High Sierra macOS freezing and stops

First backup your data as a clone backup.

Software used to Clone:

• CarbonCopyCloner http://www.bombich.com/download.html (All options are available free for 30 days)
• SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ (Free forever to do an erase and install. Purchased version allows for smart updates and schedules)

Boot into recovery drive using third option.

• command R to reinstall the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version

• option command R to upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac

• shift option command R to reinstall the macOS that came with your Mac, or the version closest to it that is still available

1. Use Disk Utility to Erase your drive as HFS+ Mac OS Extended Journaled. This will erase all data on your drive.
2. Select to reinstall macOS that came with your Mac.
3. Boot into your new clean install. You will not be able to use migration, but you can manually drag over your data from your clone.

Although this is off-topic to the original post, I felt it was important to set the record straight, so I just ran the following test to verify that Time Machine does in fact backup and restore passwords stored in the Keychain. Here is what I did:

1. Verified iCloud Keychain was turned off and no password manager was active.
2. Went to a website in Safari for which a password was stored (in Safari/Keychain), and logged in there using the stored password.
3. Launched Keychain Access, and verified that the password was stored there.
4. Went to Safari Preferences -> Passwords, typed in my Keychain password, then found and deleted the entry for the aforementioned website.
5. Switched to Keychain Access.app and verified that the password was no longer stored there.
6. Quit both Safari and Keychain Access.
7. Navigated to ~/Library and moved the Keychains folder to the Desktop. Immediately got a message that iCloud login was disabled.
8. Using Time Machine, restored the ~/Library/Keychains folder from an earlier snapshot.
9. Logged out and back in (not sure if this step was necessary).
10. Launched Keychain Access, verified that the password entry was restored.
11. Launched Safari, went to Safari Preferences -> Passwords and verified that the entry was restored.
12. Navigated to website and logged in with the restored password.

Don't believe me? Try it yourselves. Let me know what you find out.

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.

You cannot use an APFS formatted drive as a TM destination.

Can APFS be used with Time Machine, Boot Camp, and File Vault? | Other World Computing BlogTime Machine and APFS: What You Need to Know - The Mac Observer

• An APFS formatted SSD will backup just fine to an HFS+ spinning disk drive.
• Only format SSD drives as APFS.
• Do NOT format your Time Machine drive as APFS. Currently Time Machine only works with HFS+.
• Do not encrypt an external drive. There is a bug that will convert an external drive formatted as HFS+ that is encrypted to convert it to APFS.
• Boot Camp cannot currently read from or write to APFS-formatted volume

Try disabling any third party apps. I found that I had some apps that would cause this.

• Log out under the Apple in the Menu bar.
• Log in with the Shift key down. (Enter your password then hold down Shift before hitting Enter)
• This should disable most login items. If you still see any apps in the Menu bar, I suggest you quit those as well. Most likely it's a menu bar item.
• Test for the problem.

If it goes away, then go into System Preferences > Users & Groups and remove all login items. Add back one at a time if you are unable to previously identify which process is the problem. For me it was DefaultFolderX (later fixed in an update). Quitting the app caused the freezes to go away for me. It's important that all apps are updated!!

Hope this helps!

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.

I think it's worth noting that there are two major issues that are being reported:

1. Temporary freezes that only last a few seconds
2. Permanent freezes that require a power down

On my 2013 Mac Pro, I was only experiencing the latter. I have been running 10.13.4 since beta 5, and since then, I have not encountered any freezes for the past two or three weeks *fingers-crossed*.

Hi,

Try to restart 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.

Regards.

Hello:

I've been looking at this for quite a while, and here are my few thoughts:

• Those with display freezes/reboots on the Early 2013 Mac Pro should consider whether they have faulty graphics cards - there's a lot of it about. See this thread for pages and pages of discussion: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-late-2013-gpu-driver-issues.1860297
• I have the display stalling on my 2015 MacBook Pro. Never happened with 10.10/10.11/10.12 - only happened after I had upgraded to 10.13.
• Each new release of 10.13 seems to reduce the problem a little - but it still happens. I can almost 100% count on it happening when I wake my machine up, or press an iTunes keyboard button (which brings up a HUD overlay). As long as I leave it a minute or two, the system generally then carries on as normal.
• I see a lot of WindowServer CPU usage. Admittedly, I have a LOT of windows open - but many of them are minimised or hiding behind other windows - which I thought should allow them to nap, and not take up significant resources.
• I had high WindowServer CPU usage on 10.12 too - but I thought one of the big benefits of 10.13 was that WindowServer was moved onto Metal - so I would expect the CPU usage to be lower than in previous versions. Definitely doesn't reliably seem to be that way.
• I have my MacBook Pro display scaled one notch towards 'More Space' in System Preferences>Displays - I wonder if this is a factor that Apple aren't testing towards?
• I also usually run with an external (non-Retina) display attached. Today (under 10.13.6) that seemed to cause my kernel_task process to run with ~400% CPU usage - unplugging the display reduced it back to ~10% again. However, I definitely get the display stalling even without the external display attached.

