MacBook Pro M3 Pro Becomes Slow and Loses Audio/Video Functionality After Waking from Sleep

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MacBook Pro M3 Pro Becomes Slow and Loses Audio/Video Functionality After Waking from Sleep

Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased a MacBook Pro M3 Pro base model, and I've been encountering a frustrating issue that happens about once a month, usually after not rebooting for an extended period.

Typically, I put my MacBook to sleep when I'm not using it, but after waking it up following about a month of continuous use without rebooting, it becomes extremely slow. Here's what I'm experiencing:

Performance Issues: The MacBook becomes sluggish immediately after waking up. Applications like CleanMyMac and others take a long time to open, and I frequently see the spinning rainbow circle that loads for a significant time before responding.
Audio/Video Problems: No sound is produced, and videos either keep loading or play without sound. This issue also extends to headphones—when I plug them in, they're not recognized, and no sound comes through them.
Temporary Fixes: A reboot usually resolves the issue temporarily, but it returns after another month of use without a reboot.

Has anyone else encountered this issue on the M3 MacBook Pro, or does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix it? I'd appreciate any advice or solutions that have worked for others.

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Aug 23, 2024 9:13 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 4, 2024 12:19 PM in response to Faiq_Fahim

I have what sounds like the same problem on two M3 MacBook Pros (M3 Pro for work, M3 Max personal). After anywhere from 3-7 days, I will first notice the frame rate of dragging windows on the desktop has become choppy. From there the entire machine typically becomes sluggish over the next day or two (lags typing the terminal shell, scrolling browser pages in Safari stutters, etc), but I'm usually forced to reboot before I let it get to that point. Note that no processes are consuming any unusual amount of cpu or memory. From Activity Monitor's perspective and the syslog, everything looks healthy.

I don't have any "unusual" software running on either machine, and the work M3 Pro is pretty stripped-down, in particular. I previously had an M1 Max for work with the same OS (14.6.x) and almost the same software installed, and it did NOT have this problem.

I'm concerned there's some hardware flaw in the M3's, perhaps in the GPU's, that are the root of this, but I hold out hope that it's an OS bug that can/will be addressed. I've never had to reboot a Mac every few days. There's very little info out there about this, of course, but I have seen a few scattered posts reporting suspiciously similar behavior. Obviously, it's difficult to separate hardware or OS bugs from misbehaving third-party software that users have installed, and so I suspect this problem is flying under the radar. As far as I know, Apple has been silent on this, but we can only hope that (if even possible) it will be silently addressed in MacOS 15.

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Answer 2

Sep 9, 2024 7:18 AM in response to Faiq_Fahim

Same here. Videos become sluggish like 1 frame every 2 seconds, no audio, quitting browsers doesn't work it needs a reboot. It's happening more and more often.

Macbook M3 Sonoma 14.6.1

64gb of ram

1 terrabyte of free space

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