Severe lag and freezing after macOS Tahoe update on MacBook Pro M1

Time Machine backing up was the problem. It’s related to indexing, and the new Spotlight.

My computer was useless for days until I was able to erase my Time Machine backup drive and remove it from settings.

My computer is running fine now. Hallelujah!

I suspect Tahoe was re-indexed every Time Machine backup and trying to backup normally at the same time, without a state to backup from.

Indexing will slow things down a bit until it finishes. Not too much, though. In Time Machine settings, remove any external drives.

if possible can someone share the steps to reinstall the wonderful Sequoia and what’s necessary after the install is complete?

If you don't have a backup made prior to installing Tahoe, it is much more difficult. You will need to manually copy all of your data to an external drive and then manually copy it back into reinstalled Mac. If you have stuff in iCloud Drive, you would not need to back that up, just sign back into your Apple Account. Same for any services you have linked to iCloud like iCloud Photos, Music, Contacts, Mail, etc. If you have any of that type of content not synchronized with iCloud, you must export it out of the host application and then import it back into those programs. For Photos, Music, and anything else that stores additional metadata, you will lose all of the metadata you entered (like keywords, location info, faces, song/album info, etc).

Most macOS these days updates the firmware on the Mac for the new OS. I don't think reinstalling an old OS will revert the firmware, so this all may not work. I just don't know how that is handled.

1. Download Sequoia and create a Bootable USB Installer from that download. There are instructions on how to get an older macOS version in that linked article. When you format your USB stick for the installer, just name the volume, "My Volume." That way, there is no need to alter the command, you can just copy and paste the command from that article.
2. Start up from the Bootable USB Installer. There are instruction in the above linked article on how to do that.
3. Once booted into the USB Installer, open Disk Utility. Erase your startup drive. When booted into the USB Installer, you are in Recovery—do not restart into Recovery on your Mac or into Internet Recovery. You can name the new volume anything you want. "Macintosh HD" is the factory default name.
4. Once erased, quit Disk Utility and choose Install macOS. Follow the instructions and install on the volume you created when you erased the drive.
5. When your Mac restarts into macOS Sequoia Setup Assistant, choose to Migrate from a Time Machine backup. If you had inherited your backup into Tahoe, when you select the backup you will need to expand the list of backup sets and choose the date/time you last backed up Sequoia. If you select a backup that was made with Tahoe, it will tell you that you must reinstall macOS to Tahoe. Back up and choose an earlier backup set.

If you have a non-Time Machine backup, you may still be able to Migrate from that backup, but I don't know how to do that. Contact your Backup provider for instructions.

The good news is that based on the experience of numerous people in a prior version of this thread, In most if not all cases the problem is related to Spotlight, and making Spotlight reindex generally cleared things up. The most commonly suggested method was to delete all files under ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ and restart your Mac. 

I my case, it was even apparently simpler than that. after several days of sluggishness and in frustration with the loss of the option to group apps in the Spotlight version of app launcher, I went to System setting | Spotlight. No custom groups, but while I was there I deleted the Search History, and toggled the Results from clipboard on, quit Systems Settings and then went back in and toggled them off again. I’m not sure what precisesly triggerd things, but after rebooting the next day, the sluggishness was gone.

PS : I suggest that you report your problem to tech support. Contrary to the renaming of the thread the proble also occured with later model Apple silicon models such as mine. But you do not have to suffer from the sluggishnes after upgrade, or roll back the OS, or delete the host of usual suspet apps, etc.

hu-ro wrote:

Same here.

Few months-old Macbook Pro, just upgraded to Tahoe, was working great before doing that.

M4 Pro, 48 GB Memory, 2TB of memory (1.4TB still unused)

Constant lag and freezing with typing, mouse movements, opening windows.

Tried a few fixes suggested (shutting off things); nothing has helped.

Performance issues usually have a direct correlation to the work being done by third party apps.....some of which are constantly running in the background, especially anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software. Another reason can be due to compatibility issues with third party apps, so make sure they are all completely up to date.

Sometimes performance issues can be due to externally connected devices, so try disconnecting all external devices to see if that makes any difference. Sometimes there may even be a compatibility issue between two external devices.

Run the third party app EtreCheck and post the full report here. It would be best if you started a new thread because it is hard to help multiple people in a single thread since each case may have a completely different cause for the problem. Having your own thread will allow us the best ability to help resolve your laptop's problems.

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

Also, make sure you have updated to the most recent version which at this time is macOS 26.2. I know that 26.2 has improved the releasing of memory & storage when things get a bit tight with either one. I would have problems with "application out of memory" errors which required a complete reboot to "fix", but I haven't had that problem since the latest update. I never experienced any actual performance issues with Tahoe otherwise and that wasn't really a performance issue, just a sudden full pausing of apps (done intentionally by macOS).

