High Sierra macOS freezing and stops

Open Activity Monitor in Applications/Utilities. You'll need to keep this running in the background. If you Mac is frozen, you won't be able to view unless you can leave it where the window is visible.

While in the Activity Monitor, under View in the Menu bar, select All Processes.

Select the CPU column.

In this example, TextEdit was frozen but not other apps. I've seen com.apple.preferences.icloud.remoteservice not only take high CPU, but also take over 16GB of memory. My computer was wedged until the process was complete.

If you note the exact time, you can send a bug report to Apple and include the time in your report, it can help them track down the problem in your report.

BugReporter http://bugreporter.apple.com

Free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) account needed for BugReporter. Setup a free account

http://developer.apple.com/programs/register/

How to attach a sysdiagnose to send Bug Report

Mac OS X Feedback (no account needed)

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

Downgrading is not a simple process and reverting depends on your backups. If you have a SSD drive and it was converted to APFS, the drive has to be erased and reformatted as HFS+. If you have a HHD (rotational) drive, the process is easier.

Revert to previous version:

The Recovery HD partition will re-install the most current version of OS X that is currently installed on the Mac, whereas Internet Recover will re-install the version of OS X that originally came with the Mac.

Newer Mac Models can go directly to Internet Recovery by using Command+Option+R or Shift-Option-Command-R boot shortcut.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

macOS Sierra: Revert to a previous macOS version

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25593

If your Mac is using OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later, you can also use this method to start up from your Time Machine backup disk. Startup Manager identifies your Time Machine backup as ”EFI Boot.”

Hold down the Option key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.

Release the Option key when you see the Startup Manager window.

Choose “EFI Boot” as the startup disk.

If you have a Time Machine backup see instructions here:

How to Downgrade macOS High Sierra

If you don't have a Time Machine backup see instructions here:

How to Re-Install OS X with Internet Recovery on a Mac

How to downgrade from macOS High Sierra back to macOS Sierra

https://www.imore.com/how-downgrade-macos

If it were me, I'd try this first:

Remove any devices attached to computer.

Reset PRAM (Command Option P R) - allow it to chime three or four times.

Then try & do a SAFE BOOT.

If your able to get in, then;

Remove any 3rd party login items.

Also, try turning off the keyboard brightness in low light, go to preferences, under keyboard it's the top tic - then hit your brightness on the keypad until its no light.

Reboot.

I also have this exact problem.

MacBook Pro

Retina 15", early 2013

i7 2.7Ghz

16GB RAM / 512 HDD

HD Graphics 4000 1.5Go + GT 650M 1Go

I'll add some research I've done :

• On reddit, I found many users that seems to have this issue as well - with GT 650M. Nvidia released some drivers for High Sierra. I installed them but no kudos - still crashing.
• I have various UI glitches on applications using Chrome / Electron (like Slack / Spotify / Visual Studio Code )

  It was an issue on High Sierra but Chromium team seems to have fixed this now.

• As long as I don't plug in my dual screen, the problem rarely happen ( actually never ).
• It seems like when the computer needs extra GPU power, it boots the nVidia card and crashes an hour or so after.

So ... yeah, it might be related to high GPU usage, which triggers the nVidia.

Do you use intensive computational applications like iMovie / Sony Vegas or something like that ?

I'll take anything that could possibly fix this issue, I'm working without my dual-screen and it's killing me.

The following suggestions are possibilities that could be playing a part in the stalls.

You mentioned Handoff.... In System Preferences > General, there is a check box to turn off handoff.

Other possibilities:

System Preferences > Energy Saver - uncheck App Nap

System Preferences > Mission Control - uncheck automatically rearrance spaces, when switching to an application and displays have separate spaces

Remove/unmount any external drives except Time Machine

Not sure if changing this preference will help the stalls, but this will help performance on older Macs.

System Preferences > Accessibility > Display

Check Reduce motion

Increase contrast (this will also check reduce transparency)

Year ago I upgraded my MacBook Pro 15" 2014 Mid with Kingston 1Tb SSD using some thirdparty adapter M.2 PCI-E SSD => Apple PCI-E SSD and since then I experienced freezes once a week or so. All freezes had same symptoms as described here: rainbow ball and nothing can't be clicked. Sometimes background music was playing as well. None of resets/reboots/checks helped me. Sometimes it booted properly, sometimes not, until a month ago I replaced adapter with new one that had a better quality. Freezes are gone. All this was observed on Sierra and High Sierra as well.

