Golden Gate not syncing with iCloud Contacts

break7bg wrote:

<Updated Etrecheck Report with Full Disk Access.log>

Several issues from your Etrecheck report:

Antivirus software: Apple, Avira, and Malwarebytes

Red flag here for Avira anti-virus. That should be 100% UNINSTALLED using an uninstaller from the provider. You may have to search for leftover remnants from that software.

Malwarebytes is likely ok but should be uninstalled also to try to provide a clean reference system. It can be reinstalled later. But I suggest NOT using its VPN (or any VPN) and also turning off its automatic background checking.

System Extensions:

AdBlock VPN Tunnel - version 4.0.6 (App Store - installed 2026-08-20)

Application: /Applications/AdBlock.app - version 4.0.6 (App Store - installed 2026-09-06)

Description: AdBlock requires this extension to create a VPN tunnel for ad blocking.

Another VPN, should be completely UNINSTALLED.

Malwarebytes Engine - version 5.27.1 (Malwarebytes Corporation - installed 2026-10-01)

Application: /Applications/Malwarebytes.app - version 5.27.1 (Malwarebytes Corporation - installed 2026-10-01)

Description: The Malwarebytes Engine extension manages your connection to the Malwarebytes VPN service.

The VPN here should also be deactivated. I don't know how it is mechanized so to be safe, completely uninstall Malwarebytes for now, it can be re-installed later, but I suggest without its VPN and without automatic background checking. Malwarebytes even in minimal mode scans every day, you will be quite safe without all that other stuff.

DuckDuckGo VPN Network Extension - version 1.210.0 (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2026-10-07)

Application: /Applications/DuckDuckGo.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DuckDuckGo VPN.app - version 1.210.0 (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2026-10-07)

Description: DuckDuckGo VPN

So now I count at least three VPNs. Even if not active or running, these multiple installations can create conflicts.

All VPNs should be completely uninstalled (unless required and custom configured by an employer or school). These interfere with all kinds of network/internet functions on Macs and lo and behold, you are experiencing iCloud issues with syncing and with FindMyMac.

IMPORTANT: you are experiencing anomalies in your network and connection to the internet ... e.g. Contacts not syncing and other issues (Find My Mac not working). All these VPNs might be falling over one another and certainly interfering with normal Mac network and system operations. Plus that anti-virus on top of it all, I am not surprised you are being blocked somehow in some of your cloud functionalities.

Kernel Extensions:

/Library/Extensions

FileAccessControl.kext - com.avira.kext.FileAccessControl (1.2.5 - SDK 10.9)

Huge problem having anti-virus like this on a Mac. It might be blocking your icloud functions or somehow combining with all those VPNs to interfere.

Other stuff still showing in the Etrecheck report, these things are still present and can impact functionality even when not loaded. All of these items should be 100% completely uninstalled and removed:

User Login Items:

[Not Loaded] CleanMyMac_5_HealthMonitor (MacPaw Way Ltd - installed 2026-09-25)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/CleanMyMac_5.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/CleanMyMac_5_HealthMonitor.app

[Not Loaded] CleanMyMac_5_Menu (MacPaw Way Ltd - installed 2026-09-25)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/CleanMyMac_5.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/CleanMyMac_5_Menu.app

[Not Loaded] DuckDuckGo Personal Information Removal (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2026-10-07)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/DuckDuckGo.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DuckDuckGo Personal Information Removal.app

[Not Loaded] DuckDuckGo VPN (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2026-10-07)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/DuckDuckGo.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DuckDuckGo VPN.app

CleanMyMac is still active! This can be poison for the macOS. See below:

Plugins:

[Loaded] CleanMyMac_5_AppIntentsExtension - /Applications/CleanMyMac_5.app

[Loaded] Intents - /Applications/WhatsApp.app

Finder sync extensions:

[Not Loaded] CleanMyMac_5_FinderSyncExtension - /Applications/CleanMyMac_5.app

Ancient internet plug ins, probably not the cause but who knows, these are non-functional and should be uninstalled:

Internet Plug-ins:

RL Secure Plug-In Layer: (? - installed 2014-02-21)

OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: 12.3.6 (? - installed 2013-03-19)

Silverlight: 5.1.50428.0 (? - installed 2016-08-03)

Very slow read and write disk speeds for an SSD. Should be 2x as fast as what you are getting. This could be due to interference from the antivirus or real time checking of Malwarebytes or some combination of those questionable extensions, VPNs, etc. I pointed out above, including the pieces that are left over from CleanMyMac.

