Very bad performance with Tahoe

[uti Pontus hage]

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?

 

[chet118]

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?

What mac are you using?

 

[uti Pontus hage]

Mac mini M4 pro.
It definitely works better when having less spaces and fewer apps running though.

 

[chet118]

Mac mini M4 pro.
It definitely works better when having less spaces and fewer apps running though.

I updated my MacBook Air M1 and it works great. Check what exactly is loading your Mac in Activity Monitoring.

 

[ibookemo]

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?

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

 

[Retroworldnews]

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?

Yeah, I using iMac bought in 2024. 8GB ram only last OSX work great even I only have 8GB ram. After install, tend to feel like cannot open much tab in Google Chrome. Happen there is another new update on Google Chrome again which I come to know from one of the member here it seem ok but later I discover some misc lag still happen, that " Spinning colour ball appear " I never encounter way back the last OSX , literally never see " that spinning ball appear ever first I have this iMac. Guess surely there will be update soon for this new Mac OSX. Finger cross it fix.

 

[S.B.G]

I'm not having any issues with my 3 Mac's on Tahoe.

 

[NewOldStock]

Safari gets choked up and slow response so clear history and good for a while then happens again later.
Safari and youtube back paging goes back about 2 pages sometimes.
Scroling with track pad in finder looking thru apps track pad chokes and slow to a crawl but only while looking at the app section. Very strange things going on with Apple track pad. Been trying different settings on the track pad.
Hopefully 26.1 clears things up like the Dot.1 versions usually do.
Definitely not as good first release as some of the last few versions have been.

 

[maflynn]

Does anyone have any tips and tricks?

My suggestions is wait a period of time, as there may be background processes still running that's upgrade related. Secondly, if you're using that many spaces, why not simplify your setup initially. Take a step approach. Create a new account - measure the performance, add another space, check again, etc etc.

There's a lot of chatter about performance woes, and much of the discussion seems to be with those on M1 Macs. you have a beefier Mac, so there may be other factors and if you can identify or narrow down the cause, that will help you in the long run

 

[jonidontcry]

My suggestions is wait a period of time, as there may be background processes still running that's upgrade related. Secondly, if you're using that many spaces, why not simplify your setup initially. Take a step approach. Create a new account - measure the performance, add another space, check again, etc etc.

There's a lot of chatter about performance woes, and much of the discussion seems to be with those on M1 Macs. you have a beefier Mac, so there may be other factors and if you can identify or narrow down the cause, that will help you in the long run

OK I think let's try using Tahoe for a week to see if it improves after indexing completed.

 

[uti Pontus hage]

Many responses and a late answer from me.
This issue is not present when on 26.0.1 for me - everything runs much more smoothly. Even when not restarting the computer every day. But the performance before the update was very bad haha.
Thanks for the replies

 

[uti Pontus hage]

And must say that Tahoe feels snappier than previous versions. Besides some bugs that are very much expected this early I would say good job Apple!

 

[JMalone]

And must say that Tahoe feels snappier than previous versions. Besides some bugs that are very much expected this early I would say good job Apple!

You are not seeing any more “snappier” or faster performance than previous versions. If previous versions had animations and resizing that matched the monitor refresh rate then the new OS cannot magically have faster performance than that.

The issue people are having is glitches and jerky pop up animations which you cannot compare against Sequoia because those animations did not exist in that OS.

 

[maflynn]

You are not seeing any more “snappier” or faster performance than previous versions. If previous versions had animations and resizing that matched the monitor refresh rate then the new OS cannot magically have faster performance than that.

You're assuming that Sequoia was the pinnacle of performance and it did not incur any slowdowns or degradation of performance and it's GUI was matching the refresh speed of people's monitors (60 - 240hz) all of the time.

I have a 60hz monitor, I can safely say there's been times when the OS got bogged down. Overall I'm very happy with Sequoia's performance but to state its physically impossible to make Tahoe faster, is kind of silly.

I think it is all possible that the member is seeing better performance using his mac. Newer versions of an operating system most definitely can be faster then the prior version. The common complaint with Tahoe, is the opposite for many people but that doesn't mean its universal, the member's system could be seeing an uplift in performance.

The issue people are having is glitches and jerky pop up animations which you cannot compare against Sequoia because those animations did not exist in that OS.

@uti Pontus hage isn't pixel peeping or doing a deep dive on every UI element, he's simply stating that it feels faster then Sequoia

 

[MBAir2010]

we need to remember these M series needs more free space in the drive than Intels since the memory is unified.
( I have bo idea how to explain this in depth, like riding a motorcycle I know how to but can't reveal how that works!)
on my M1 I keep 20-40 GB free as last week I only had 9GB free and the system slowed down.

hope this helped!

 

[JMalone]

You're assuming that Sequoia was the pinnacle of performance and it did not incur any slowdowns or degradation of performance and it's GUI was matching the refresh speed of people's monitors (60 - 240hz) all of the time.

Yes sometimes all operating systems can jerk if an app isn’t optimal or if a user has bogged down their machine with too many tabs and windows.

I have a 60hz monitor, I can safely say there's been times when the OS got bogged down. Overall I'm very happy with Sequoia's performance but to state its physically impossible to make Tahoe faster, is kind of silly.

Tahoe cannot be faster Sequoia like for like. If it can show some numbers. This is computing and everything can be demonstrated with numbers.

Newer versions of an operating system most definitely can be faster then the prior version.

Only when the previous version was overall very bad, such as Cheetah was. But we know why Cheetah was bad because it didn’t have graphics acceleration in many areas. That is no longer the case with modern systems.

@uti Pontus hage isn't pixel peeping or doing a deep dive on every UI element, he's simply stating that it feels faster then Sequoia

But “feels” isn’t quantifiable in this case. If it was possible to look at 40 years of discussions in one long page hitting command+F would show every year dozens of people say the latest system “feels faster” when there is no quantifiable speed improvement. The human mind tricks itself very easily, especially when a person has sacrificed time and energy into something and goes into denial mode.

 

[maflynn]

Tahoe cannot be faster Sequoia like for like. If it can show some numbers. This is computing and everything can be demonstrated with numbers.

I think you're too deep in the weeds, the member said it felt snappier, that's all, and tahoe certainly can. There's more to an OS feeling faster then the redraw speed of a GUI element.

Lets just take what he said at face value, and not delve into the mechanics of why a gui drawing on the screen cannot outpace the refresh speed of the monitor.

 

[uti Pontus hage]

You are not seeing any more “snappier” or faster performance than previous versions. If previous versions had animations and resizing that matched the monitor refresh rate then the new OS cannot magically have faster performance than that.

The issue people are having is glitches and jerky pop up animations which you cannot compare against Sequoia because those animations did not exist in that OS.

Okey haha.

 

[galad]

Most apps based on Electron have an issue that slows down the entire system on macOS 26 (they override a private method and on Tahoe it slows everything down). Fun times, until all those apps are updated.

 

[thebart]

Most apps based on Electron have an issue that slows down the entire system on macOS 26 (they override a private method and on Tahoe it slows everything down). Fun times, until all those apps are updated.

Can't blame everything on that. I already have done the workaround fix and I don't even have any electron app actively running. Still see slowdown.

 

[galad]

Obviously it's not the only issue, unfortunately.

 

[TheRdungeon]

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?

Yeah had similar issues with the graphics, enrolled in the Beta program just to get 26.1 and it seems much improved