Very bad performance with Tahoe

[Landing]

For who don’t notice the performance issue, please try opening five Finder windows or safari(by cmd+n 5 times) and clicking on the desktop to see the framerate drop.

No problem with my Mac Studio M2 Max using OLED monitor at 4k 240hz

 

[thebart]

No problem with my Mac Studio M2 Max using OLED monitor at 4k 240hz

Sorry for the off topic. I've wanted to get an OLED monitor but hear the text rendering isn't good. Which one do you have, what resolution are you running it in, and how's the text? Thanks

 

[turbineseaplane]

Sorry for the off topic. I've wanted to get an OLED monitor but hear the text rendering isn't good. Which one do you have, what resolution are you running it in, and how's the text? Thanks

I've always seen this mentioned and never once had an issue with it or noticed what is being talked about.

Maybe depends upon which OLED in particular?

 

[Landing]

Sorry for the off topic. I've wanted to get an OLED monitor but hear the text rendering isn't good. Which one do you have, what resolution are you running it in, and how's the text? Thanks

It's not a problem with it the since the new 2024 3rd gen OLED panel. On 4k QD-OLED it's not an issue anymore.There are even 27" at 4k now

 

[hagjohn]

Hi everyone,

Is anyone else experiencing severe performance issues with macOS Tahoe?

I typically work with five Spaces and around twelve open apps running across them. Unfortunately, the system has become so slow that it's nearly unusable—everything lags, stutters, and eventually becomes almost unresponsive. Restarting helps briefly, but the poor performance quickly returns.

I made the mistake of upgrading early this time—something I usually avoid—and now I remember why.

Does anyone have any tips and tricks?

No. the only issue I have is the calendar widget on my desktop keeps going from white to clear. Other than that, it is on par with Sequoia.

 

[littlebighuman]

I have EXACTLY the same issues. I'm on M2 Pro with 32GB RAM (50% disk free space) and use 4 spaces and Expose. Normally this is buttery smooth, but since Tahoe this is extremely slow, the animations are laggy and the system freezes for a couple of seconds at times.

 

[Steph.fr]

I have EXACTLY the same issues. I'm on M2 Pro with 32GB RAM (50% disk free space) and use 4 spaces and Expose. Normally this is buttery smooth, but since Tahoe this is extremely slow, the animations are laggy and the system freezes for a couple of seconds at times.

This is your opinion, and of course you're entitled to it, but I personally have no performance issues with Tahoe, and I can certainly express that here.
(fisherking is very busy with other threads; I'm just giving him a hand.)

 

[maflynn]

but since Tahoe this is extremely slow

That's not my experience but I can sympathize.

 

[littlebighuman]

This is your opinion, and of course you're entitled to it, but I personally have no performance issues with Tahoe, and I can certainly express that here.
(fisherking is very busy with other threads; I'm just giving him a hand.)

This is your opinion, and of course you're entitled to it, but I personally have no performance issues with Tahoe, and I can certainly express that here.
(fisherking is very busy with other threads; I'm just giving him a hand.)

I don’t understand why you are commenting? It is not my opinion, it is my factual situation. It is already clear that a lot of people don’t have the issue. Some people have it and are trying to solve it. Hence I gave my specs.

Please let this not dissolve in some silly brand=my identity=must defend. discussion. Lets focus on solving issues.

 

[macbookj0e]

I'm in the same boat on an M4 Pro. Tahoe is definitely not polished - super slow on my Mac.

Tim and his shareholders may be happy but many of his customers aren’t. macOS seems to be as quality as iOS at the moment, in other words a bit of a shambles.

Not only slow but very buggy and poorly designed and optimised. This is poor from Apple. We pay premium prices for premium products and the software is far from premium in my opinion.

macOS 26 windows are hard to resize because they aren't really rounded - 9to5Mac

One of the things I noticed after upgrading to macOS 26 was that I would sometimes fail when trying to...

9to5mac.com

 

[Wolf1701]

Tim and his shareholders may be happy but many of his customers aren’t. macOS seems to be as quality as iOS at the moment, in other words a bit of a shambles.

I agree, although iOS seems to work better than iPadOS (slowness, difficulty in force-closing all apps) and, in any case, macOS seems to have become the poor relation... there are too many examples to list here.

 

[macbookj0e]

I agree, although iOS seems to work better than iPadOS (slowness, difficulty in force-closing all apps) and, in any case, macOS seems to have become the poor relation... there are too many examples to list here.

Yes sad but true 😐

 

[Steph.fr]

I don’t understand why you are commenting? It is not my opinion, it is my factual situation. It is already clear that a lot of people don’t have the issue. Some people have it and are trying to solve it. Hence I gave my specs.

Please let this not dissolve in some silly brand=my identity=must defend. discussion. Lets focus on solving issues.

😱 Fisherking, help me !!! I clearly don't have your sense of dialectic ...

 

[dmccloud]

I don’t understand why you are commenting? It is not my opinion, it is my factual situation. It is already clear that a lot of people don’t have the issue. Some people have it and are trying to solve it. Hence I gave my specs.

