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

I have similar issue. Not the same as nico, but similar. When mac is under load, playing music or videos, the audio is crackling and breaking. Very annoying. Hope there will be a bugfix update soon...

FaceTime is laggy and iMessage spinning wheel is driving me to distraction. I'm not even playing music or videos. I'm in Word, have photos running, notes and apple mail. So tired of all the shiny sparky shenanigans. What's happening with my Apples?

Absolutely agree. Music app is glitching. This replacement of the playback bar from the top to the bottom of the app window is absolutely illogical (always difficult to fast forward the track and it is always gets mixed with the background. Moreover, there are hundreds of previously non-existent glitches in Music app itself (the first is that it now responds slow on MacBook Pro M3.

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im DONE with Mail. Apple made it really easy for me. I was already using a third party app for other email accounts. I started enjoying that experience more than Apple's Mail app. This just sealed the deal.

I've noticed the same problems after updating to MacOS26. My MacBook Pro M3 Pro became laggy when opening several apps, and sometimes everything just freezes, forcing me to restart the computer. When this happened only Mail, Messages and WhatsApp were open. Are there any solutions to this?

That's a quick fix but the auto fill and password key is not working now. I should have reviewed the bugs before downloading the Tahoe OS update. These challenges negatively affect productivity and business use. Apple developers should warn users of the potential challenges before making it available. Points to Apple products being user-centric and not great for corporate environments.

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

I have been seeing the beach ball more in the last couple days since upgrading.

Most apps are OK performance-wise (have not pushed too many too hard just yet) , but Maps is extremely slow to load; much slower than previously on Sonoma and my iPhone for that matter:

Maps Very Slow (macOS Tahoe) - Apple Community

Fingers crossed these performance issues are fixed in next Tahoe minor update.

Luis, you are probably correct about Intel Macs. (I'm using the last high-end Intel iMac from 2020.) However, not all flaws with Tahoe are performance related. For example, why does the TV app no longer show names for episodes? I've been a Mac owner since 1984 -- when the 128K model came out -- and have seen issues in many upgrades. However, in my opinion, Tahoe is the worst upgrade I have ever experienced. This obsession with annual updates is ridiculous. And Apple needs to quit putting efforts into the Vision POS and making sure normal macOS, iOS, and iPadOS users get a proper user experience. I hate the thought of reverting to Sequoia -- and I have never before had to go back to a previous system -- but I am seriously thinking about it. If I weren't so deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem, I would even consider a Windows computer.

After upgrading to Tahoe both my mac laptops began loading webpages so slowly, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds. Safari or Chrome, it doesn't matter. I have an m3 pro with 36 gb of memory. My internet connection is fiber. I'm used to pages loading in seconds. I hope there's a quick fix

I'm glad you started the thread! Having followed some of the guidance I've found here, basically only FaceTime is causing an issue. At the very worst there are lags which culminate in my USB-C drives and hub being disconnected. Logitech webcam goes offline. The drives come back but the webcam doesn't. This is on an M2 Mac mini.

This update made my Mac completely unusable, everything takes long to load, some apps don’t even load. I just want to go back to my old OS and delete this. Why would they release an update that is going to completely destroy devices what a waste of time.

I'm on an M4 Air with Tahoe 26.01. Tried Tony's trick and the issue is the same. Random freezes that last for 2-5 seconds.

When it does happen, it seems to refresh the pages on open app windows etc. REALLY frustrating when trying to work!

Tony - This has worked for me (so far). Although I haven't let it run as long as others who commented favorably about your suggestion, I got greatly improved performance. If Apple will fix the other problems people have observed (such as missing titles within Genres in the TV app), we might be getting somewhere.