![]() ![]() Next in line is to simply restart your Mac. For some types of problem this is usually the best solution – WindowServer is a good example, as that can only be restarted by logging the current user out. If that isn’t appropriate or doesn’t work, the next least disruptive thing to try is closing all your apps, saving what you can on the way, then logging out and back in again. If you know what you’re doing in Terminal, you can kill the app or process there if you prefer.Never try doing this with kernel_task, though, which is using CPU to protect your Mac. This will definitely lose any unsaved changes in documents. In Activity Monitor, select the app or process and press Command-Option-Q.Although this should be gentle force, any unsaved documents are likely to lose their recent changes. Open the Force Quit dialog using Command-Option-Escape, select the app there, and click the Force Quit button.Bring the app to the front, and quit it normally after saving any open documents, if that still works.If you’ve been able to identify an app or process which appears to be the cause, you can now try quitting it, to see if that restores normal performance. Having gathered the most important evidence, it’s time to recover your Mac. Even if you do think looking through log might help, that’s probably best done retrospectively, using a browser such as my free Ulbow, once your Mac is running sweetly again. There’s little point in opening Console to look at what’s going on in the log, sadly, unless you’re already adept at its use and know how to interpret what you might see there. Of course, some usually do anyway, but all the heavy users need to be accounted for in your process to eliminate causes. Sometimes, the Disk pane can also be worth a check, as can Network, but the big two are CPU and Memory, looking for apps or processes which are taking more than around 10% of CPU or more than about 4 GB. In the CPU tab, click in the % CPU column header to sort them with the highest at the top, and in Memory order them using the Memory column.Īt least take a screenshot of each view for future study, even if you haven’t time or inclination to do that now. ![]() Check first that Activity Monitor is set to show all processes in its View menu, or it may conceal some of the most significant. The two most important panes at this stage are CPU and Memory. The two most useful things you can do now are to write detailed notes recording what happened, and to study the panes in Activity Monitor. It’s also easily captured using the command in Activity Monitor’s View menu. ![]() The snag is that, unless you are an Apple engineer and know your way around the log files and other data captured, this is of no value to you. ![]() (period or full stop) keys together, after which the screen should flash once, then several minutes later a window opens showing where the diagnostic dump file has been saved, so you can carry on. You invoke this by pressing the Shift-Control-Option-Command and. This article suggests a structured way to tackle both diagnosing and dealing with this.īefore you bring your Mac back to life, if possible spare a couple of moments to record some vital clues as to what has gone wrong.Īpple does provide one way of capturing full details using sysdiagnose, which is essential if you’re going to report the problem to its engineers. There have been a few reports of Macs running recent versions of macOS, particularly 12.0.1, gradually getting slower until they almost grind to a halt. ![]()
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