After 12.5 Update, Sometimes Apps Bounce Continuously and OS Hangs, Requiring Manual Power Reset

[Takuro]

After installing the 12.5 update on my 2020 27" iMac, every so often, apps will start to fail to launch and will bounce continuously. If I right click them in the dock, they will all they they are not responding with an offer to kill them. Within a few minutes, the operating system will hang so badly that the cursor becomes a pinwheel and all interactions with things like the menubar, desktop, dock, etc have a delay of several tens of seconds. Eventually, the mouse will even stop registering any movement, and I'll be forced to do a manual reset with the power button.

This never happened on 12.4 but has happened on 12.5 about 3-4 times now in just one week of usage. One time, I happened to have a terminal window already opened and managed to run a "top" command, but no process was hogging the CPU. I unfortunately never got a chance to check memory usage. However, in my experience, macOS has a built-in prompt if memory falls below a certain threshold, and this should be visible before there's a performance impact so the user can intervene, but I've ever seen any such warning prompts.

Is anyone else seeing this? I am not sure if it's a fluke or not, but it seems this most open happens when changing between Wi-Fi connections if the new connection has some issue that prevents a clean cutover (eg: the "please move closer to your hotspot" error if a connection fails).

Thanks

 

[BanditoB]

I haven't seen anyone else mention this issue, so it sounds like a fluke. If I were you, I would do a reinstall of macOS Monterey. It seems like something may not have updated correctly on your system.

 

[Takuro]

After a lot of trial and error, the issue is Little Snitch. I've reported it to the developers.

The real issue ended up being that the entire network stack of macOS is being torn down with some pseudo-connectivity. This leaves apps in a state similar to a November 2020 issue where apple's OSCP servers went down and Trustd couldn't authenticate signatures. It's a real issue that happened as reported here, wherein for an entire day, all Mac users couldn't launch apps.

Network issues became my focus when I noticed that when the issue happens, the entire Networking pane in System Preferences becomes empty with no WiFi, ethernet, or network services listed. In addition, in System Profiler, the entire WiFi pane can't list a single piece of hardware in my system. Again, this points to a low-level issue deep in the network stack of macOS where it can't even poll the network hardware to know it's there.

I found a reliable way to recreate this on a fresh macOS install:

- Install Little Snitch and enable its kext. You will see Little Snitch running as a network service in the Networking preference pane of System Preferences.

- Install Minecraft. Add a few servers to the connection window. Sometimes, they will try to load continuously and never get a reply back from the server. Try to force-quit the app, and it will hang and not really quit. The app will remain in the dock and say its unresponsive. (I think there's something specific about Java's networking code that helps reveal the issue.)

The end result will be that the network stack crashes in macOS and stays down until a reboot, and the system becomes very slow. I was able to verify that in the 2nd step, when Minecraft is waiting for the servers to reply, moving Little Snitch to the trash bin forcibly unloads its kext, and the servers *immediately* begin responding.

I think this behavior just began in 12.5. Not sure if Ventura is impacted, but I'll test it alter.

 

[Takuro]

Just as an update: Issue also exists in Ventura beta 4.

 

[halledise]

this wee utility is your friend.
install, run, then restart the mac.
boom …
kext utility

 

[bogdanw]

No problem for me



This issue is not caused by LittleSnitch and Kext Utility doesn’t do anything to help with it.

 

[Brachaci]

I have experienced pretty much the same issue after updating to 12.5. For me it happened just after I received my 2020 iMac 27 from the service with pre-installed Catalina. I have immediately upgraded to Monterey 12.5 and then after each start of the system, all sorts of basics tasks started to hang, apps were bouncing, then getting unresponsive. Anything from opening Safari, Finder, System pref, Activity monitor etc… I wasn’t digging into it like you have. After two days I went for the clean install from bootable USB and ever since then it is running very well.

 

[Sydryx]

Hey! I'm having this exact same issue. Reinstalled Mac OS (without wiping), and the problem was fixed for a day or two but then started happening again. Similar to you, nothing is hogging the CPU when I'm able to get activity monitor to load. Think I'm just going to have to pull the trigger on a complete wipe today.

 

[Takuro]

Think I'm just going to have to pull the trigger on a complete wipe today.

I'm not sure if it's the same issue unless you're using Little Snitch or something that intercepts network traffic as kernel / network extension. I got my issue pinpointed pretty specifically at this stage. I can reproduce this on a fresh macOS install with nothing but Little Snitch running if I run Minecraft with even just 1 server added. The server will sometimes take up to 3-5 minutes to load, or sometimes never load, but moving Little Snitch to the trash lets it load immediately. And if I force-quit Minecraft in the 3-5 minutes its stuck, the networking pane disappears and the system becomes unstable.

I will say though that I think Ventura handles the situation *slightly* better in that apps still launch normally, and I can actually shut the system down properly, even while the network stack is hosed. Monterey seems to handle it worse. Either way, the Little Snitch devs need to fix their crud.

Also: I think my issue is specifically Little Snitch + Java. Before I made the correlation that Minecraft can cause it, I realized that all the times I saw a lockup was when I was starting or stopping an app called DavMail, which is a background process that uses Java too. I think Java helps Little Snitch mess up the network stack.

this wee utility is your friend.
install, run, then restart the mac.
boom …
kext utility

I'm not sure how I feel about using a tool used for Hackintoshes. Seems that site ripped it from InsanelyMac, which I used to be a member of a long time ago. This isn't a permissions issue, since I can create the problem on a fresh install.

 

[Sydryx]

Yeah probably something different (where I'm not using Little Snitch), but same symptoms. Think I isolated my problem to the app Fantastical. iMac had been working great as I reinstalled my old apps back on. Woke up this morning and realized I hadn't reinstalled Fantastical, so went ahead with that. Soon after the problem started happening again. Have since deleted it, and iMac is working fine again. Maybe just a coincidence, but I'll throw it out there in case anyone else stumbles across this post with a similar issue.