Mojave login UI sluggish & laggy

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Mojave login UI sluggish & laggy

Just installed Mojave and the bootup login UI is extremely sluggish and laggy.

i.e. On system boot UI presents mine and the guest accounts, clicking on my account avatar brings it to the center and presents the password prompt - the animation of this process is extremely sluggish and laggy.

FileVault is on, so at this point pre-login, HDD is yet mounted / decrypted - that should preclude any user driver / launch agents issues.

Which means issue might be with Mojave firmware/EFI?

Am on a custom MBP 15 2.2 (2018) 16GB / 1TB.

Anyone else experiencing the same?

PS. Called Apple support, rep stubbornly refused to raise a case, saying given system has just been updated, it might be “indexing and optimizing” causing the performance hit and lag. Utter nonsense in my view. This is pre-login with FileVault enabled. Rep suggest I try Safe Mode, ignoring my reasoning this was pre-OS boot and Safe vs Normal boot makes no difference at that point. Nonetheless hit Shift on boot and tried and made no difference, naturally. Rep wasn’t interested in video capture of issue, insisted I wait a few days “confident” issue will right itself, and if not to call again. I’ve demanded he call me back instead because I’m confident it will not unless a fix comes through.

PPS. Have done PRAM and SMC resets. Connecting / disconnecting all peripherals to no effect.

PPPS. Some on other forums claim this was an issue previously experienced by some with High Sierra too, and has to do with FileVault?

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS Mojave (10.14)

Posted on Oct 18, 2018 8:02 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

removetxtforward Author

Level 1

62 points

Oct 18, 2018 8:20 AM in response to removetxtforward

This is a repost of https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8552955 if you previously had it bookmarked.

This post relates to the same problem: Login Screen very slow (laggy)

Issue has nothing to do /etc/sysctl.conf - so please refrain from posting solutions based on the removal of it.

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Answer 2

Oct 18, 2018 8:20 AM in response to removetxtforward

Here's to share my case notes with Apple support so you may examine if you are indeed in the same situation while reporting it to support yourself (which you still should, more data points / config variations will help them get to the root of the issue faster).

- - - - - - - - - - -

Hi (Apple Support Product Specialist),

As promised, have uploaded all files we spoke about:

1) 2 x Vidcaps of Login UI - Laggy / Sluggish / Poor Frame Rate

including SebMaz93's video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GnkFM-CAZO2JZt54LT1WBKsdMFVY7Iqd

2) Capture Data (w FileVault On)

3) 1 x Additional Vidcap with Additional User Account Created - To see if it affects the login UI performance (no difference)

4) 1 x Screencap of Disk Utility First Aid Check - Boot HDD is OK (in any case it was also reformatted during my Mojave re-install)

Here’s to recap troubleshooting steps I have done:

1) Safe Mode - No difference

2) SMC + PRAM reset - No difference

3) Disconnecting All peripherals + SMC + PRAM reset - No difference

4) Disabling FileVault - Problem does not present, given login screen is drawn much later after kernel initialisation as opposed to by boot loader when FileVault is enabled

5) Mojave Fresh Re-install on a reformatted HDD, user files then restored from Time Machine

Additionally these are the other discussion threads with seemingly over two dozen people have indicated having the same problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8552955

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8552433

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/9iqdnt/mojave_login_screen_lag/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/9izv63/macos_mojave_login_screen_issues/

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Answer 3

burn24

Level 1

4 points

Nov 28, 2018 3:45 AM in response to removetxtforward

I seem to still be having issues with my login screen being slow.

Whether I'm logging in from boot up or resuming from sleep/screensaver the loging screen takes a while. I can type my password and hit enter and after a number of seconds the screen shows my password has been entered and then eventually logs in. It's not a great deal of time but... this machine is far from old and not a bad spec.

I have checked to see what additional apps try to run on start-up and there's nothing on the list.

Machine Spec:

Mojave 10.14.1
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
4.2Ghz Intel Core i7

500GB SSD (Apple installed) w/ 260GB free space

32GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 580 8192MB

Any ideas welcome.

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Answer 4

rlscott

Level 1

4 points

Dec 1, 2018 12:43 PM in response to removetxtforward

You may be right... but after upgrading to Mojave 10.14, I had the same issues reported here,

very slow, no networking (no hardware found message). I opened a terminal session, "sudo /bin/bash"

and then "cd /etc".... "mv sysctl.conf sysctl.conf-orig".... "reboot".

After the reboot.... it all worked fine... got any explanation?

I do not see a 10.14.1 available yet (as of Dec 1, 2018)

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Answer 5

Dec 1, 2018 12:50 PM in response to rlscott

Sounds like your issue is different. The issue discussed in this thread is only for UI lag at the FileVault login screen after boot (mainly only noticed if Guest accounts are enabled since there is animation); no issues at all after login.

I contacted Apple about it last week and apparently a fix is in the works...so 10.14.1 is still susceptible.

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Answer 6

Dec 28, 2018 8:58 AM in response to removetxtforward

Removing /etc/sysctl.conf fixed it for me.

I had the same symptom after updating to Mojave 10.14.2. Login screen was extremely laggy (like 2 frames per minute). I reverted back to High Sierra from Time Machine backup and removed /etc/sysctl.conf. After installing Mojave again, everything worked fine.

Like other people reporting the same issue, I have also migrated my account from Mac to Mac without reinstalling anything.

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Answer 7

Nov 1, 2018 9:55 AM in response to removetxtforward

Issue seems to have been resolved with the Mojave 10.14.1 update!

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Answer 8

Nov 28, 2018 7:30 AM in response to burn24

This is still an issue for me as well. 10.14.1 provided no improvement.

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Mojave login UI sluggish & laggy

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