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.

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!

I'm trying to open GarageBand on Mac:

"GarageBand cannot be opened because of a problem. Check with the developer to make sure GarageBand works with this version of macOS. You may need to reinstall the application. Be sure to install any available updates for the application and macOS. Click Report to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple."

I am on an Apple M4, 16 GB, macOS Golden Gate 27—2025 laptop. I am on a school laptop, and I need this for my assessment. I have it fully updated, and I don't want to reinstall the application in case I lose anything. I might not even be able to reinstall it, as it says:

"This app is managed and updated by your organization."

Is there anything I can do in Terminal? Just tell me if I need my password/serial number, etc.

Our Entra Mac users, running macOS 27, are unable to login after connecting to new a Wi-Fi network.

The affected users' passwords successfully unlock their Macs at startup, but the subsequent login screen displays:

Network is unavailable. Please check your connection and try again.

The users is now locked out of their Mac, even if they attempt to connect to a previously known Wi-Fi network. The Mac becomes completely unusable to the user.

The local admin account can still sign in on the affected Mac.

Sequence:

1. Existing Entra SSO user has (had) a working account.
2. The Mac connects to a new Wi-Fi network.
3. The affected user attempts to sign in.
4. Startup disk unlocks successfully, but desktop login fails with the "network-unavailable" message.

Only workaround we've found:

Signed in as local admin and deleted the affected account profile. When the user signs in again, macOS automatically recreates their SSO account and access is restored.

This restores access but required backing up and recovering the user's local data. It does not identify the root cause.

The issue appears to be very similar to what Okta users have reported:
https://support.okta.com/help/s/article/okta-platform-sso-authentication-failures-occur-after-upgrading-to-macos-27

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.

My wife's organization's website got infected by malicious code and she got a ClickFix fake Cloudflare verification page when she went to fix it. Unfortunately, since she often has to log in to the back end of the website and since they have gotten real Cloudflare verification pages before, she did, in fact, open Terminal and run the code before immediately realizing her mistake.

I had her download Malwarebytes for Mac and it identified three instances of two different pieces of malware (MacOS.Stealer.Nova and MacOS.Stealer.Odyssey), which we quarantined and removed. We then restarted the computer and ran the scan again, and nothing was found. She also changed her organizational and Google passwords from another device, and we have her work Mac currently sitting in the other room and disconnected from the internet. She has started going through the passwords that were saved in her Chrome password manager and changing them, and she has 2FA enabled on major accounts as well.

I unfortunately do not have enough experience with Macs generally or with Terminal in particular to know if anything actually happened or if the code itself was never actually executed.

When she ran the code, she got the result "zsh: command not found: #" but she was allowed to enter the website, so I suspect that at least something happened when she ran it, but we don't actually know when the MacOS.Stealer.Nova or MacOS.Stealer.Odyssey pieces of malware would have been installed.

She does have a Time Machine backup from several months ago, but she obviously has a ton of important files and documents that she needs that wouldn't be included in that backup.

I've included screenshots, and she has spoken with the people in charge of the org's website who quickly got the malicious code removed, but since her organization is so small she doesn't really have an IT department that she can turn to. Does anybody here know enough about Terminal to look at the code and the output to give us a bit of insight?

Thank you!

No matter what I do, restart, close settings, turn location services completely off or on, my desktop just switches over to this window in settings. Its like a persistent bug that I cant stop. Never had this happen before until yesterday.

I can close this window and go back to chrome, safari, doesnt matter. This window just reopens and switches my desktop over. Very annoying, anyone dealt with this before?

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/27536

ok so I did the dumb thing and kept my whole dev folder in iCloud Drive with "Optimize Mac Storage" on. Git repos, node_modules, venvs, all of it. Yes I know...

Now I'm trying to move everything out to a local folder and iCloud just refuses to download anything. Most of the files are cloud-only and opening any of them hangs forever. Literally a 700 byte git config file. It's been hours.

stuff I've tried:

• freed up a ton of disk space (went from 15 GB free to 110)
• killall bird (it ignored the normal kill, had to -9 it lol)
• killed fileproviderd too
• brctl download on the folder, which did absolutely nothing
• network's fine, I'm signed in, and I've got like 1.3 TB of iCloud space left

bird is just sitting there at ~65% CPU. brctl status says it needs to sync up AND down, so I think it's stuck behind a huge upload backlog from all the git/node_modules files.

haven't restarted or tried Safe Mode yet. I'm also scared to sign out of iCloud, because some stuff hasn't uploaded and I really don't want to lose it.

so:

• has anyone actually unjammed this without nuking everything?
• is there a sane way to get repos out when the files literally won't download? some have uncommitted work

(macOS 26.7.1, MacBook Pro M1 Pro)

I've been getting increasingly tired of all the various subscriptions we are now forced to take on whether it's iCloud, Amazon Prime, Netflix etc. For our family, iCloud is probably the most used and important but we are over the family storage limit and the costs just keep going up.