My case definitely related to storage subsystem and not caused by system upgrade, but symptoms are pretty similar, so this could be a point to similar roots.

BTW, in past I had a problems once I disabled a swap file as I thought 16gb is enough to not have a swap file. I was wrong. Disabling a swap lead me to unstable system. Have you disabled it? As I know many users disabling it, since they care about SSD lifetime. Perhaps High Sierra has some internal changes that heavily rely on swap file and its absence could cause problems? This is just assumption, but should be checked as well and it also related to disk subsystem.

A friend of mine bought a new MacBook Pro properly formatted to APFS and High Sierra has no problems at all and runs like a rocket ship. Since I erased the SSD and re-loaded High Sierra to the now properly formatted SSD drive High Sierra is now flawless on my Mac Pro 5.1. and faster than any OS X system I've had. This is after 20 or more hours of heavy use.. Carbon Copy Cloner is the only way I see to do this and save all your data..

I believe the problem is in the live re-formatting to APFS of the drive when using the Apple update, for some reason that update scrambles the data to where stalls and slow text, crashes are the norm.. I understand everyone does not have the resources to boot from another drive and erase their internal drive to install a new High Sierra system with all the original personal data. I can envision long lines in the future at the Apple stores for an erase and cloned data re-format on many thousands of computers...

I'd first try Apple Diagnostics Test.

Whether you have it installed, or willing to install it, or try through D or Option+D (immediately on boot.)

Sometimes, the system APPEARS to be fully functional, and there is a sensor going out and this type of thing can happen, it also happens on anything SMC related... ie sleep wake or other issues. If it is a part like that, Apple's solution will be to replace the whole thing - if your system is too old, you might want to look into component level repair services for the fix... get some one with a warranty.

Respectfully, it's just not believable that so many people would suddenly have some kind of hardware failure coincidental with the upgrade to High Sierra, especially since a number of them have successfully fixed the issue by back-grading their Macs to earlier versions of the OS.

To give an update on my personal experience, I have seen a drastic reduction in pauses/freezes since following Bone1971's recommendation to delete old entries in Library/LaunchAgents and Library/LaunchDaemon folders. I didn't delete all - just items which were obviously left over from old/outdated/unused software.

To clarify, in my case the target remote TM drive is not APFS (it's an older machine that hasn't changed). But when I upgraded the client (desktop, iMac) to High Sierra time machine backups caused the client machine to go nuts making local snapshots and freezing the whole system for long periods of time. Turning off time machine and manually removing the local snapshots has (temporarily) solved the problem.

I finally broke down and called support. They suggested I reset the SMC. I've done this and haven't noticed a problem since (YMMV).

How to reset the SMC on Mac desktop computers

1. Choose Apple menu > Shut Down.
2. After your Mac shuts down, unplug the power cord.
3. Wait 15 seconds.
4. Plug the power cord back in.
5. Wait 5 seconds, then press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

Hi People,

I try just to find at least one thing that everybody here hasn't tried yet, so don't feel you obliged to tell me if it is stupid or irrelevant...

(moreover I hate that, and I'm particularly rancorous...)

So...

You can try to start once in Safe Mode.

In addition of doing what it has been invented for, the Safe Mode clears out the system caches, and deletes the dynamic loader cache, which is a known suspect, see often guilty, implied in many display problems. When you restart afterward in normal mode, a lot of unexplicable things may perfectly have been solved.

And, in any case, the last "stable" macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65) seems to me (unusually) actually stable, indeed...

Regards.

Just a quick update. It's been several days since I rebooted into standalone and then rebooted normally. I have yet to see the freezing problem. For completeness, I did select "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency" (in System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display) so I cannot be certain the boot into standalone mode is entirely responsible for the "fix".

I fix my problem with slow responses and freezes. I copy everything I want to my external hdd and then did format of hdd. After that I install Sierra and then last update. NO HIGH SIERRA. and everything is very good. System is very fast, battery looks better.

Ok it did not help I guess.

Maybe it's a problem with the WIFI-driver.

Now I use my phone as connection and it is back.