All Apple Apps (Mail,Safari,Calendar, etc.) do not respond. Over the last week it has been on and off, going to Activity Monitor more and more. Periods where they all don't respond have only grown more annoying and longer. Any help or tips on how to solve this will be very appreciated.
Thank You!
MacBook Pro Running El Capitan
MacBook Pro with Retina display, iOS 7.0.4
Any error message?
No errors. Cursor just spins, it has been opening a frozen empty window. Sometimes it's just he cursor spinning. Then I have to force quit.
Please launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take an action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.
If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.
Hope I followed the instructions clearly. Let me know if there is more needed.
Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem.
Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.
Everything worked in Safe Mode and after restart. It has happened before in the past week where I restart, every app works, then they stop responding after some time passes.
1. This procedure is a diagnostic test. It changes nothing, for better or worse, and therefore will not, in itself, solve the problem. But with the aid of the test results, the solution may take a few minutes, instead of hours or days.
The test works on OS X 10.8 ("Mountain Lion") and later. I don't recommend running it on older versions of OS X. It will do no harm, but it won't do much good either.
Don't be put off by the complexity of these instructions. The process is much less complicated than the description. You do harder tasks with the computer all the time.
2. If you don't already have a current backup, please back up all data before doing anything else. The backup is necessary on general principle, not because of anything in the test procedure. Backup is always a must, and when you're having any kind of trouble with the computer, you may be at higher than usual risk of losing data, whether you follow these instructions or not.
There are ways to back up a computer that isn't fully functional. Ask if you need guidance.
3. Below are instructions to run a UNIX shell script, a type of program. As I wrote above, it changes nothing. It doesn't send or receive any data on the network. All it does is to generate a human-readable report on the state of the computer. That report goes nowhere unless you choose to share it. If you prefer, you can act on it yourself without disclosing the contents to me or anyone else.
You should be wondering whether you can believe me, and whether it's safe to run a program at the behest of a stranger. In general, no, it's not safe and I don't encourage it.
In this case, however, there are ways for you to decide whether the program is safe without having to trust me. First, you can read it. Unlike an application that you download and click to run, it's transparent, so anyone who understands the code can verify what it does.
You may not be able to understand the script yourself. But variations of it have been posted on this website many times over a period of years. Any one of the millions of registered users could have read the script and raised the alarm if it was harmful. Then I would not be here now and you would not be reading this message. See, for example, this discussion.
Nevertheless, if you can't satisfy yourself that these instructions are safe, don't follow them. Ask for other options.
4. Here's a general summary of what you need to do, if you choose to proceed:
☞ Copy the text of a particular web page (not this one) to the Clipboard.
☞ Paste into the window of another application.
☞ Wait for the test to run. It usually takes a few minutes.
☞ Paste the results, which will have been copied automatically, back into a reply on this page.
These are not specific instructions; just an overview. The details are in parts 7 and 8 of this comment. The sequence is: copy, paste, wait, paste again. You don't need to copy a second time.
5. Try to test under conditions that reproduce the problem, as far as possible. For example, if the computer is intermittently slow, run the test during a slowdown.
You may have started up in safe mode. If the system is now in safe mode and works well enough in normal mode to run the test, restart as usual before running it. If you can only test in safe mode, do that.
6. If you have more than one user, and only one user is affected by the problem,, and the affected user is not an administrator, then please run the test twice: once while logged in as the affected user, and once as an administrator. The results may be different. The user that is created automatically on a new computer when you start it for the first time is an administrator. If you can't log in as an administrator, test as the affected user. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this section doesn’t apply. Don't log in as root.
7. Load this linked web page (on the website "Pastebin.") Press the key combination command-A to select all the text, then copy it to the Clipboard by pressing command-C.
8. Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name ("Terminal") into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Click anywhere in the Terminal window to activate it. Paste from the Clipboard into the window by pressing command-V, then press return. The text you pasted should vanish immediately.
9. If you're logged in as an administrator, you'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You will not see the usual dots in place of typed characters. Make sure caps lock is off. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you make three failed attempts to enter the password, the test will run anyway, but it will produce less information. If you don't know the password, or if you prefer not to enter it, just press return three times at the password prompt. Again, the script will still run.
If the test is taking much longer than usual to run because the computer is very slow, you might be prompted for your password a second time. The authorization that you grant by entering it expires automatically after five minutes.
If you're not logged in as an administrator, you won't be prompted for a password. The test will still run. It just won't do anything that requires administrator privileges.
10. The test may take a few minutes to run, depending on how many files you have and the speed of the computer. A computer that's abnormally slow may take longer to run the test. While it's running, a series of lines will appear in the Terminal window like this:
Test started
Part 1 of 4 done at: … sec
…
Part 4 of 4 done at: … sec
The test results are on the Clipboard.
Please close this window.
The intervals between parts won't be exactly equal, but they give a rough indication of progress.
Wait for the final message "Please close this window" to appear—again, usually within a few minutes. If you don't see that message within about 30 minutes, the test probably won't complete in a reasonable time. In that case, press the key combination control-C or command-period to stop it. Then go to the next step. You'll have incomplete results, but still something.
