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 beta, so I upgraded from Tahoe to GoldenGate 27.0.1. 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!

What are we thinking? First the traffic lights, and now certain dialog boxes, have this effect when clicked & dragged.

I don't mind the traffic lights being 'bouncy' but this is slightly different.

In 27.0 you can move the trash warning box around the screen like any other window, in 27.2 b4 it stays pinned to the centre of the screen and does this if you try to move it.

Hi! I’m on Tahoe rn, so I wanted to ask you guys if you could send me the files for traffic lights
Thanks in advance and have a great one!

Notice where the window ends up landing when the cursor crosses from screen to screen. It doesn't stay put under the cursor.

This doesn't affect all windows though, just like window dragging within the same monitor is not broken for all windows: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1lcvtsh/am_i_the_only_one_having_issues_with_dragging/

But it definitely affects some windows, including "About This Mac" window.

MacOS 27.2 Beta