Video freezes and/or is choppy Mac Mini M2 Pro - Definitely not overloaded

Thanks and noted. A hang over (as are most of those kexts, support libraries and extensions. Having done a factory reset, none of these are there any more and I don;t have any "disk utilities" any more.

BDAqua, thanks for your reply. I have checked all of the connected disks and all have reported back as successful with no errors. Just in case it is useful all my drives are APFS, both internal and external.

I have attached Entrecheck report below. One "interesting" thing to note - if the mouse is jiggled over the window concerned, whether a Safari window for online video, or the TV window for offline, the video restarts quite often immediately.

I am not running any VPN, anti-virus or cleaning apps. I do have CleanmyMac X but am not running it and have ensured it does not start up, even the pesky health check monitor.

So... Entrecheck

I have taken what I need from my home account (docs, images etc) and done a factory reset. Now rebuilding. A cathartic experience...

Thanks for all the advice

Ian, this video issue occurs on both online and offline video. So what comes off my SSDs (external) as well as what I play over the internet. My connection is consistently 135MB/s. Wifi signal (the Mac says) is excellent. All my own video (i.e. offline stored on SSDs is H264. However, I don't know enough about codecs to go to lower level.

I am wondering whether the migration assistant has graded something from my previous i7 iMac. It certainly seems to have pulled a number of kexts across that I do not believe would have been in the Sonoma base build but I do not know enough about what they do or whether they are actually loaded to know if they may be causing any issues.

Thanks hcsitas. Quick query if I may... Does the option to erase and reset to factory on Apple Silicon actually do that to the extent of removing all potentially rogue kernel extensions etc? Does it really take it back to the pristine condition it was in when I first opened the box? This may well be the best option if I want to be absolutely certain of not dragging around stuff from several Macs ago it seems...

So, here's the thing. Apparently this is an issue that has been around for some time. It has to do with Spaces and when you have larger displays. If you manage your displays as separate spaces there is no choppiness or other issues at all. Everything works well. Of course, you do have to cope with the *features* that separate spaces bring such as apps opening on the last space used, the menu flicking between displays and the dock too.

If you turn off management as separate spaces, that's when the choppiness/freezing occurs.

Hi BDAqua. These are not there. As suggested (strongly) I did a full factory reset. This issue is a known one with Spaces (or lack of them). It was in Monterey and Ventura and confirmed as being in earlier versions of Sonoma too. I have 14.6 and it still remains. Switch off displays have separate spaces and the stuttering commences.

I reduced my resolution on both screens from 3200X1800 to 2560X1440 (so effectively less pixels than a single 4k screen (Isn't it called DQHD or similar) and with separate spaces off it fails. Separate spaces on - perfect, no stutter on 4K video run in 4 windows simultaneously and with other heavy apps running.