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Yosemite Bogs Down/Slows Down After Some Time

N

neteng101

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
1,148
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I don't reboot or shutdown my Mac often - but with Yosemite I'm noticing after a few days it starts to really slow down. Mission Control, etc all will get extremely laggy, CPU utilization is nowhere near maxed.

Maybe a slow memory leak or something happening to the WindowServer process? In any case there doesn't seem to be a cure other than to reboot every so often.
 
I noticed the same on my Mac Mini 2012 and my MacBook Air 2013. I also noticed that the slowdown takes longer on my MacBook Air than on the Mini.
 
blaichch said:
I noticed the same on my Mac Mini 2012 and my MacBook Air 2013. I also noticed that the slowdown takes longer on my MacBook Air than on the Mini.
Click to expand...

Do you have more RAM on your Air possibly?

Mine is happening on a late "13 rMBP with 8GB of RAM.
 
blaichch said:
Well, I'm having 16GB on my Mini and 8GB on my MB Air. So that can't be it
Click to expand...

Oh well there goes one theory. Its quite perplexing... there's nothing I can see to suggest a process that has gone crazy, but the lag that comes over time with usage will always come back.
 
I had this issue 13" Mid 2014 rMPB, got it replaced and the slow down after a day of use is still there.
 
I had the same issue on my late 2013 rMPR 13" with 8gb of RAM.

It would be plenty fast and smooth, equal or better than Mavericks, but gradually become choppier when in use. By the time I would restart, mission control was a stuttery mess, minimizing and maximizing was pitifully choppy, switching between desktops was choppy, and overall UI performance was more similar to a $300 windows Laptop than what I would expect from a $1,500+ Macbook.

Now, I'm fairly sure I fixed it (knock on wood). I haven't restarted the computer in days, and still have used in plenty, and performance is just as good as when I rebooted. Very smooth, very fast.

I'm not sure exactly what fixed it, but I reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and repaired disk utilities. One of these must have fixed it, because I'm not having gradual slowdown issues anymore. Judging from other comments, it seems this issue primarily affects rMPRs.

Hope this helps
 
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Well, I will say this. Yosemite's animations and such are lagging on my Early-2011 13" MBP, 8GB RAM. There are also Wi-Fi bugs...and bad printing bugs...that all started after moving to Yosemite. I am tempted to move back to Mavericks for now. I think it would be worth going through an HD wipe and clean install with all the frustration.
 
For what its worth....

I had it for a while. I shut down every program. Shut down the computer. Turned it on. Again made sure every program was shut. Shut down again. Turned back on. Opened my programs as usual. Things have been fine since.

The one thing I haven't done that I did before was use iCloud drive to look at some files from within finder and I haven't opened any pdfs that use preview. I don't want to do any of those things because I think thats where the issue might be.

I also deleted and reinstalled some of my email accounts because i was getting terrible can't connect, server not recognised problems and the mail app kept changing my settings to settings that aren't supported.
 
severage said:
I'm not sure exactly what fixed it, but I reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and repaired disk utilities.
Click to expand...

Giving this a try - it usually takes me a few days before it gets noticeable/bad, but I've got nothing to lose. Hope it works... cause its really annoying when it happens.
 
neteng101 said:
Giving this a try - it usually takes me a few days before it gets noticeable/bad, but I've got nothing to lose. Hope it works... cause its really annoying when it happens.
Click to expand...

I tried all the resets and disk repairs. It didn't solve the problem.

Disabling transparency didn't help either.
 
I ran into a similar issue, downloaded OnyX and ran a couple of cleaning tasks/disabled useless animations like Mission Control animation/dock animation/ transparency now it feels like brand new, of course this may not work for everybody and OnyX should be used with care.
 
iMojito said:
I tried all the resets and disk repairs. It didn't solve the problem.

Disabling transparency didn't help either.
Click to expand...

Hmm....does your Mac initially perform well and slow down overtime, or is it just slow and choppy right after a reboot?
 
severage said:
Hmm....does your Mac initially perform well and slow down overtime, or is it just slow and choppy right after a reboot?
Click to expand...