Write speed: 1865 MB/s

Read speed: 2793 MB/s

break7bg wrote:

used Terminal to search for any remaining pieces of Avira

Not sure what commands in Terminal you used. It needs to be able to search through the user Library folders and also some directories or folders that may be hidden. FindAnyFile does search those places if you instruct it to.

All gone. My next step is to uninstall Clean My Mac, if you believe this is the issue. I have used CMM on both mine and my wife's laptops for ages with no symptoms of anything bad. Mt Mac had been running very smoothly until this incident of not Finding itself. I even log into iCloud to see if my Mac is there. It tells me to turn on Find My Mac on iCloud, too.

CleanMyMac is not guaranteed to be the cause of this problem, but something installed is (new Macs without things installed don't exhibit this problem). CMM is one of the more notorious apps as can be seen from searching Apple Discussions, thousands of posts reporting operational problems with Macs caused by CMM. It sometimes has been known to "clean" out computers by deleting files that should not be deleted, and their absence then interferes with proper functions. This sometimes is not seen until a seemingly minor OS update or security update occurs, and then the absence of those files/folders becomes problematic.

Should I uninstall CMM? I know there is an uninstall program that come with CMM. I will use it should you advise. I will reboot after cleaning all of that. Then, try settings, again?

I would absolutely uninstall CMM. Also, uninstall all the VPNs (you had several, some were loaded, some were not loaded, but all should be removed, preferably uninstalled). Then reboot into Safe Mode, leave it in Safe Mode for 15-30 minutes, then reboot normally. Then see if Contacts will sync and FindMyMac works.

You should also rerun Etrecheck and post an updated report. If things still aren't normal, there may be residual things to take care of that Etrecheck might show.

If, after all that, it's still not right, then, if it were my Mac, I would make at least two backups on reliable media, test those backups to make sure they have all your files and that a few sample or random files and folders can be properly restored from them, and then completely wipe/reset the Mac as per

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Then you will be left with a like-new Mac with a fresh OS but nothing else. On first boot up, it will offer to migrate from a backup. I would migrate only user accounts and files, but nothing else, no settings, no apps, no misc items. Then, I would check for normal Contacts sync and FindMyMac. If somehow those still don't work, then you would need to repeat the wipe as per Apple link above but then, instead of migrating from the backup, you would need to manually copy your user files from the backup over to the new system, which is much more laborious and hopefully won't be needed. In that case, having one of those backups be a "clone" type backup makes this much easier. SuperDuper is a cloning backup tool that comes with a free version you can use for this; the paid up version is also worth getting as it includes some extra features. Another cloning tool is Carbon Copy Cloner.

I have done this wipe/format and migration from a backup, it is fairly straightforward and does not take very long. Re-installing your paid for apps (Microsoft, Adobe ...) does take a little time and you will need your installation codes but I did it some years ago for an older MacBook Air that stopped booting after a security update. I had "inherited" that laptop from my daughter who had used it in college and who knows what she had installed on it or done to it. So it ran much smoother and faster after the wipe/migration. I migrated in that case from a Time Machine backup.

break7bg wrote:

We have discontinued various software, like "Clean My Mac," to determine if other software causes the issues. We even set up a TEST ID as an admin to see if that works. It did and it left my Find My Mac ON.

Seeing that "CleanMyMac" had been active in the past and only recently "discontinued" (what does that mean), that's very concerning. What other "tools" had been installed and active in the past? CMM can be damaging because in some of its "cleaning" activities, files can be deleted and remain deleted even when CMM is installed or turned off (discontinued?). Those missing files can interfere or prevent normal operating system functions.

The fact that the problem is gone with a new user is strong evidence that something that was installed by the original user has caused this issue. It is not an OS issue but rather a consequence of a user installation. It could have been CMM or perhaps something else.

Posting an Etrecheck report here might enable you to "crowd source" the problem as scores of readers here wth experience in these things may find what is causing it for your user account.

Otherwise, I would tend to agree with neuroanatomist that wiping/erasing the Mac back to its as new state and restoring user files (not settings and not apps) and then reinstalling afresh trusted apps might be the only way.

break7bg wrote:

This is what I had done personally before contacting Apple Support last night telling them: My MacBook Air M4 is signed into my Apple Account and appears in my Apple Account device list. Location Services, Find My Mac, Find My network, two-factor authentication, and Full Security are all enabled. But when I turn on Find My Mac, it says ON, and immediately after I click Done it changes back to OFF. The Mac does not appear in Find My on my iPhone or at iCloud.com/find. I spent an hour with Apple Support trying everything. Then, Apple Support told me to contact an Advisor today at Apple Support during business hours with this summary: My Mac won't enable Find My Mac. I've checked all settings, confirmed Location Services, and iCloud are ON, there are no profiles or restrictions, only one user, and no alerts. I've restarted several times (even from Safe Mode), but Find My Mac still turns OFF after clicking DONE.

