MacOS Big Sur Unstable

I had the program installed but I did not want to grant all the rights to the program.

Two weeks ago I contacted apple in an other regard. We went through all the programs I had installed.

They recommended NOT to use EtreCheck and had me uninstall it.

MalwareBytes is an excellent app, one that even Apple reps recommend at times. However, Clean My Mac is considered akin to malware by most of the experienced users around here.

Don't know about Goodsync and DigitalRebellion. One is a backup app and the other is a workflow app for video production or editing. They may interfere with some system or other app performance. Unless there's someone having problems with those apps installed and can uninstall them to see if there's any performance improvement we won't know.

I agree. I've found Big Sur, including the latest 11.2.3 update, to be quite unstable. Adobe apps hang. Sometimes the computer absolutely freezes. I close the lid, open, and things unlock again (instead of having to hard restart). Not that great. I really like my M1 Air but this Big Sur is weak compared to Mojave.

I haven't "upgraded" my 2018 iMac yet because Catalina & Big Sur just aren't that good. My Mojave machine is rock solid. I "only" have an occasional crash in Final Cut Pro on rendering. It's always been like that. But all else is wonderfully solid.

Big Sur - not so much.

Hi, I have the same problem on Mac Pro 6.1 with Big Sur, it freezes on various occasions and then restarts. The report always mentions watchdog. I've tried everything, deleted kernel extensions, removed applications, reset pram, etc. but nothing was successful.

I have no time to waste looking for a solution to this problem.

Now I have installed Mac OS Mojave on an APFS partition of my internal SSD, reinstalled my Apps, and I work with Mojave without any problems whatsoever.

I hope Apple will fix everything with an update as soon as possible so I can get back to using Big Sur.

I'm certainly not going to waste a lot of time constantly restarting my Mac Pro and interrupting the flow of my work.

I would like an operating system that runs smoothly and professionally, without unnecessary frills.

Is 'It just works ..' a thing of the past? Really sad ..

Hi Old Toad, running a 2013 Macbook pro, upgraded to Big Sur and then immediately has slow downs and excess heat and fans. The OS would lock up once a day requiring a restart. Photos and mail particularly slow. In Safe mode the same. SMC PRAM resets are no benefit. Upgrading to later 11.1.2 etc improved the frequency of freezes, but not slow downs. No I am experiencing new random black screens, followed by fan noise and then shut downs.

After 3 months of failures I have attempted to downgrade to Catalina. It is possible but you can not use Migration Assistant. It will not allow Migration from a backup source that contains a newer OS than the destination. This means a clean install will require a manual move of your files and apps and that is fraught with failure to copy all the required files.

It's up to you, but IMHO do not install/reinstall Clean My Mac.

It often causes more problems than "fixes" it claims to make - your Mac does not need to be "cleaned."

Hi Chris,

I also have those problems with my MacPro early 15, 13", 16GB RAM, 2,9GHz i5.

It often freezes when open up applications, closing them or installing/uninstalling apps.

I couldn't fix it by now and I couldn't figuring out, if maybe some programs are responsible for this behaviour.

With all programs I have, I'd run the Catalina without any problems, so my conclusion is "Big Sur is buggy".

Soon I will do a fresh install of bigSur and watch, if the problems occur again, if yes, I'm going to downgrade the machine and don't use that BigBug-OS.

So, you are not the only one...

Hope, Apple will fix those things immediately.

Best regards

Shockingly so. I have had regular crashes of the OS for the last several weeks - most often when reawakening from sleep and notifications are stacking - though I'm not convinced that is always the cause. I am running on a MBPro Touch Bar 2019 and I find Big Sur to have issues with responsiveness - especially in the notifications center. There are also several features missing that I assumed would never go away, in particular the ability to mirror my iPhone/iPad to my Mac through Quicktime

Trust me, I am around a lot of Big Sur users and the issues you cite are exceedingly rare.

That isn't meant to dismiss your issues, but rather any of the issues you cite let alone all of them are quite rare.

I use myriad applications all day on several Macs and have never, ever had to force quit any of them.

It could be because those apps are having issues running on Big Sur; if they are Apple apps, then it may be due to hardware issues on your machine itself.

Endless issues on a Mac Mini 2015. Unplanned and unwanted sudden restarts, locking up, freezings ... the list goes on.

As I write I am updating to 11.1 and hoping that some of this - if not all - will be fixed.

Not a single issue with my MBP 16. Rock solid, zero freezes or crashes.

I do wonder if you have a hardware issue; running Bootcamp is not proof as if you have memory issues it depends on what is in the memory locations that are bad.

Regardless, this is not my experience nor that of the many, many others I know with MBP 16s.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but you couldn't be more wrong.

Big Sur was in testing by hundreds of thousands of Apple developers and users worldwide for over five months before it was first released to the public.

Each successive release has also been extensively tested by developers and users before release, and all this also ignores the significant amount of testing that has taken place within Apple.

To state that Apple "rushed out" a release "without testing" because you are having issues (despite the millions of users world-wide not having issues) is ridiculous.

Yes, it's annoying when you are having an issue, and I don't say what I do to demean your particular issue, but to claim Apple rushed out the release or "didn't test" it is false on its face and ridiculous when examined in any detail whatsoever.

Reading an "implication" into my response is not the same as having said it.

When I state that I (and hundreds of people I personally deal with, and millions worldwide) have not had an issue, it's simply to give some sense of scale of the issue, to note that it's obviously not universal, even when using the same hardware, and that there is obviously something unique to your systems in terms of configuration or hardware that is causing your issues to occur.

That doesn't mean it's not an issue for you, it doesn't mean that Apple can't solve it, but it does mean that Apple can't just grab a random machine off the shelf and have it reproduce in the lab so they can solve it.

Note again that reporting an issue here, even if multiple people do so, is not going to accomplish anything if it is a software issue that must be solved on Apple's end; to accomplish that people need to contact Apple Support directly or send Apple feedback.

• Contact - Official Apple Support
• Feedback - macOS - Apple

I have heard that before that specifically Sophos causes problems here. Given that it is a widely used tool however, I do feel like that Apple cannot just ignore it and demand that I adjust. Also, literally cannot use the computer without it for work since our VPN does not let me connect without it. Again, no problem there under Windows 10...

Apple isn't here and isn't demanding anything. We're all end users like yourself. We're recommending non-use of those types of apps based on multiple occurrences of other users having used them, had problems and solved their problems by removing the offending software.

The fact that there are no known self propagating viruses for Macs make software like Sophos rather surpufulbous and a waste of money. However, there is malware and adware and those are handled very thoroughly and efficiently by Malwarebytes. It was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community.