Slow Mac after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0 OS

I thought I eventually fixed it, only for it to come back, but now much later than before (my iMac works fine for an hour or so before it hits the high % CPU). Bringing it for a check up to the shop. Very frustrating when my experience with Apple products was pretty much "plug and play" until now.

Exactly the same issue on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, 16Gb memory, 837.52 GB available of 994.66 GB storage.

Finder impossibly slow; MS Word also impossibly slow; basic functions (drag and drop, attaching files to email, saving and moving documents etc.) all practically unusable.

Hi Philips,

I already experienced slowness on my 2019 iMac before the system upgrade to Sonoma 14.0 but it just got much worse, until wallpaper won't display. I did approach Apple service centre in 2021 or 2022 about upgrading the RAM and I was told this is not possible for the model I have. Will external SSD be compatible? Mine is a home computer, and I am not good at installing programme or setting up one. What do you suggest me to do?

Even though I have understood well what you are saying, the question of the century is: why does it happen only after updating the operating system to Sonoma? This problem didn't exist before. My problem however is at startup. 7 MINUTES to get it fully operational. Then it's fast... So it's a problem at startup. I used CleanMyMac but it didn't help

I have to say something strange. Every time I put CleanMyMac on I have had problems (and I pay for it... it's not downloaded illegally. I pay for the subscription). So I hope it doesn't CAUSE problems. It would be serious. However, since Apple can check if I send reports, it could tell if it is potentially harmful

my macbook is like 3 years or less old. i had NO ISSUES prior to this upgrade. now my battery says it needs to be looked at. one of the portals for chargers doesnt even work anymore. the loading is slow. the cursor moves slower. things load weirdly. what have you guys done. they need to fix these issues. this is ridiculous. to have us all upgrade and then ask us to go through 50 steps to try to fix them. i literally had NO problems with my macbook. this is like my 5th macbook, we have a museum at our family home. 3 years or less is not old. please advice apple to fix these issues.

After the installation of Sonoma the computer - M1 - has become overheated fast and on the software side with MSOffice365 onenote does not work anymore (endless color ball syncing up to 9 hours) and the other office packages show a slow syncing response. Tried login/out, reinstall and issue persists. Can work on Onenote perfectly through the browser. MS escalation and Apple escalation resulted in no solutions and suggestion is to backup the computer and reinstall everything.

I have the same exact issue after upgrading to Sonoma 14.0 and 14.1. My iMac is 2019 3.2 GHz 6 Intel Core i7 16 GB memory with over 480 gb storage available. I did safe more and restart cycles several time but it gets slow after a while. StreCheck reposts major performance issues but does not suggest anything. Any suggestions?

For my case: Sonoma 14.1.1, Mac Studio M1 MAX, 32GB memory, 2T SDD. Of course, Safe mode has been done. EtreCheck said that there are CPU consuming processes such as WindowServer, launchservicesd, fonts, kernel_task and so on (Activity Monitor also displayed them). I also turned off an anti-virus temporarily, but the load average keeps around 20--30. In this circumstance, everything goes slow, even a keyboard typing may delay :-S

Can anyone salvage this situation?

I have the same problem as everyone else. I have a 2019 iMac which is on the compatibility list of Sonoma but just doesn’t work. Everything is slow, internet doesn’t work properly, mouse and keyboard lose connection…..essentially it’s unusable. Did Apple actually test this software. It seems to me that this is Apple building in obsolescence. It’s just not good enough

System modifications - There are a large number of system modifications running in the background.

Kernel extensions present - This computer has kernel extensions that may not work in the future.

This might be the reason for you slow down!

Thank you very much Apple! My iMac is now running very slow after Sonoma 14.0 update. Very frustrating indeed. System Settings advises 'Software Update Available' & that macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 update is ready, it will not update.

After 1 hour the remaining time is still showing as - About 4 minutes remaining.

Have tried to do all the saving data & reverting back... what a waste of time & energy.

I have a 2020 27" iMac 3.3 GHz i5, 16GB Memory with SSD, running 14.1.1. I am having the same problems everyone is describing after moving to Sonoma. Does anyone know if there is a response from Apple on these reports?

I wanted to add I am also having a very difficult time getting WiFi to connect to Xfinity on my iMac with the Xfinity Wireless config profile installed or without. Even manually entering the info will result in WiFi trying and trying only to suddenly say that the network (which is clearly being received with a strong signal and showing a strong signal in diagnostics) cannot not be found. This is also happening when trying to connect to my iPhone hotspot - but only on the iMac - only weird wireless issue on the unsupported MacBook Pro is the Chrome browser resets connection and loses the page constantly, Safari won't open a single page at all. Just sits there without doing a thing, but both Brave and Firefox cruise fine. Weird.

I have a MacStudio M1 Max, 64GB of RAM, 2TB internal PCIe SSD drive. I did not have a problem with Monterey, when I upgraded to Ventura, I had various problems and hoped they would be fixed in Sonoma, but not only are they not fixed, now my computer takes a very long time to start, my mouse is erratic, when before it started very very fast and had no mouse issue.

I've been a Mac user since 1986, have done Mac IT, training, teaching for years, but lately I'm seeing that the engineers at Apple are faltering more and more. I believe it's that there's no one there like Steve Jobs who made sure that the system was as totally efficient. Very disappointing.