Bought our iMac last year (2022) because the old were no longer supported. According to apple they should be suitable for photo editing but it keeps lagging and freezing while there is almost nothing open (only Lightroom). Apple proposed a trade-in (with a 1 year old iMac), with a price drop of 1900euro. At the moment it is almost unworkable and must say I feel a little bit ripped off. Does anyone know how this iMac can have a better performance?
iMac 24″, macOS 13.5
Download and run Etrecheck. Be sure to give it Full Disk access before running.
Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.
Copy the report
and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.
Then we can evaluate the report to see if we can determine the cause of the problem.
Download and run Etrecheck. Be sure to give it Full Disk access before running.
Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.
Copy the report
and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.
Then we can evaluate the report to see if we can determine the cause of the problem.
For One, the computer is running Low on Empty Space
Size: 994.66 GB
Free: 160.80 GB
Available: 161.64 GB
The lack of empty space on the drive the more the computer is looking for space to save all the changes that are happening on the computer
Manage Storage
It is generally a good computer practice to alway keep at least 20% to 25% of the Total Drive Capacity’s as Empty Space. Allowing the computer to drop below these guidelines may eventually, cause unintended consequences.
There is Purgeable Space and there is Empty Space.
Purgeable Space which is Controlled by the Operating System. When the Operating Systems decides the computer needs additional Empty Space, it will move a portion of the Purgeable to Empty space
AFAIK - there is no User Actions to hasten this transition from Purgeable to Empty Space
It can day or longer before this will occur.
The links below will assist in identifying what is taking up space on the Internal Drive and provide possible ways to remove data that is under the direct control of the User ( Home Folder ) .
Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac
What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it out?
Free up storage space on your Mac
How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac.
Often caused if the Time Machine Drive has not been attached to the computer and TM Backup is set to run on a Schedule.
TM Backup will make Snap Shot on the Internal Drive awaiting the TM Backup Drive to be attached.
Only then will the Snaps Shots be transferred to the External Drive and deleted the Internal Drive.
See used and available storage space on your Mac
Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Is there a Suite of Adobe Applications used on this computer ?
They may create some very large cache files that can be removed. Though, the Adobe cache files will be recreated as the Applications needs them.
https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/premiere-pro/kb/clear-cache.html
The final word from Apple on Managing the " Other/ System Data “ Category
Other / System Data: Contains files that don’t fall into the categories listed here. This category primarily includes files and data used by the system, such as log files, caches, VM files, and other runtime system resources. Also included are temporary files, fonts, app support files, and plug-ins.
You can't manage the contents of this category. The contents are managed by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.
From your screenshot it's apparent that Topaz Gigapixel AI is the culprit. I'd uninstall it according to the developer's instructions and then run for a while to see if the problem reoccurs.
You have forgotten to say which iMac, which OS...
Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.
From the report we will know more about the system and may be able to spot any issues.
You may have larger issues if the Empty Space is not addressed soon.
The easy part is shifting the blame on an application
The hard part is dealing with a drive that is going to eventually, cease to boot up
Appologies for the delay in answering, I am quite new at this.
It is a 24-inch, M1-chip, 16GB memory, running on Sonoma 14.0
Recently updated to Sonoma which made the issue even worse, before(with Ventura) I could run some programs at the same time but now it keeps on crashing. In the beginning when it was still "new" I had no issue with any of it but after 1 year (and updates) it is terrible.
Added there report and some snapshot of the issue.
Thank you for your help.
Hey thanks for looking at the data. It was running fine in the beginning (Lightroom - Photoshop and Topaz --> which I need for photography), after the first update it was just slower and after the very last to Sonoma it keeps on crashing/freezing when only using one of those app, so after the update it only got worse. Now I cannot even save photos from photoshop without it having issues.
I will make sure a little bit more goes from the drive but haven't had issues with this in the start either.
It seems to me that the updates to different macOS version also causing issue for me.
Apple iMac really slow