Please let this not dissolve in some silly brand=my identity=must defend. discussion. Lets focus on solving issues.

When only a relatively small number of people are experiencing the same issues, it's much harder to "solve" said issues as there's no readily apparent common cause or contributing factor.

I have both a base M4 Mini and an M4 Pro MBP, and I've seen no performance issues like you and some others have reported - even while running developer betas on both devices. Sometimes, issues like you describe are not caused by the latest OS updates but by the buildup of old and outdated files left behind from apps that have been upgraded or even removed from the devices. This is why many people will periodically restore their Macs/PCs/Linux boxes and start with a fresh copy of the OS - to clear out junk and clutter that may be impacting performance under the hood.

 

[littlebighuman]

I have EXACTLY the same issues. I'm on M2 Pro with 32GB RAM (50% disk free space) and use 4 spaces and Expose. Normally this is buttery smooth, but since Tahoe this is extremely slow, the animations are laggy and the system freezes for a couple of seconds at times.

The latest upgrade to Mac OS Tahoe Version 26.2 (25C56) seems to have fixed my issues. I did take some time to finish Spotlight indexing, but Exposé and Misson Control are snappy again, as is moving around in and moving Windows between Spaces.

Now, if I do multiple Misson Contol actions in a row, WindowServer spike to around 50%, but not to >80% like before. It still hovers between 20% and 30% when idle. Not sure if that is normal. I run a little script to poll windowserver cpu utilization and log it to a file. I'll let it run for a week or so to see what is normal. Would be great if someone without issues could do that as well.

#!/bin/zsh

LOGFILE="$HOME/windowserver_cpu.log"

while true; do
  TS=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
  CPU=$(ps -axo %cpu,comm | awk '/WindowServer/ {print $1}')
  echo "$TS CPU=${CPU}%" >> "$LOGFILE"
  sleep 60
done

For now it seems solved, but other things I will keep an eye on is Logitech mouse software. In general it is bloaty trash and I've suspected it to cause the mouse drag. I also have both my internal screen and external screen set to "More space" which apperently can cause performance issues as well. But before Tahoe this was fine. But like I said Tahoe Version 26.2 seems to have fixed it.


Edit: disabling dynamic wallpapers and having the same wallpaper on every Space seems to lower windowserver CPU util as well. Again, pre Tahoe this worked fine.

 

[littlebighuman]

When only a relatively small number of people are experiencing the same issues, it's much harder to "solve" said issues as there's no readily apparent common cause or contributing factor.

I have both a base M4 Mini and an M4 Pro MBP, and I've seen no performance issues like you and some others have reported - even while running developer betas on both devices. Sometimes, issues like you describe are not caused by the latest OS updates but by the buildup of old and outdated files left behind from apps that have been upgraded or even removed from the devices. This is why many people will periodically restore their Macs/PCs/Linux boxes and start with a fresh copy of the OS - to clear out junk and clutter that may be impacting performance under the hood.

I own >20 Macs that are in use now and have for decades (as well as Linux servers, K8S clusters, Windows here an there). I have never needed to reinstall Mac OS for performance issues. Mac OS can be troubleshot quite effectively and I've been able to solve these kind of issues without having to reinstall. My current Macbook is on a migration chain of 4 machines over 12 years.

 

[maflynn]

😱 Fisherking, help me !!! I clearly don't have your sense of dialectic ...

To me, there are people have noticed a performance degradation and its not our place to marginalize their complaints, but it seems many people on similar hardware have not see that degradation. I think its probably a case by case situation with the OS, hardware and apps being used.

I own >20 Macs...
I have never needed to reinstall Mac OS for performance issues.

I think many of us can also proudly proclaim how many macs we use, and how experienced we are, I've owned multiple macs and been on the mac platform since the iMac Bondi blue days. I have found reinstalling macOS to be beneficial and improve performance and many times the most expedient path to a solution.

There may be multiple ways to resolve some problems, but sometimes just taking a sledgehammer to kill a fly is the best answer. What I mean by that, instead of spending hours,days or longer trying to fix an issue, just erase, and reinstall

 

[TumbleDryer]

I have an M4 Mini and at times typing is SOOO laggy. Thought it might be my VPN interfering somehow but so far tests prove otherwise.

Simply only having TextEdit open and typing in it glyphs appear half a second after pressing the key.

Nothing in Activity Monitor suggests anything taking up loads of processes?!

 

[dmccloud]

I own >20 Macs that are in use now and have for decades (as well as Linux servers, K8S clusters, Windows here an there). I have never needed to reinstall Mac OS for performance issues. Mac OS can be troubleshot quite effectively and I've been able to solve these kind of issues without having to reinstall. My current Macbook is on a migration chain of 4 machines over 12 years.

I have to wonder how much legacy stuff from the oldest machine is still present on your current machine. Even though you may not think reinstalling Mac OS is needed, others do just that as part of routine maintenance on their operating system. In my case I do that periodically because it's far quicker to back up my download and documents files along with exporting my brewfile and .zshrc files and reinstalling than it is to hunt through the library folders and manually remove everything related to older apps and command line tools I no longer need.