High Sierra has made my MacBook Pro abysmally slow

I have a 2011 MacBook Pro and it runs High Sierra very well. Here’s what I did...

So a few years ago, on one of the earlier macOS’s (Yosemite, I think), I noticed this SAME PROBLEM. Everything became a chore for my computer. I tried clearing the cache, hard-rebooting, and nothing seemed to work. I have a friend who worked for Apple and he walked me through all the troubleshooting, until finally came the answer:

IT’S A HARDWARE PROBLEM. Especially with running the current OS on a 6-7 year old MacBook. That’s ancient in tech years. What it needed, he prescribed, was a Solid State Drive (SSD), instead of the Mechanical Drive that comes on older MacBooks. And it needed a lot more RAM. I went from a 200-ish GB hard drive to a 500GB SSD. And I went from 2GB of RAM to 16GB of RAM. I ordered these parts online and got them installed on my MacBook. This cost me about $500 altogether (he didn’t charge to assemble the parts, bless him). And even now, my 7-year old dinosaur keeps pace with the latest MacBook on the latest software. And I’m a musician, so I use Logic Pro X and MainStage 3, pretty demanding programs, with little to no lag/delay.

I hope this helps! Also, I was getting on here to see if there were any other solutions to this issue besides hardware, (my wife has a 2013 MacBook Pro) but it doesn’t seem so as of yet. I’ll keep looking...

I'd create a clone of your present system on an external drive. You can use a cloning software like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopy Cloner.

Then boot from the clone and use its Disk Utility to wipe your internal by choosing the entire drive (uppermost, unindented icon) > Erase. Then download High Sierra on your external and use the installer to choose your internal for the installation.

After that, when it first boots up it will be in Setup Assistant. It will prompt you to migrate. You should migrate since no system files (like the ones you're having issues with) will be migrated. Then you should be all set up, just the way it was before, except hopefully a lot better.

You know it's not a "glorified paperweight" since you know a clean install will work. But before you do that, you may want to run EtreCheck. It is a diagnostic tool that's very useful to us in finding problems. Also it will give us further specs on your Mac. After it runs post the log file here. It will contain no personal information.

As Bob says, uninstall CleanMyMac. No anti-virus or so-called "cleaning" apps are necessary or recommended for Mac OS. They interfere with Mac's own built-in security. At best they will use unnecessary resources and at worst bork you system.

The other problem is that you're running a beta and we can't really comment on problems here. But when you are beta testing, that's what you signed up for. if you want no issues then go back to the GM release.

I know exactly what you are talking about. I am having the same exact issue, with the same exat Mac model as yours.

The only new feature I noticed was lag everywhere.

I am a IT Administrator so I know it's not malware.

For those still not convinced, I did a clean install and same exact thing.

• Right-clicking things in the whole OS take seconds to bring up the menus.
• Scrolling in Safari suddenly becomes extremely laggy: you start the two-finger scroll swipe and the page doesn't move. SOOOOO FRUSTRATING when you are used to the fluidity that you come to expect with Mac trackpads.
• Minimizing, maximizing become laggy as ****.
• It takes SO much longer to start up applications
• Let's not even mention booting up ;(

I am going back to Sierra right after I finish this post.

TBH I think certain bugs and things like Metal 2 are partly to blame for this, and hopefully these will be ironed out. Not sure about the rest, though. And of course the more features are added, the more resources it will need, and our devices aren't exactly getting any younger. But none of these features are worth the huge performance penalty.

I was unable to edit my earlier post, but I'd like to provide an update:

I'm happy to say that Apple has fixed most of the speed issues with the latest 10.13.2 update 🙂

Boot up speed is improved, as well as most of the UI-related quirks.

What's really ironic here is that the UI gets a bit jumpy again when my discrete graphics kick in (GeForce GT 650m). That is extremely surprising as the Intel HD Graphics 4000 is much less capable! I'm guessing that Apple just needs to provide updated dGfx drivers in the next update and things should be back to normal 🙂 Here's hoping!

Cheers and Happy Holidays y'all!

Well, this might be one solution, however it is not 100 % sure a cure for all similar lagging cases;

I am having very same problem, MBP 13 Retina Late 2013 is having extremely high kernel_task all the time, machine is unusable totally! It has 8 GB RAM + i5 cpu + 256 GB SSD (M2). Disk space is used less than 100 GB.

OSX was Sierra, once lid was closed and reopened next day and machine was awful slow. Upgraded to High Sierra. No help. Tried to reset SMC, NVRAM, safe boot and reinstalled original OSX Maveric + formatted HD. No help.
Installed latest OSX again, high Sierra. No Help. Lost even machine Serial id if looked via My Mac. ***

Tried to run Ubuntu Linux from USB flash - runs smoothly, no problem with CPU load etc. Booted High Sierra back and problem continues. Decided to install Ubuntu in HD (dual boot ) and now Linux Ubuntu is running smoothly without problem / high load. Before that I consulted Apple Help desk, no help from there.

Second Apple in this family (first was iPhone) and 100 % guarantee that this is the last piece of really pain in the *** purchased from Apple - newer ever comes to this house new Apple.

I can see you already downgraded to Sierra... But yes, I also did the same and everything is back to normal again. *breathes huge sigh of relief*

Another thing I noticed is that High Sierra was much more aggressive on battery life; when I had a lot of windows open it would still be using the Integrated graphics. I don't think this is a problem for the newer Mac models (2013 and up) because their integrated Intel Iris graphics are much more capable, whereas our Intel HD 4000 are pretty underpowered.

Forcing it to switch to dedicated graphics helped a bit, but it was still nowhere near Sierra in terms of UI performance.

Sierra FTW 🙂 (until I upgrade my Mac)

Cheers

Same model, 16GB RAM/500SSD... same sluggish problem over all SO, finder tabs sometimes takes 1~2 sec, navigating in columns view same problem, chrome images shows them jumping frames, safari full screen view jumps frames, well this makes my rMBP 2,6 feeling as a core 2 duo from 10 years ago.

I guess the big problem is the GPU, as until few years ago GPU in macbook were crap,

I wouldn't attempt to downgrade, but check the documentation on the beta. If you wipe your disk you can install the GM High Sierra from the AppStore.

I didn't realize that High Sierra was a beta version...upgrading was the worst OS decision I have ever made. I will certainly pay better attention before upgrading any future OS. This will also include checking the Community to see what issues are associated with the new OS.

How do I perform a clean wipe? Once the wipe is performed, how would I go about downloading and installing Sierra latest version? I will not see my Time Machine for a few months as I am on an extended business trip. I do not have an option available to get a backup from my TM. But I would need some very complete instructions so that I will be able to use my Mac after performing the wipe and subsequent install of Sierra.

Related to this, I guess I need to assume that I will be spending a lot of time getting applications to install and run again...

For 27-inch, late 2012 iMac users it's even worse. It's impossible to use my computer right now with all the glitches on the screen. On the other hand, High Sierra is running very smoothly on my MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch 2015....

Not sure how to downgrade and I'm fairly new to Mac/Apple so I'm being extra cautious. Any tips? My MacBook (mid 2012, me as original poster) is basically a pricey paperweight at this point so I'm a little frustrated.

Thanks for the update. I’ve blessedly been on a brief vacation and haven’t booted up the MacBook so hopefully I’ll get an after-Christmas delight when I boot up later today. I did buy more RAM but haven’t installed it yet; not sure it will help but 4GB seems a little low to me anyway.