I will be contacting them this afternoon.

This sounds like more than just the Contacts not syncing on the Mac ... it seems other aspects of iCloud and/or Apple ID (Apple account) are not working properly on that Mac. So far I see two problems: Contacts on the Mac not syncing; and Find My not working on the Mac.

Something else to try that might help: boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility First Aid on all volumes starting at the lowest level and working up to the highest level (hardware device level). This has to be done from Recovery so First Aid can work on the boot drive. But the most common fix is to log the device completely out of the Apple account (Apple ID) and then reboot and log back in. Running First Aid can fix some things that can also interfere.

Do you have any of the following (or things like any of the following) installed with third party (non-Apple) software (whether active or not):

• Anti-virus
• Network security tools
• Network monitoring tools
• VPN
• Custom DNS or other special router or network settings that are non-standard
• "Cleaning" tools (such as Clean My Mac)

It could be helpful for you to download and run Etrecheck and post the report here using

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

There are a number of experts reading this column and they may discern something you can change from that report that may help you resolve this.

FYI, I worked with Apple Support for 3 days and finally — finally — fixed this problem. I ended up having to erase my Mac and set up my profile again and then rebuild. Works fine now. The tech had me sign on with a second user profile and when I did so it synced the contacts perfectly, so he said I had to wipe everything because something was associated with my profile that was causing the jam. I still think it is related to the Golden Gate upgrade, but I got tired of waiting for a fix via a future update.

Follow the steps in this Apple Support article that specifically address iCloud syncing issues.

If your iCloud Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders won’t sync - Apple Support

break7bg wrote:

<Etrecheck Report on my Mac Air M4 2025.log>

Just ran this after cleaning most that I can find.

Good work on your part!

I still see these, so some residual pieces of Avira are still there (they can load at any time so "not loaded" is not reassuring), and you should remove those ancient plug ins that certainly no longer work.

Kernel Extensions: /Library/Extensions [Not Loaded] FileAccessControl.kext - com.avira.kext.FileAccessControl (1.2.5 - SDK 10.9)

Internet Plug-ins: RL Secure Plug-In Layer: (? - installed 2014-02-21) OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: 12.3.6 (? - installed 2013-03-19) Silverlight: 5.1.50428.0 (? - installed 2016-08-03)

Write speed: 2005 MB/s Read speed: 2820 MB/s

These write/read speeds should be well over 3000 MB/s. They still seem low to me, not sure how to interpret that. My 2019 MacBook Pro, an Intel machine that is much slower than your M4 laptop, gets over 3000 MB/s for write and read speeds when Etrecheck is run.

Terminal was used per your instructions

The Terminal instruction I provided was the one line command uninstaller from Avira (which apparently no longer works). What you will want to do is use FindAnyFile and instruct it to:

• Search for all files and folders that contain the string "Avira" in their name
• Search for all files and folders that have the string "Avira" in their contents

This will be two searches.

Be attentive to false positives that have nothing to do with this antivirus software.

Make sure you configure it to search in hidden folders and files. Have it do this with admin privileges.

I see this on Avira's web site: "Avira is part of Gen - a global company with a family of trusted brands"

The string "Gen" will probably generate zillions of hits in a search, however, most likely not relevant.

Are your iCloud functions still not working (FindMyMac; Contacts sync) on your Mac? Did you do the Safe Boot as I suggested?

break7bg wrote:

Please be patient. I want this solved as much as you do. But, I had other things to focus on this afternoon. I have not gone to the Safe mode, yet. The iCloud still tells me to try to set up Find My Mac. When I do, it still stays OFF. I will get that software you suggested and run it to clean up more. Then, I will empty Trash and reboot in Safe Mode to see what can be done as you suggested.

No worries!

When you get around to booting into Safe Mode, it might be instructive to see if the FindMy and Contacts sync work, while in Safe Mode.

I don't know a way to force sync contacts on a Mac. Sometimes in situations like this, rebooting into Safe Mode and then rebooting normally helps. In addition, you can on the Mac log out of your Apple ID/account, reboot, then log back in again, to see if that gets it back to normal.

break7bg wrote:

I I do that (log out of my Apple Id), my laptop tells me I lose all my Wallet Cards! Are you sure I should do that?

Yes, you would need to re-enter each wallet card to restore them after logging back in. I have done that myself multiple times and did not consider that a major thing. Presumably all that data is well known to you and would be easy to re-enter.

