Severe lag and freezing after macOS Tahoe update on MacBook Pro M1

It appears that for several people affected, it turned out to be an issue with Spotlight.

Perhaps try this fix:

macOS Tahoe was a nightmare of freezes on my MacBook. Here’s how I finally fixed it

The worst MacOS release in 2 decades ( 2 x 10 = 20 years).

Laggy, ugly, slow, and glitchy. No you don't need to waste your time reinstalling the OS and restarting apps. None of that will help. There are deep performance and UI issues here and breakage of things Apple really didn't need to break. Nobody asked for this, the "new" Apple design team did this to you.

Same problem here. Looking at the interface and performance of some apps reminds me good old Windows Vista time :)

Solution from the top ranked reply didn't help me. However, following guide seem to work so far: https://macreports.com/macos-tahoe-26-overheating-on-macbook-m1-m4-intel/

Sorry to see you are having such a bad experience, but despite what this thread may lead you to believe this is not what a typical user is experiencing. Do the several troubleshooting steps that have been recommended and report back. I bet that in Safe Modeyou will not see these slowdowns and crashes.

Safe Mode is meant as a TEST. In many cases, but not always, problems that users are experiencing do not occur in Safe Mode. The point was never to suggest running in Safe Mode all the time. It was to suggest that IF problems disappeared in Safe Mode, that would indicate some third party modifications were likely the cause.

Gyllard wrote: "...I hope the engineers at Apple are monitoring this thread..."

That's unlikely — use this form:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

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Just upgraded a brand new MacBook Air M4 to MacOS Tahoe. The QuickTime Player playing video from local drive (Mac HD), video forward and backward with trackpad is extremely sluggish, half of the time none responding. Before it’s easy and intuitive to use trackpad to forward and rewind video while playing. Now the forwarding and rewinding on QuickTime is almost unusable.

PS. My 10 years old MacBook 12” on Big Sur doesn’t have this issue. Can play the same video and forward and rewind snappily.

I agree that it's not "the worst" but I am using a Mac mini M2; I'm not a heavy user at home and so a complete pointer freeze is a first for an OS, for me. The lag in text entry with something like Signal (which might be the cause of the problem based on what I've read) is so esoteric. I could go back to a previous OS but I would rather the issue was identified and resolved.

Sadly, the truth is that Tahoe is not Apple's best work. I have aMacBook Air M2 and have also experiences very slow boots, lags in performance, etc. still after installing the 26.0.1 upgrade of Tahoe. Furthermore, the suggestion that users should use a third party cleaner is not really accepting responsibility for the issue. If the problem was with machines that were far older, it might be reasonable, but if an OS upgrade causes such problems on a three year old machine that was operating smoothly and very rapidly one day, and plugging along the next day... well it is time for Apple to accept responsibility. And, if the functions offered by a 3rd-party cleaner is considered a requirement then it should be be part of the OS itself, or an Apple utility that is equally capable as 3rd party sources.

NorthernLakes314 wrote:

Sadly, the truth is that Tahoe is not Apple's best work. I have aMacBook Air M2 and have also experiences very slow boots, lags in performance, etc. still after installing the 26.0.1 upgrade of Tahoe. Furthermore, the suggestion that users should use a third party cleaner is not really accepting responsibility for the issue. If the problem was with machines that were far older, it might be reasonable, but if an OS upgrade causes such problems on a three year old machine that was operating smoothly and very rapidly one day, and plugging along the next day... well it is time for Apple to accept responsibility. And, if the functions offered by a 3rd-party cleaner is considered a requirement then it should be be part of the OS itself, or an Apple utility that is equally capable as 3rd party sources.

Do NOT use any third party cleaners! And anyone who might have suggested it is a m***n.

I guess I'm not a typical user either, Luis. I'm experiencing similar issues: Tahoe on a MacBook Pro M1 is noticeably slower. My suspicion is the Liquid Glass / Metal 4 is the root cause based on Apple's own comments of GPU intensive. What I have not noticed is a significant difference in app crashes. With every new OS I expect a few app glitches which vendors seem to fix quickly.

I've already taken steps to reduce motion via Accessibility options and with 26.1 reduce transparency. Neither appears to have had a significant impact. Safe Mode is not a realistic option for everyday use. I hope your answer was intended as sarcasm. Do you have other recommendations?

I just did that and sadly it does NOT address the lag time in starting up or the loss of recognizing attached SSD's. My MB Air M2 is FAR better and faster than my brand new Mac Mini M4 with added RAM. In fact it is STILL an issue after multiple calls to Apple Support. I have installed Tahoe twice now, once after wiping the drive...and still the same issues....incredible lag in start up and external drives not supported...one no longer shows up at all but attached to my Air is there....decade of photography not accessible....so this is not acceptable....

With Apple since Performa days.

Same here. I need to move windows to another screen to make them respond again.

I have similar issue. Not the same as nico, but similar. When mac is under load, playing music or videos, the audio is crackling and breaking. Very annoying. Hope there will be a bugfix update soon...

FaceTime is laggy and iMessage spinning wheel is driving me to distraction. I'm not even playing music or videos. I'm in Word, have photos running, notes and apple mail. So tired of all the shiny sparky shenanigans. What's happening with my Apples?