Initially performs pretty well, but OSX gets slow over time. While Chrome tab switching and scrolling is smooth, Mission Control becomes sluggish. Closing all apps doesn't restore smoothness so the only choice is to reboot.

MBA mid 2012 8GB ram, just before someone points hardware problem...
PD: My macbook is in clamshell mode most of the time, attached to an external display .
 
Last edited:
iMojito said:
Initially performs pretty well, but OSX gets slow over time. While Chrome tab switching and scrolling is smooth, Mission Control becomes sluggish. Closing all apps doesn't restore smoothness so the only choice is to reboot.

MBA mid 2012 8GB ram, just before someone points hardware problem...
PD: My macbook is in clamshell mode most of the time, attached to an external display .
Click to expand...

Ok, just making sure it wasn't an old computer that just wasn't equipped to run Yosemite. So it is the same problem.

In resetting the PRAM, I accidentally reset it 2-3 times. Are you sure you reset the PRAM and SMC? I know you said you did, but the system doesn't really notify you if/when you reset them. Because I was having awful stutter and choppiness that could only temporarily be fixed by a reboot before I did this.
 
severage said:
In resetting the PRAM, I accidentally reset it 2-3 times. Are you sure you reset the PRAM and SMC? I know you said you did, but the system doesn't really notify you if/when you reset them. Because I was having awful stutter and choppiness that could only temporarily be fixed by a reboot before I did this.
Click to expand...

I'm sure, SMC reset turned my trim enabled SSD unbootable, and PRAM reset second chore has higher volume in my case.

Just rebooted after some minor tweaks in Onyx, which I don't expect would solve the problem.
 
I already filed a bug report on the 24. October. Today they requested a sysdiagnose from me. So let's hope that it gets fixed soon. To bad that I just rebooted my computer :D
 
OP wrote above:
[[ I don't reboot or shutdown my Mac often - but with Yosemite I'm noticing after a few days it starts to really slow down. ]]

My suggestion:
1. Shut down each night
2. Reboot each morning.

I don't use Yosemite as "my main OS" -- still using 10.8.5 for that.
However, I am currently experimenting with Yosemite, which is installed on a decade-old firwire400 external drive (so old that the internal drive is IDE, not SATA!).

The computer is a late-2012 Mac Mini with 10gb of RAM (2+8).

Surprisingly, it runs much better than during my previous experimentation with Mavericks (which I would never recommend to anyone).

I have noticed some odd things, however, which I believe are directly attributable to Apple's "new paradigm" of memory management that began with Mavericks and continues with Yosemite.

With generally just Safari open, Activity Monitor will start showing excessive "disk write" activity -- even though I'm doing -nothing- that would prompt such activity, not downloading, just "viewing".

While this is going on, I can open Terminal and enter:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

... which I believe is the command (at least, in Mavericks) to disable the swap file (essentially disabling virtual memory).

Once I do this, the excessive writes quickly fade off to "0" or very few.

I realize one can be "tempting trouble" by disabling virtual memory in OS X.
But doing the above definitely "calms down" Yosemite in my experience, and causes me no other discernible problems whatsoever.

Final thought:
If the above terminal command is NOT the correct one for disabling VM in Yosemite, does someone know what the correct one might be?
 
iMojito said:
Great! Any news on this?
Click to expand...

No, sry. But I'm now running 10.10.1 PB2 and the slowdown seems to be a lot better. I can even play 3D games again. But I think that there's still a small slowdown but I'm not completely sure about this.

Mission Control is still very slow and choppy.
 
Unfortunately the issue is still present for me on a Mac Pro with OS X 10.10.1 (14B25) and there doesn’t seem to be a solution.
 
Still an issue on a Mid 2012 rMBP (2.6ghz, 16gb ram) running 10.10.2 (14c94b).

Only temporary fix is rebooting which lasts a couple days before it's noticeable again.
 
socamx said:
Still an issue on a Mid 2012 rMBP (2.6ghz, 16gb ram) running 10.10.2 (14c94b).

Only temporary fix is rebooting which lasts a couple days before it's noticeable again.
Click to expand...

Same here. Yosemite is fine, but then it will slow down. Animations are slower, apps take longer to open etc. It's really frustrating. Resetting the PRAM etc helps but then its comes back.
 
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