Apps slow to open and respond after macOS Tahoe 26.1 update

Symp EL wrote:

After updating to macOS Tahoe 26.1 I have noticed that apps like Pages, Pixelmator Pro, GarageBand, and Numbers are taking much longer to open. I frequently get the spinning beach ball, and even simple actions like clicking a file name to rename it, saving a file, or closing an app take two to three seconds to respond.

I have already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the affected apps as well as rebooting multiple times, but the issue persists.

I am running a MacBook Air M2 with 16 GB of RAM and nearly 700 GB of free storage space, so hardware limitations should not be the issue.

Has anyone else experienced this or found a fix? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Have you shut down and restarted more than once since your 26.1 update...

—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS

no insight

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.