Anybody else run a setup wherein they keep multiple MacOS user accounts logged in on a regular basis? And if so, are you running into system graphics slowdowns after being logged in a while? I ask because I've noticed ever since I think Catalina, my Mac slows way way down over time when used this way.
I start it up, it runs very nicely, everything is snappy, etc. My wife shares the machine, so she logs in. Sometimes I log in under two accounts (work, personal) for a total of three. The machine has 32 GB of RAM and is running off an SSD so it should be snappy. And it is! For a while.
Then over the course of a few days or maybe a week everything starts to bog down, most notably in the drawing of graphics. Application windows get laggy to resize. Highlighting text even starts to lag behind the cursor. I check Activity Monitor and nothing is going nuts particularly (though WindowServer looks like it's taking more CPU than it should). Eventually, I restart the machine and things are great and snappy for a while and gradually slow down again. Memory pressure in Activity Monitor looks normal and when I check my load averages they're totally decent. But something is murderering the speed with which graphics are drawn on screen.
This is happening on both the Macs I have:
- a 2014 iMac 5K, 32 GB of RAM, Catalina
- a 2020 MacBook Air i5, 8 GB RAM, Big Sur
The frustrating thing here is that I have worked with multiple accounts for a long time with much lesser machines, like my old 2012 Mini and haven't seen this slowdown except for the past year or two.
I know people are going to suggest a clean reinstall of everything and while that's probably a good troubleshooting step, it's also a bunch of time lost and I wanted to see if others have a similar issue before I go ripping up my setup and rebuilding it anew.
I start it up, it runs very nicely, everything is snappy, etc. My wife shares the machine, so she logs in. Sometimes I log in under two accounts (work, personal) for a total of three. The machine has 32 GB of RAM and is running off an SSD so it should be snappy. And it is! For a while.
Then over the course of a few days or maybe a week everything starts to bog down, most notably in the drawing of graphics. Application windows get laggy to resize. Highlighting text even starts to lag behind the cursor. I check Activity Monitor and nothing is going nuts particularly (though WindowServer looks like it's taking more CPU than it should). Eventually, I restart the machine and things are great and snappy for a while and gradually slow down again. Memory pressure in Activity Monitor looks normal and when I check my load averages they're totally decent. But something is murderering the speed with which graphics are drawn on screen.
This is happening on both the Macs I have:
- a 2014 iMac 5K, 32 GB of RAM, Catalina
- a 2020 MacBook Air i5, 8 GB RAM, Big Sur
The frustrating thing here is that I have worked with multiple accounts for a long time with much lesser machines, like my old 2012 Mini and haven't seen this slowdown except for the past year or two.
I know people are going to suggest a clean reinstall of everything and while that's probably a good troubleshooting step, it's also a bunch of time lost and I wanted to see if others have a similar issue before I go ripping up my setup and rebuilding it anew.
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