a "hammer" approach where both Intel and Apple Silicon machines do sync processes on battery, not just Apple Silicon; there may be no prerequisite logic implementation here, either by haste or possibly design as notably, poorly performing kernels do spur hardware refresh cycles, which in turn fuel profits. Apple's in no hurry to resolve performance regressions that will spur iPhone or MacBook refreshes... Where I get grumpy is I can't downgrade my iPhone to iOS16 which also appears impacted, albeit to a lesser degree, but it's notably lost around 30% battery life post-iOS17 upgrade and is notably slower with Siri, browsing and directions. Only the last supported iPhones are being permitted iOS16-branch signing going forward; the original iPhone X and iPhone 8 models... Those users on those are already slow enough they need no stimulation to refresh.

That’s different. Check your available memory, also, check your network; are you using DNS filtering? Consider setting your DNS temporarily to cloudflare, Google or quad9, see if that alleviates. You may have a cloud sync process gone haywire.

milind37 wrote:

Hi,

This is a work Mac.

Then you have to talk to whoever manages the computers at your workplace.

Per a suggestion here, I removed TuxeraNTFS from my system and it "seems" to have improved the situation.

If your local Genius Bar is any good they can help you revert to Ventura.

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.

Hi everyone. I have an iMac 3 GHz Intel Core i5 6 core - radeon Pro 570X 4 GB, 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4. Having had the same problem (more than 7 minutes to get everything started right at startup), I reinstalled everything from scratch. It went perfectly. I reintroduced some programs from backup and found the problems. In particular, a message appears while I restart it saying "installation progress". However I have no intention of reinstalling everything. "CleanMyMac" only highlights two files that it can't delete (because I don't have privileges and can't unlock them) when I do maintenance.

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?

Still the same problem here on a 2019 iMac 21.5" 8GB standard HDD no Fusion drive.

Even after a new Sonoma install from the Internet recovery. It's faster now, but still much slower than about 3 months ago on the mid 2019 Ventura.

Activity Monitor doesn't show any noticeable CPU, disk or network activity or memory pressure.

As it's a new install, third party kernel or system extensions can be excluded.

It's even slow when booting into safe mode with shift and neither PRAM and SMC reset helped. Official Apple support suspected clock battery failure, but that can be excluded as the clock continued well after leaving it plugged out.

Has anyone succeeded further here already?