Since it sounds like you prefer not to do that, however, here is an alternate suggestion:

• Open Contacts on your Mac and choose File => Export and select an option to export your contacts as they appear on your Mac. This is just so you have a backup of what is there now.
• Close Contacts on the Mac.
• Go to System Settings and select your Apple ID/Account, go to iCloud and deselect Contacts. This is choosing "do not sync" for Contacts. You may see a warning about losing the iCloud contacts on your Mac when they are de-synced. This is why you should create a backup/archive in the previous steps.
• Close System Settings, and reboot into Safe Mode. Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support (NZ) The purpose of that is that Safe Mode clears out some of the caches, which might have stale data that could cause this type of problem. Sit in Safe Mode for 15 minutes or so.
• Reboot normally. Go back to System Settings and reactivate Contacts sync for your Mac. Report back on results.

For resolving sync issues typically—

Sign out of your Apple ID/Account /iCloud on the Mac and back in again and compare your results

Sign in to or out of your Apple Account on Mac - Apple Support

break7bg wrote:

I am pretty certain that I will need to go through that step of a clean swipe and start again as you say. This will probably happen today (or the next time they connect with me) as I wanted to give Apple a chance to identify the issue. Things are not dire, yet. I will let them walk me through erasing the Mac and steps going forward.

Typically once Apple ascertains that there is no hardware cause for the problem, it is assumed that either something user-installed, or perhaps some combination of things user-installed, or perhaps some aspect of the user configuration, is causing the problem.

The logic is as follows:

• No hardware issue, hardware is tested and believed to be fine
• Since 99.999% of millions of users do not experience the issue, the macOS itself is believed NOT to be the cause since it is common to all those users
• Therefore something installed or a configuration setting in the user account is the most likely cause
• Due to the difficulty in troubleshooting that, usually it is recommended to restore the computer to its pure state as when new, e.g., by following these instructions:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

This results in a "wiped" computer and the next step is to restore the user files. This can be done with Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant (or first boot up), or by manually copying user files for the Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Pictures etc. folders. Of course this requires a good backup (two should have been made for redundancy).

There is some manual effort involved in this restore, but it is not difficult at all. One does have to reinstall all non-Apple apps from scratch. Bringing installations, apps, and settings over from the backup may well reintroduce the problem into the new system.

Just a tip while you are working the problem. I just opened Safari and iCloud.com to my contacts page and then saved the link to my dock on my Mac and started using that instead of clicking my Contacts app. That way my contacts were available and synced on all my devices……

break7bg wrote:

I have not been able to set Find My Mac ON, yet.

So that means that the Mac is still being negatively impacted by something, possibly those Avira remnants, or something leftover from those other problematic apps that had been installed. Find My is fairly basic Apple device functionality, it is unacceptable that a user innocently installs an app meant to make things easier and instead they lose such key functionality. So more still needs to be done.

But, at least my Contacts are syncing.

That is certainly progress, but it shows that what happened to you with those antivirus and "cleaner" apps may be a combination of things and could be more complex than just deleting a few files.

I am using FAF and it finds a reference to Avira (two small folders) on iCloud. Each time I try to trash, FAF will not allow me to trash ... when rebooting, they come back.

Avira has polluted your iCloud? That's insidious. There are some things to try. (1) Log in to iCloud in a web browser and delete the files from there. Watch on your Mac to verify that they are gone there too. Empty the Trash. Then reboot and re-check. (2) Boot into Safe Mode and try to delete the files while in Safe Mode. (3) There are other more invasive steps one can take if (1) and (2) do not succeed but I would pause at that point. A wipe/reinstall might make more sense then because the corruption may be very difficult to remove. Realize that antivirus apps check anything being done on your Mac, including file activity in iCloud that involves files going to/from your Mac. This can slow down everything.

I have not tried rebooting in Safe Mode, yet. Any other recommendations before trying Safe Mode?

Safe Mode is benign, it just starts up your Mac with most third party software and extensions disabled. Safe Mode might even fix what residual issues you are seeing, but it might also enable you to permanently delete those files associated with the anti-virus. It would be helpful to see if both Contacts sync and FindMy work properly in Safe Mode.

I notice the errors for large CPU consumption. How do I address that?

Your write/read disk speeds are also still low. Those high cpu flags and slow disk performance are indicative of background processes still running that need to be rooted out. You could look at Activity Monitor but there is so much information in there and it changes constantly, so it is hard to interpret. I would wait on dealing with the high cpu issue until you have the cloud based functionality back and working (FindMy, etc.). I also assume all VPNs are UNINSTALLED, removed, those can absolutely slow down computer performance, especially the networking part.