Safari slow on Mac Mini after Tahoe 26.2

Sorry to be late getting back. Crazy week! Great job on getting the report nicely posted

Other than always being concerned about aftermarket stuff Like Nord, I see little else in the way of known interferences. Duck seems to have brought its own VPN . It shows "not running" but, if there is a way to remove its VPN, I'd try.

IHMO, at this point, it is important to either indict or eliminate Nord once and for all. Test with it disabled or removed. If nothing changes you can add it back. If things get better, we found the Golden Ticket,

Some subtle tidbits in the report that could be aftermarket related:

1️⃣ Drive performance: EtreCheck reports this:

Performance:

System Load: 3.00 (1 min ago) 2.93 (5 min ago) 2.53 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 0.85 MB/s

File system: 9.22 seconds

Write speed: 3273 MB/s

Read speed: 1914 MB/s ⚠️

I have a modest collection of EtreCheck Mac drive performance numbers across models, and the SSD in a M1/M2 model should be doing Writes and Reads at almost the same speeds, ±3200MB/sec. You Reads are more than 40% slower than Writes. I've seen "cleaning" apps do that but, regardless, that hints at aftermarket software interference.

The metrics ( File system: 9.22 seconds) are reporting your drive as healthy. Good.

2️⃣ CPU Usage:

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

WindowServer 19.08 % (Apple)

NordVPN 18.02 % (Nordvpn S.A.) ⚠️

AppleSpell 16.50 % (Apple)

EtreCheckPro 4.56 % (Etresoft, Inc.)

kernel_task 4.46 % (Apple)

That's almost 1/5 of your CPU capacity a the time of testing. When I worked in law enforcement, we called that a "clue."

3️⃣ From Diagnostics:

Diagnostics Information (past 60 days):

2026-01-15 21:18:19 Mail Crash (7 times)

First occurrence: 2026-01-12 18:59:27

Executable: /System/Applications/Mail.app

In my experience going back to the early days of the Apple Mail app, it has been very stable unless it "trips over something." I see only one suspicious "something."

4️⃣ Actually unrelated, but:

Backup:

Time Machine Not Configured!

PLEASE get Time Machine involved! In these days of solid-sate storage, having an external backup is more important than ever. With soldered-down components, if the logic board fails, you cannot simply move the SSD to a new logic board.

Anyway, again sorry the tardiness.

Allan

Welcome!

Starting with basics, have you installed any of these:

— Anti-virus software

— so-called "cleaning" apps or thos the promise to "optimize" you Mac

— client-side VPNs, the ones with all the TV adverts.

We are seeing many issues caused by those over-hyped client-side VPNs. Security experts warn against many as bringing effective or downright dangerous. If you need a VPN for work, your employer will make one available that is compatible with their corporate servers.

There is some evidence that having more than one ad blocker can slow Safari.

If you are not sure what is or is not installed, posting a system config report can help us better help you in this text-based setting. Fortunately, there is a safe. secure way to do that.

If you want a data-driven evaluation in this setting where we can neither see nor touch your computer, please post an EtreCheck report. We can quickly and within the limitations of these forums help you determine what issues are at play without our playing a protracted game of "20 Questions" with you that could go on for days. 

EtreCheck Pro is available here:

https://etrecheck.com/index

The free version will do nicely for this purpose, although the app is worthy of our financial support.

We can see hard data about drive performance, software issues and interferences, and RAM usage. Etrecheck is the development of a long-serving and trusted ASC contributor. It is a reporting app, not a "fix-it” app, expressly for displaying information in these forums to help us help you remotely. It will not reveal any personal or secure information.

Please see this excellent user tip on how to post long text reports like EtreCheck's into a forum response:

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

Please post the entire report. What seems insignificant to a new Etrecheck user can speak volumes to those of us who have reviewed thousands of those reports. 

You are most welcome!

I have all of my critical data files under one folder that I periodically back up to a thumb drive (and I have other backups of my photos elsewhere too).

Very good. Any backup is better than no backup, so I see that as good news. I'm OK with the thumb drive but would feel more warm and fuzzy if you had two—or three. Thumb drives don't age as well as some other devices. Were they all the backups I had for critical work, I would use at least two to have duplicate copies, and set a reminder to get new ones every couple of years.

I've been there and used thumb drives hung arong my necj before Time Machine was a thing. I suspec you have a workable system for your situations so I'm totally OK with that.

AJ