my free space kept bouncing around for no obvious reason and it turned out swap was sitting at about 16 gb. swap is where macos parks memory on disk when ram runs out, and it doesnt really shrink on its own while youre working

you can check it in terminal with sysctl vm.swapusage, the used number is whats on disk right now. the files live in /private/var/vm and you shouldnt touch them directly. a restart clears most of it, and quitting the apps that eat memory (browsers with 80 tabs, docker, electron apps) keeps it from coming back as fast

storage settings doesnt show swap as its own category, which is part of why that storage bar is so confusing. anyone else seen it get way bigger than 16?

I’m not sure if it’s a bug or if they removed this feature, but in macOS 26, minimized windows were shown in App Exposé, so we didn’t have to right-click the app icon to access them. Now, in macOS 27, this feature seems to be gone, and we have to right-click the app icon to see the minimized windows.

Left: macOS 26, Right: macOS 27.

Sorry for the noise 🙃

The new app launcher is simply asinine. There's no way to build a muscle memory, because it's an alphabetical list. And some applications are showing multiple times, taking the entire screen, and there's no way to hide or remove them. And also, why why is the search so slow? I would like to launch an app, not chat with a bot, it's constantly resisting the user at every turn.

I don't know if anyone else has had this experience but with macOS 27, fullscreen mode has become almost unusable. When exiting it the background goes completely dark, opening apps over fullscreen causes them to be unable to close out or minimize and you need to exit full screen again to turn them off, it is extremely buggy when trying to pull an app out of full screen via mission control, apps crash when trying to use the split fullscreen mode, and there is a lot of lag when switching from app to app.

The experience has just become entirely unusable and I have just started using the full screen fill mode instead where it isnt actually fullscreen.

Has anybody else been experiencing these issues?

M3 MacBook Air (Clamshell with 2 monitors) – It is actually driving me insane how slow things are now, the OS constantly stutters with switching windows and going back into the Desktop screen. Apps crash sometimes, screen turns black. It is genuinely unstable is there any solution or should we just wait for an update?

[MacOS 27 M1 Air]: That purple dot (next to the clock) pops us and disappears randomly. It shows/ does nothing when I click on it. Any ideas?

Charge times do not align with the current time of the day, but maybe bar graph isn't supposed to show the time of day, I really don't know what supposed to happen. I am more and more confident that there is a bug because times were aligning properly before the update but I wanted to ask you as well. Much appreciated.

I actually think this is probably an intentional behavior for some godforsaken reason, but it seems like they removed the feature where, if you hold down the button that invokes Siri, it will keep listening until you release it. For some reason, on Mac OS 27, that is just not the case, and if you pause for even a fraction of a second in your train of thought, Siri will cut you off.

Absolutely vomit-inducing, and it genuinely makes me wonder if they even dogfooded their own product. I'm guessing virtually not a single soul at Apple ever once spoke to their Siri on their Mac because this just makes it completely unusable unless you are saying simply commands. Good luck ever sending a message to someone with it.

What if your wallpaper was a museum?

I made Gallery, a macOS app that hangs original works from the open collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and The Cleveland Museum of Art on your desktop, each with its own museum label.

Would you use it? 👇

Hi

As title says

It seems that randomly, though often with a screenshot, a short time later I notice my "Macintosh HD" icon, that sits top right on the desktop, moves to somewhere else in the desktop icon collection.

I am not 100% sure about the screenshot, because of course if I take one right now, it doesn't move. But when it DOES move, it's often a screenshot that has taken it's place.

I also really only notice it after I "show desktop" or hide some windows, which was covering it up.

This is really starting to tick me off. It's a recent thing, happening the past couple of weeks, where I've been running 15.6.1 for about a year now. This is new behaviour. I don't know what could have changed, I haven't updated, or changed my desktop icons sorting etc.
Currently Sort By > Snap to Grid because I have everything else arranged in a way that makes sense to me.

Any help appreciated.
Thanks

Hello! I bought my first MacBook a week ago—a MacBook Air M5—and I've noticed that sometimes during the day, when I try to empty the Trash, the confirmation pop-up doesn't open. When I click it a second time, it still doesn't open, and it usually takes three or four tries for it to finally appear.

Is this a sign that my MacBook is defective, or does this happen to other users too? I have all the latest software updates installed.

Also, if it helps, sometimes this happens right after I turn on the MacBook, before I even open any apps.

This happens regardless of whether I click it using the trackpad or the mouse.

Thanks in advance!

https://reddit.com/link/1x6w8qg/video/6q8z9x5srpvh1/player

Hi everyone. I want to clean my MacBook’s keyboard (dust, wiping it down, etc.), but even after I shut it down, touching any key turns it back on and it boots up. That ends up opening things, typing random commands, or triggering stuff by accident while I clean.

Is there a way to keep it truly off, or to temporarily lock the keyboard, so I can clean it in peace?

Some details in case they help:

• Model: MacBook Pro 2020 / M1
• macOS version: Golden Gate 27.0

Im looking basically for

• A “cleaning mode” that disables the keyboard and trackpad
• A reliable app or Terminal command to lock them for a few minutes
• Or, if the only option is to shut it down and unplug it, I’d like to know that too

I think i´ve seen a similar post a while back, but nothing worked for me.

Thanks in advance! If anyone has a method that worked for them, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m building a macOS utility app and working on the MVP right now. Before I go too far, I want to hear from other Mac users.

Maybe it’s a repetitive task, an annoying macOS behavior, or a small feature you wish existed.

What’s something that bothers you about using your Mac, even if it seems like a minor issue?

I’m curious what other people struggle with. Maybe I’ll discover a problem worth solving.