I'm thinking this must be affecting a lot of people, so I hope Apple is working on solutions.

Doubtful on both counts. You would need to have support cases open with Apple for them to even consider doing anything....assuming they determine that macOS is the cause. You can also provide Apple with product feedback, but doubtful it will do much since the issue is not specific enough for a fix:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

The majority of issues will be due to third party software and issues with third party software are the sole responsibility of the third party developers assuming you can figure out which app(s) is causing the problem which is why I suggest running EtreCheck & posting the report in a new thread so your issue gets the attention it deserves.

Trying to keep it positivel

That is always good to do, although it can be challenging at times. I wish you well.

If sever lag is your problem this solution has worked for everyone else

I experienced the same issue after Tahoe upgrade. May Mac was totally unusable it was so slow. I looked at Task manager and started to suspect that corespotlightd might be the root of all my troubles. I deleted all files under ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ and restarted my Mac. Result was night and day and it has been running smooth as silk for several days now.

This begs the obvious question: what is different between the two?

Almost surely there is some third party old or incompatible agent, daemon or login item causing havoc.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

xander91107 wrote:

This is a huge mess… everything I do today beachballs… want to copy a line of text.. that will be a 2 second beach ball… want to reply to an email, 15 seconds of beach ball… open a file… whole system freezes for 10 seconds, beach ball, then maybe the file will open.

Mac Studio - M4 Max, 128 GB Ram, 2 TB HD

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

I accidentally, after a marathon coding session, decided to perform the system update that I was being nagged about, mostly to make the notification go away. There are usually 2 buttons one at the top for upgrade to our new shiny whatever then one at the bottom to run updates to the last stable version. I could have swonrn clicked on the update, not upgrade, but I woke up to welcome to Tahoe. I fugured I would give it a try and turned off all of the Vista graphics features in the OS and give it a go.

I am pretty sure I will be spending time on the weekend downgrading. Here is why;

• I use my computer to get work done, I don't care all that much about how it looks, and as a lot of reviews have pointed out it is an inconsistent mess where asthetics takes precidence over functionality, performance and I have found, stability.

• A lot of the naitive apps are noticeably worse, I use textedit to use dictation to prepare prompts while my AI assistants write, test, and document code. The text no longer is legible at the edges due to some kind of scrollbar bug, and wrap constraints in settings no longer works, it is like an app someone wrote because they needed it in a hurry, and never got around to fixing because they don'e care.

• I am working on an M1 Max with 64GB of ram, even applications like contacts are sluggish, and I find other apps, especially electron based like VS Stidio Code and even bitwarden run noticeably slower, maybe not that much slower, but there is a jankyness, where it feels the app could disapear at any moment and report a crash. I have had issues with some older database management software dying at inoportune moments, but in fairness to Apple, this particular software has never been all that great on the Mac (works fine in Linux and Windows).

• There is a weird scrolling bug in terminal windows, something I use a lot, where if there are error logs scrolling away, or Claude code churning away, the os is deciding it would be helpful to scroll to the top of the window. I mostly use iTerm2 anyway, and it inverviened with a message saying that something was trying to controll the scroll bar, do you want to ignore? Thanks iTerm!. I sometimes will just use the nautive terminal as it's easier sometimes to ssh into remote servers.

• I have to reboot my computer evry 12 hours because one thing or another has shat the bed and is using all the CPU.

I have been using a Mac since 1987, and I am a fairly technical person. I don't know if is me getting older, or Apple, as a company switching focus with the Mac platform, but I remember back in the day being really excited for OS updates. It is kind of fun to remember, the way it used to work is that on the day of the release you could go to an Apple Authorized Reseller or Service Center with your floppy disks and they would copy the new OS onto the disks, and I remember as a young person, walking home with my freshly coppied OS looking forward to exploring all the new features.

Now, it's a situation where I wonder what issues a new OS is going to cause me, and how much time I am going to have to spend figuring out how to modify my workflow or otherwise resolve issues that were not there before.

An eye opener for me yesterday when I had to get stuff done, and my Mac was not being it's usual co-operative self, I have an old MS Surface PC with Linux Mint that I have been messing aroud with over the past year. It is looking like a more and more appealing alternative.

hdulc wrote:

Having the same problem. I ran EtrePro - here's what it reports - the major issues were No system uptime found and No operating system found. Huh?!?!?!

Any ideas?

<EtrePro Report.log>

@John Galt forgot to specifically mention to uninstall BitDefender as well, although it is implied from the rest of their post with the reference to Anti-Virus software. These types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve because they interfere with the normal operations of macOS.

I only recall seeing one reference to CMM/macpaw which either means you already tried to uninstall that software, but it left some bits behind, or you are using one of their other more limited apps. It is fairly common to see CMM not completely uninstall itself.

