Has anyone else experienced MacOS Big Sur being really unstable? My MacBook Pro often freezes when shutting down and I have to hold down the power button to get it to power off. Also most apps freeze when quitting them and I have to Force Quit them. It's just unstable and doesn't seem that great. I'm running a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with 16GB or RAM.
MacBook Pro
To verify it's not a 3rd party software issue Apple had me do the following:
1 - make sure I had a full and current backup of my hard drive, either Time Machine or a full clone.
2 - Boot into the Recovery volume, erase the drive and reinstall the system without migrating any files from my backup. Run and see if the crashing continues. If it does it's hardware or the system. If it doesn't then the user files are the culprit.
You might try the above to verify that it's no any of your files or 3rd party apps that the culprit.
Among other things you should uninstall the HighPointRR kernel extension as it is likely incompatible with Big Sur.
The same may be true of the Sony kernel extension.
You may also want to check if there is a newer version of SoftRAID if you need it; the latest version is 6.0.3.
After a bit of trial and error, using both my work laptop, and my personal one (both macbook pro, 16" and 13"), it seems to me that the problems I have are connected with putting the laptop to sleep when it is still connected to the external monitor.
If I disconnect from the external monitor first, wait a couple of seconds, and then close the lid, it's very likely that the next day the laptop will be fine. If I put it to sleep while still connected to the external monitor, then over night "a problem occurs" and I am welcomed with a reboot the next day. This wasn't happening with sierra through catalina.
So to specify a bit better my position here: Big Sur appears to work very well, it's stable and everything. But reliability around sleep cycles has plummeted in quality. At least, this is my experience.
After Big Sur completely hosed my Intel MBPro, I'm back on Mojave after a week of recovery (including having to use Windows and MacDrive to recover from data(!!), and my computer is working much better than it ever did on on Big Sur. Fans powered up full blast for no reason. Now, it's dead quiet.
Big Sur's inability to use external backups with CCC and Superduper is inexcusable. And it won't allow digging into the guts of the backups to find lost data just like Mojave and earlier.
Just revert before Big Sur kills your computer. You'll be happier. This OS is a nightmare when it fails. And, do NOT turn on FileVault encryption so you can recover data when it does.
So I switched from NordVPN to ExpressVPN and have no problems yet. My thought is something with the latest NordVPN Client is causing massive problems with the network component of MacOS Big Sur.
I have a clean install of Big Sur, and it is far more stable than a clean install of Catalina, followed by all of its updates. Of course, if yours was an upgrade, you may have not run Disk Utility First Aid prior to the upgrade, or may have application installations that are impacting stability (e.g. so-called Mac cleaners, or any anti-virus software to name two categories of suspects).
Changeling44,
I ended up having to totally format my MacBook Pro and reinstall everything from scratch to resolve the issues I was experiencing. I didn’t even trust a time machine backup. I hope you don’t have to go through that process, but that ended up fixing most of my issues. Apple clearly has some work to do on whatever is going on under the hood.
How is everyone doing with 11.2.1? I uninstalled Avira Antivirus and installed 11.2.1 at the same time, so I don't know which one is responsible, but my Macbook is far more stable now than before. I also didn't have this many problems until Big Sur, been with Macbook since 2015 so went through numerous large updates, this one being the most problematic, forcing me to try POE (process of elimination).
I've been having problems with freezing and restarting...
I uninstalled Google Chrome and also uninstalled Clean My Mac.
I reinstalled Google Chrome only and I've had no issues with any applications as of yet.
I noticed that I was having issues with Google Chrome so wanted to test this first. If all is good in a week or 2 I will redownload Clean My Mac and give an update.
Yes, run a “Clean my Mac”, also scan with Sophos. Other users have reported that it is actually Sophos causing the issue... I’ll just use it as a Windows machine for now...
The safe mode helped and then I booted into recovery mode and did a disk first aid. That seems to have helped with the apps freezing, but the laptop still freezes on shutdown from time to time. Hopefully Apple issues a fix.
Sophos was notoriously bad on my Mac many many years back when I had it running. The moment I removed it, the system had immensely improved. Even other anti-virus programs run smoother than Sophos does.
Mind you with the whole Big Sur SSV system volume structure, it's pretty hard for malware/viruses to infect your Mac. You'd have to deliberately disable SIP, SSV, then have the malware/viruses make system changes, followed by resealing the System volume with a snapshot for it to affect your Mac. So unless it's a requirement of your business (which it is for you), then there really is no need to use anti-virus software.
Yes, and I haven't seen a single crash whatsoever on three Macs, so without data, no one here could help you further.
If like others, you would like to post an Etrecheck report, perhaps I or someone else here could help you narrow down what's going on.
No matter how many times you say "Big Sur is inherently unstable," it simply isn't true.
Millions of people around the world use it daily with no issues whatsoever, and if were as unstable as you claim it to be, a lot more people would be complaining.
Your car comment is interesting, as the very first thing a new car dealer would do is remove anything you may have added, so have you checked to see if the same issues occur if you a full erase, perform a completely new installation of the OS and install absolutely zero software and login as a brand new user? That's the state in which Apple supplies computers and is most analogous to a new car you would take back to the dealer.
If you don't want to use diagnostic tools, there is only one thing left you can do:
Contact - Official Apple Support
or if you don't want to go that route, let Apple know if your dissatisfaction (they aren't here) at this link:
No one here can help you if you aren't willing to help yourself.
Since day one Big Sur has been the most stable release of macOS I've ever used, and I've been using Macs since 1988.
If you want to burden your users by forcing them to use Windows, feel free - and it literally matters to no one here as we are just fellow Apple users trying to help others.
Has anyone established a common issue yet? I have been encountering freezes, slow downs and fan running since upgrade to Big Sur. With each upgrade through to 11.2.2 the freezes have become less frequent, but slow down is still evident - particularly in mail, and Photos (notably while editing using retouch), and I have had FCP crashes... all have never occurred before in previous OS.
Using the Etrecheck has shown a few possible pointers to culprits... so Malwarebytes, Goodsync and DigitalRebellion - is anyone also using or have previously installed these? How about CleanmyMac3? (I had removed this a long time ago but this may not have been a clean uninstall)
Apple does not acknowledge issues.
The only notice you will receive noting something is/was broken is when Apple notes in a future update that the problem has been fixed.
In the mean time, anyone in Apple Support you might contact regarding your issue will respond with the same first debugging step:
Certainly it's warranted for security reasons alone:
About the security content of macOS Big Sur 11.3 - Apple Support
MacOS Big Sur Unstable