In order to get results, the test must either be allowed to complete or else manually stopped as above. If you close the Terminal window while the test is still running, the partial results won't be saved.
11. When the test is complete, or if you stopped it manually, quit Terminal. The results will have been saved to the Clipboard automatically. They are not shown in the Terminal window. Please don't copy anything from there. All you have to do is start a reply to this comment and then paste by pressing command-V again.
At the top of the results, there will be a line that begins with the words "Start time." If you don't see that, but instead see a mass of gibberish, you didn't wait for the "close this window" message. Please wait for it and try again.
If any private information, such as your name or email address, appears in the results, anonymize it before posting. Usually that won't be necessary.
12. When you post the results, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the software that runs this website. Please post the test results on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.
If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.
13. When you're done with the test, it's gone. There is nothing to uninstall or clean up.
14. This is a public forum, and others may give you advice based on the results of the test. They speak for themselves, not for me. The test itself is harmless, but whatever else you do may not be. For others who choose to run it, I don't recommend that you post the test results on this website unless I asked you to.
15. The linked UNIX shell script bears a notice of copyright. Readers of ASC may copy it for their own personal use. Neither the whole nor any part may be redistributed.
The results from the diagnostic test:
A
There is not enough free space on the startup volume. It may be running out of space intermittently.
For information about the Other category in the Storage display, please see this support article. If the display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
In Photos:
File ▹ Show Recently Deleted ▹ Delete All
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space. A common waste of space is old iTunes backups of mobile devices. As illustrated in this support article, select the Devices tab in the iTunes preferences window, select the backups you want to delete, and click Delete Backups. Keep at least one backup of each device that you still use.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later.
Deleting files inside a photo or iTunes library will corrupt the library. Changes to such a library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install the app in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
security execute-with-privileges /A*/OmniDiskSweeper.app/*/M*/* 2>&-
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password.
The application window will open behind other open windows. When you scan a volume, the window will eventually show all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.
B
The symbol cache is very large. It stores data used in logs and crash reports, and it may have grown because it's corrupt. The cache is created automatically, and if deleted, it should be recreated when you restart the computer. Initially, at least, it will be a lot smaller.
I've seen one unverified report that a system became unbootable when the cache was deleted. That would have been due to a corrupt installation of OS X, but you should be prepared to reinstall if necessary. There is no reason to panic as long as you have good backups.
Back up all data before proceeding.
Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)
from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item named "com.apple.coresymbolicationd" selected. Move the selected item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator login password. Restart the computer and empty the Trash.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, select the line below and copy it to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
/System/Library/Caches
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.
A folder named "Caches" should open. Inside it is a subfolder named "com.apple.coresymbolicationd". Move that subfolder to the Trash, restart, and empty.
C
These system modifications may do something useful to you, but any or all could be contributing to the problem:
DisplayLink
Fitbit Connect
If you want to keep them, do a trial removal to find out whether they're at fault, and refer to the developers for support if they are. Some or all may need to be updated.
Any third-party software that doesn't install from the App Store or by drag-and-drop into the Applications folder, and uninstall by drag-and-drop to the Trash, is a system modification.
Whenever you remove system modifications, they must be removed completely, and the only way to do that is to use the uninstallation tool, if any, provided by the developers, or to follow their instructions. If the software has been incompletely removed, you may have to re-download or even reinstall it in order to finish the job.
I never install system modifications myself, and except as stated in this comment, I don't know how to uninstall them. You'll have to do your own research to find that information.
Here are some general guidelines to get you started. Suppose you want to remove something called “BrickMyMac” (a hypothetical example.) First, consult the product's Help menu, if there is one, for instructions. Finding none there, look on the developer's website, say www.brickmymac.com. (That may not be the actual name of the site; if necessary, search the Web for the product name.) If you don’t find anything on the website or in your search, contact the developer. While you're waiting for a response, download BrickMyMac.dmg and open it. There may be an application in there such as “Uninstall BrickMyMac.” If not, open “BrickMyMac.pkg” and look for an Uninstall button. The uninstaller might also be accessed by clicking the Customize button, if there is one.
Back up all data before making any changes.
You will generally have to restart the computer in order to complete an uninstallation. Until you do that, there may be no effect, or unpredictable effects.
If you can’t remove software in any other way, you’ll have to erase and install OS X. Never install any third-party software unless you're sure you know how to uninstall it; otherwise you may create problems that are very hard to solve.
Trying to remove complex system modifications by hunting for files by name often will not work and may make the problem worse. The same goes for "utilities" such as "AppCleaner" and the like that purport to remove software.
D
Please back up all data before proceeding.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/SIMBL.osax
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)
from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator login password. Log out or restart the computer and empty the Trash.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.
E
If there's no improvement after all the above steps, disconnect the external display and run without it for a while.
F
From the menu bar, please select
▹ System Preferences... ▹ Network
If the Network preference pane is locked, click the lock icon in the lower left corner and enter your password to unlock it. Then click
Advanced... ▹ TCP/IP ▹ Configure IPv6: Automatically
If that's already the setting, change it to something else, then change it back. Click OK and then Apply.
Mac Apps Keep Crashing
