MacOS27 Golden Gate Cause Lagging on M1 Pro

256 GB Storage (240 GB in use).

^^ This is the problem, right here. ^^

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to run slow / beachball. 

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage – based on your post, you DO NOT. The absolute minimum is ~20-25 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. Terminology is important here – free space is not the same thing as available space. The one that matters is Free space, but what macOS shows in most places is Available space. Available space includes both free space and ‘purgeable’ space, the latter comprises system caches, snapshots and other data that macOS can delete if it decides more free space is needed. However, there is no way the user can force those data to be purged.

The place to check how much Free space you have is in Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it). For example, on my M4 MacBook Pro, the Storage settings pane and Get Info on the internal drive show 1.24 TB of Available space, whereas Disk Utility shows there is 1.15 TB of actual Free space, 90 GB less than ‘available’. Although 90 GB is a small fraction of my 2 TB internal storage, that would not be the case with 256 GB or 512 GB of internal storage.

Note that you can also see the Free space in the System Report (System Settings > General > About > System Report button, at the bottom > Storage). 

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

I'd pull up the Activity Monitor and watch Memory Pressure. 8GB of RAM is barely enough. I had an MBA with 8GB about three years ago. I ended up trading it in and getting an MBP with 16GB because I got tired of having to manage the memory.

If your memory pressure is in yellow, start closing out apps. If it hits red, restart. Make sure you don't have any apps set to launch automatically on log in.

Also, make sure that your version of Zoom is up to date. Sometimes, the automatic update fails on Zoom. You need to download the current version directly from the Zoom website.

Also remember that it can take several days for the Mac to complete background optimization after an update. Try leaving it open and connected to WiFi overnight. That should give it time to complete that while not competing with your attempts to work.

ME3364 wrote:

This is legitimately an issue. I have an M1 Pro with 16GB of memory and never had a problem with this before macos 27. We have a thread going on at work (fortune 100 company) in our mac users channel and it is a common theme, everyone is experiencing it.

Please Apple, listen and do something. It is annoying and a productivity killer.

What is 'legitimately an issue'? The OP in this thread had filled up the Mac's internal drive, which is a recipe for problems and is certainly a legitimate issue.

It's highly unlikely that there is a systemic macOS issue causing lagging in Golden Gate. Minor bugs, yes. But a pervasive issue? There were over one million users on the public beta for two months, and 10-15 million users now running it. Personally, it's been fine for me on my personal Mac (an M4 Pro MBP). My work Mac (an M1 Pro MBP) is still on Tahoe.

If you and every Mac user at your Fortune 100 company is experiencing lagging on Golden Gate, then most likely there is some utility/extension you all have installed as part of the company overlay that is causing the issue due to incompatibility. When I was a Mac user at a Fortune 100 company, IT would not allow anyone to update to an x.0 version of any macOS. It typically wasn't until x.1 or sometimes x.2 that the update would be rolled out.

As for Apple, they are not here. “We” are users like you and have no power to implement any suggestions. Apple employees are generally precluded from even reading these forums, with the exception of moderators who only monitor for compliance with the T&C.

To have Apple consider your feedback, submit it here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

trista255 wrote:

I’m having the same issue with 2021 M1 iMac. 8gb Ram. I still have plenty of storage over 80Gb. I’ve optimized everything i can. I’m using heavy chrome browser work for multitasking. Totally bogged down my system after golden gate update. Any ideas of a fix?

Chrome is a notorious resource hog on Macs. Installing it also installs multiple ‘helpers’ from Google that run in the background, and their purpose is not to help you but to help Google (keep in mind that Google’s primary source of revenue is using your data to drive targeted advertising). Even if you aren’t running the Chrome app, those system extensions are always running in the background. I’d recommend deleting Chrome and all related components.

https://chromeisbad.com

If you are looking for something other than Safari, consider Firefox or Brave (the latter is based on Chrome code but without the Google baggage).

Definitely, things take a few seconds to actually do. Even warning alerts are slow to pop up and the alert sound is delayed. It sometimes takes two or three clicks for it to register when you click on something. Like closing a window: Click... <nothing> click... <nothing> click... oh there it goes. If you don't hit it two or three times it won't work.

Also another thing, if you let the screen saver go and you're using Safari, when you come back all the tabs are blank, then they refresh which can be inconvenient as sometimes you are forced to log back into whatever website you were on.

This is legitimately an issue. I have an M1 Pro with 16GB of memory and never had a problem with this before macos 27. We have a thread going on at work (fortune 100 company) in our mac users channel and it is a common theme, everyone is experiencing it.

Please Apple, listen and do something. It is annoying and a productivity killer.

I’m having the same issue with 2021 M1 iMac. 8gb Ram. I still have plenty of storage over 80Gb. I’ve optimized everything i can. I’m using heavy chrome browser work for multitasking. Totally bogged down my system after golden gate update. Any ideas of a fix?

Thanks, but most of the folks in our channel are software engineers and have checked off all the basics. I read the thread and the folks I have talked to have well over a half gig of free space (most machines are deployed with 1TB SSD), myself included, so disk space isn't the issue.

I'm glad your M4 Pro works. It seems that most having the issue are on older hardware (M1, but have had people report it using M2 and M3 hardware as well).

Thanks for the tip on Apple not monitoring this.....this will be my last post in this thread. My point in posting was hoping that they would see this and do something, but that isn't the case so will cease and desist. However, I question why Apple would not want to monitor user feedback or would block support or most importantly, their product managers, from reviewing valuable feedback from their customers.

I didn't even consider the storage space... Excellent advice.

Really glad to hear you've got it working.