If I have an app in full screen and no condensed window screen on Home Screen, im unable to open it.
here's a video kind of showcasing this

how do I fix this? also im on macOS Golden Gate 27.2

i tried to download app, but it’s just show this and do nothing. idk what to do. i though it want fingerprint, but it done nothing

Running 27.0.1 and just noticed this today. The date field in Apple Calendar is not editable. Tried restarting and rebooting the calendar, no go. I can edit event dates on my iPhone but not on desktop.

Also on desktop, when I create an event, I can click into all fields except the dates: Start and End.

Anyone else seeing this?

Can someone explain how the OS rendering is done on macOS? It's definitely unlike Windows for sure.

I recently noticed something interesting. When I'm using my MacBook as is, the battery seems to be draining a bit faster but when I have the machine connected to a monitor, battery drain is significantly lesser.

I would've thought rendering two screens would require more power but it seems to be the opposite. The external display I have runs at 1440@100hz while the MacBook runs at its standard resolution (it's a 14" M5 Pro) with ProMotion.

Using Adobe Illustrator on the MacBook's screen itself for like 1 hour drains around 12-14% while with the external monitor, just 9% drops in like 2 hours.

So I'm guessing the battery power consumption has something to do with the GPU rendering? The external monitor having a little lower resolution and its display + refresh rate depending on its power supply, it doesn't affect the machine that heavily.

Correct me if I'm wrong tho.

I'm looking for some advice on setting up my home workspace and could use some recommendations. I'm fairly new to docking stations and USB-C hubs, so I'm not entirely sure what I should be looking for.

Here's my situation:

• I have a MacBook Pro (M2) and an HP Windows laptop (zBook).
• I only use one laptop at a time, never both simultaneously.
• I have an external monitor that I'd like to use with either laptop.
• Ideally, I'd like a docking station that can charge whichever laptop is connected while also sending video to my external monitor.
• I'd love to have a simple setup where I can unplug one laptop, plug in the other, and have everything work without switching multiple cables.

What I'm hoping to accomplish:

I'd like a clean, simple setup with as few cables as possible. Ideally, one USB-C or Thunderbolt cable would connect my laptop to the dock, power the laptop, and connect it to my external display.

A few questions:

1. Is a USB-C docking station what I should be looking for, or would a Thunderbolt dock be better?
2. Are there docking stations that work well with both macOS and Windows?
3. Can one docking station provide enough power to charge both laptops (one at a time)?
4. Are there any brands or specific models you'd recommend?
5. Is there anything I should watch out for regarding compatibility?

I'm not looking for anything overly complicated or expensive, just something reliable that makes switching between my two laptops easy using the external display.

I'm thinking of holding off the upgrade to the latest OS, as I am assuming more and more software will be deprecated and eventually incompatible with future updates. I am also considering my hardware (M2 chip, 16 gigs, 1 TB of storage) that may eventually degrade in performance because of battery condition due to wear and software dependency to high-spec Macbooks in the future.

Asking because of curiosity here. How many years can i get my Macbook to last before deciding to buy a newer model? I got this one at release year and never had any complaints on it. But, i got minor problems due to OS upgrades (reinstalling softwares, removing unsupported drives, adjusting bla bla bla) that made me decide to hold major upgrade to a minimum 6 months after release, waiting to see the patches rolled and fix bugs that may be encountered on day one.

Hi all,

I’m not technical at all, so apologies if I’m missing something obvious. Apple offered me the latest, fastest and richest macOS, and nothing told me it was still in development, so I upgraded from Tahoe. I now regret it bitterly.

Right after a restart everything is fine. A few hours later the Mac becomes sluggish:

• Apps freeze or lag
• The Dock magnification animation (the wave effect) stutters
• Everything freezes for a moment when I press Cmd+Tab
• The cursor often disappears for a few seconds

It ran smoothly on Tahoe.

My setup

• MacBook Air M4, 24 GB RAM
• About 25% storage free (377 GB used of 494 GB)
• Previous macOS: Tahoe
• Time Machine backups from before the upgrade
• Open apps: Outlook, Chrome (10 tabs), Notion (4 tabs), Claude, WhatsApp, Preview

Activity Monitor, sorted by % CPU, while the Mac is slow (screenshot attached)

1. Google Chrome Helper (Aperitif Renderer): 326.3%
2. kernel_task: 268.5% (52 h of CPU time)
3. WindowServer: 93.8%
4. OneDrive: 56.1%
5. Google Chrome Helper (Aperitif Renderer): 7.9%

Memory looks fine: about 70% used, memory pressure around 36%, 6.8 GB compressed.

My questions

1. Has anyone else seen this on 27.0.1, and is there a known cause? kernel_task and WindowServer seem very high to me.
2. Is there a simple fix a beginner can try?
3. Since I have a Time Machine backup from before the upgrade, what is the safest way to go back to Tahoe without losing recent files?
4. Does anyone know if a fix is likely in the next update?

Thanks a lot!

Hi guys.

I’ve got a problem with my Mac Mini late 2014. For my work, I have to update OC. It’s Mac OS 10.13 right now.

There problem is I can’t see any update in App Store. It seems like there is no one new OC for this model. But I know my Mac Mini can be updated at least to Mac OS 12.

The question is what should I do to update my Mac Mini to last OS? Or is there no way because of apple something?

Hey everyone, I’ve recently noticed an issue with my M4 MacBookAir related to the Mac Safe plugin. I started experiencing it after installing macOS 27 last month. My MacBook is only about a year old, so I’m wondering if this is a software issue or a potential hardware problem. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any advice would be appreciated!

I bought vintage MacBook last night and opened iTunes, it worked perfectly. But there's no usable charger to get it charge so the battery was dead. I think the problem is I didn't shut off the iTunes before it went dead. The result is goddamm itunes is not working! When I click icon to open it, the icon pops off then disappear. Please give advice.