All in all, I strongly suspect this issue is due to a bad rewrite of WindowServer to move it onto Metal. I've tried multiple reinstalls of the OS over the top of my current install to resolve, and removed as many background launchers as I can do without - but nothing has helped consistently. Unfortunately I've got to use my machine as my day-to-day workhorse, so I cannot nuke it from orbit and start again from scratch. As the problem has lessened over time, it's become less compelling to try major surgery - especially as no-one else seems to have reported consistent success yet.

Something is still badly wrong here. :-(

Similar problem here -- MacBook Pro 10,1 (mid-2012), i7, 16Gb -- but happens with no media of any kind playing. The mouse cursor usually remains responsive in the sense that I can move it around, but there's no response to mouse clicks or keyboard input. Never saw this problem prior to the High Sierra upgrade.

I've also tried to log in from a remote machine via ssh to initiate a restart. I'm usually able to connect, but my session invariably hangs after the first command is issued (including `shutdown -r now`). Eventually had to do a hard restart.

Same problem. Macbook 2012, 256GB, 8GB. Freezes at least once a day. Initially I had only 20GB free space, I though it had to do with that but now I have 90GB+ and still same problems. Need to do a hard reboot every time. This is ridiculous!!

I started seeing this happen on my 2012 27" iMac shortly after updating to High Sierra. It seems to be related to having any browser window with video in it (even if paused), or maybe any app that uses QuickTime (I've been using the QuickTime player quite abit, also). It's been doing this at least once per day, sometimes more often. It occurs in both the primary user account, and other secondary user accounts. I've disabled just about every Safari extension, and almost all login items. Up until the most recent freeze, everything is frozen. The latest time it happened, however, the mouse pointer was still alive, and I was even able to reconnect the mouse when I cycled power on the mouse. It would move around the screen, but nothing else would respond. (I tried power cycling the keyboard, but couldn't bring up the force kill window).

I've looked through all the console logs each time it has frozen (after rebooting), and I can't find any related crash info, or any clues. It does seem like perhaps its the window server, because there are other log entries after the time of the freeze (before forcing a reboot) which would tend to confirm that at least some processes are still alive and running. The fact that I could move the mouse pointer the last time it happened (and even reconnect the mouse after power cycling it) tends to confirm that most processes are probably still running.

I also disconnected most USB peripherals, and a disk drive that I don't generally use. That hasn't made any difference, so I don't think its related to USB or Firewire. For good measure, I blew all the dust out of the RAM bay today, just to make sure it wasn't a heat issue.

I think it is windows related as well. I was on a Skype conference call which kept on going without any problems, but I couldn't do anything else. Mouse was still moving but I couldn't click anything, screen was frozen. Skype call lasted 30 minutes in this state. Had to do a hard reboot.

Same here. Ever since High Sierra is running the Mac freezes - there is not even a special event when this happens. Sound (Spotify, YouTube) keeps playing. Tried everything, disabling Spotlight indexing, hard disk repair, recovery mode: nothing works. Must have been the 20th hard reboot since installing High Sierra.

High CPU for any random multiple apps running (e.g. Dropbox sync, Pushbullet launch/sync, homebrew git prune && git gc, iCloud sync, etc) causes kernel panic and crash and OSX High Sierra asks to hit any key to reboot. Happens multiple times.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

3.1 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Macintosh HD

Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

Model Name

Has to be cautious to not launched more apps than I typically use and try to only have 2 or 3 simultaneous running. Else, I can get up to 7 or 9 kernel panics daily.

Have sent in to local QCD Technologies (Singapore), for a full disk format, OSX High Sierra reinstall + Time Machine restore, and still this happens!

HELP PLEASE!