Once I see these types of apps, I end up only skimming the EtreCheck reports since it is impossible to assist until those apps are completely uninstalled.

If you continue to have issues, then please start your own new thread as suggested by @John Galt & include a new EtreCheck report after uninstalling CMM & BitDefender so your issue can get the attention it deserves.

And thanks for supplying the EtreCheck report. Always a good step when trying to troubleshoot a problem.

Would you be willing to try something (I imagine you would 😉) and see what effect it has?

I'm not suggesting this is a long-term fix. More just a curiosity at this point. Would you try setting your power settings to "High Power" for a bit and see how it goes?

# Set high power mode
sudo pmset -a powermode 2

Double-check the settings stuck:

❯ pmset -g custom | grep -B2 -E 'powermode'
Battery Power:
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 powermode            2
--
AC Power:
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 powermode            2

You can revert at any point with the following:

sudo pmset -a powermode 0   # Back to Automatic

This can also be toggled via the UI in System Settings -> Battery -> Energy Mode.

Please Apple, update Tahoe ASAP!

You have done the tech equivalent of walking into the doctor's office and asking patients in the waiting room to fix you. We are all other end users, and Apple cannot see bug reports here among the estimated tens of thousands of new posts every day.

If you are serious about Apple hearing you, you must use this for mac OS issues:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Did you try the proposed solution of deleting the contents of

~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/

It seemed to have worked for several users.

rogerharrop wrote:

Hello,

I have all the above but I'm not an IT guy and am in my seventies. Please explain exactly how I delete all files under ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/.

I found "Library "under Macitnosh HD but there is no sub folder "Metadata"..............

Many thanks

Roger

The tilde makes all the difference.

There are two different Library folders.

The one you need is hidden by default, and sits inside your home folder (that is what the tilde character represents

in ~/Library).

Two ways to get to the ~/Library folder if it is hidden:

1) In Finder, hold down the Option key, and from the Go menu choose Library

2) In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and type

~/Library

You'll need to take a full backup of your system ideally on two different devices/targets just to be safe, then wipe it and reinstall the system from scratch. Apple never provides the option to downgrade because they assume they're always right and you'll never need to and they don't want to do the work to provide that feature. Luckily all M4 and earlier hardware will always be compatible with Sequoia or earlier OS's. But any new M5 hardware shipping over the next few months will only work with the garbage v26 OS's and they'll ship with that by default.

Forkingaround wrote:

I will admit I accidentally jumped on the bandwagon and did the Tahoe upgrade, when it first came out. ..... When I asked about reloading Sequia I was told they no longer have it. I was finally able to figure out how to create startup with Sequoia and started from scratch.

Yesterday I decided to take a chance and try again with Tahoe. Things are better-ish, but still going back to Sequia for now. Still having to many glitches, restarts, over heating you name it. At least this time I am prepared for the hassle of wiping and starting from scratch.

FYI, instead of jumping full into the upgrade, people should instead install the new OS to an external SSD & test things out. Follow the instructions in the following Apple article....there is a very critical detail to avoid using the Mac's DFU Port during the install process on an M-series Mac:

How to use an external storage device as a Mac startup disk - Apple Support

It is also possible to create a new APFS volume on the internal SSD & install the new OS there, but this requires at least 100GB+ of Free storage space just for the barebones macOS installation. Most people probably don't have enough Free space to install all their apps, much less migrate their data. Once the test is over, delete the new APFS volume & upgrade your original older macOS installation. FYI, ignore the "Available" storage value shown every where in macOS since "Available" is not synonymous with Free. The Free storage value is only shown in Disk Utility.

Also, for most people there is no reason to immediately jump into a new major OS upgrade. There are always problems at the launch of a new OS since companies just cannot wait until the bugs are ironed out since the Internet is available to push out fixes at any time....so what if things break for people. I won't upgrade until at least the x.1 or x.2 release at the earliest, and only after seeing if there are any wide spread issues & confirming all my third party apps & my workflows are all compatible with the new OS. Tahoe certainly has a lot of graphical/visual bugs for an OS which is so focused on its new visual look & style. That really says a lot about Apple releasing Tahoe like this.

And before anyone says anything about the cloud. I DO NOT USE THE CLOUD!!!!! It would be nice if Apple kept it easy to not use it without jumping through hoops to make sure it is all turned off. But that is a different rant for a different day.

FYI, I only use Contacts & Messages on my Mac so I do not log into my AppleID as such during setup or within the System Settings to avoid having everything activated & syncing automatically. I launch the Messages app & authenticate with my AppleID which only activates Messages. I agree everything should not be automatically enabled since there are potential privacy & security risks involved, but Apple these days is only about simple personal non-business use of their products.