Are there any other alternative solutions that are worth looking into? I also run a home Ubiquiti system and was thinking of possibly a NAS but that introduces other potential issues like ensuring you have proper backups and it's not always easy for my family members to take over managing the system should I pass away.

Are there any other simple options available out there? I'm looking to actively reduce the number of subscriptions I have moving forward. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Updated m2 MacBook Pro to MacOs 27.0.1 and now my computer is very laggy. I use one external 4k monitor but never had issues in previous software. In activity monitor, window server now uses 120-140% CPU and hovers in this range all the time.

Anyone else having similar issues since update? Any suggestions on how I can fix this greatly appreciated! Considering downgrading to MacOS 26 for the time being if this continues.

Update: I closed out of the "Clock" app and that helped significantly. My Windowserver CPU dropped down to 20-30%. Whenever I reopen and keep a timer/stopclock in the background, it shoots back up. Why does a simple clock app use this much CPU I don't understand

Hi everyone can someone help me fix my finder, when I want to hit the options tab it is huge and goes off the screen. Any help is appreciated thanks.

As titled. Unmounting the external drive(s) will result in Finder immediately showing up to 50gb freed up from internal SSD. It doesn't look like all external drives are doing this though, just the HDDs.

A quick check with DaisyDisk shows that the internal "Free Space" actually remains the same regardless of whether external drives are plugged in, but "Free + Purgeable" changes.

I've excluded all my external drives from spotlight indexing and have temporarily paused Time Machine backups. But I still can't figure out where this "purgeable" 50gb is??

Any insight would be appreciated, thank you!

MacBook Air M2 / 16GB / 256GB (MacOS 27.0.1)

I'm having a really frustrating issue with Safari on my Mac and I'm hoping someone here has found a permanent fix. This started to become an issue after I update my mac to Golden Gate 27.0.1

Whenever I try to play videos on YouTube, Reddit, or almost any other site, the audio plays perfectly fine, but the video itself will not play (it's either a black screen or completely frozen).

I’ve tried clearing my history, website data, and cache. Sometimes, doing this allows me to watch videos normally again for about 1 to 2 days before the issue returns. However, even this "fix" is inconsistent, the videos don't always start working immediately after a cache clear. It usually takes a random amount of time afterward for them to suddenly start playing again, so I'm not even sure if clearing the cache is what's actually helping.

I really prefer using Safari over Chrome or other browsers, but this bug is making it almost impossible to use daily.

Anyone who's been sad to see MacUpdater go, please take a look at Version Tracker.

Superb!

Deep in features, easy-to-use, pleasing interface, fast and (I venture to say) likely to be an all round winner…

(I'm just a fellow user like you. No investment in the product or company; except that it took me barely 10 minutes to subscribe.)

Hey all. I bought the Anker DL7400 prime and honestly I'm underwhelmed by it. I was unaware it uses display link in order to get the image from the dock to the MacBook and honestly, it's trash. The lag you feel is very noticeable, so I'm looking to replace it.

https://amzn.eu/d/0dgesXd6
https://amzn.eu/d/05LgBWwO
https://amzn.eu/d/0c3eMHnC

These three have caught my eye. Just wondering if anyone has experience with them and can help out at all?

EDIT: The machine in question is an M3 max MacBook pro

Since macOS 27 some parts of the UI are in English, not translated to the language I use daily (Polish).
The funny part? It was working correctly in macOS 26... What the hell Apple?

I have two Macs using a wi-fi peer connection, but it's going to take several hours. Can I connect a USB-C 3.1 cable and it automatically switch to that connection? I just didn't want it to force me to restart the transfer.

Does anybody know how to fix this bug when the spaces bar doesn't display windows on the spaces thumbs? macOS 26 displays the windows on the spaces and it's much easier to find the required one. Maybe some workarounds how to restore it? Restarting Mac, doesn't help (

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 15.6.1

Scanning for 15.6.1 installer
Install failed with error: Update not found

Per title, any other official source where I can get them?

Trying to troubleshoot Bluetooth speaker issues that emerged on my M4 MBA after update. Problem persists after wipe off and clean install. Going to try older version per suggestion by Apple staff.

Thanks.

I was using the ChatGPT desktop for repetitive mouse clicking and dragging but after today's OS update, not any more. ChatGPT would SSH across to other machines and do the work, now it can't not and I can't find a log to read.

Help please.

Anyone else experiencing similar? I've had it installed since nearly day one because it was supposed to be a Snow Leopard release. I know Siri AI is gobbling up about 12-14GB but where did the other 20GB go? I thought temp files would delete themselves but I've actually lost another 6GB in the last two weeks.

When I drag the window for safari/edge around my monitors, sometimes, randomly, the draging will get "stuck" and I wont have a way to move the windows. I can go full screen and sometimes it will "unstuck" but often I have to quit and reopen the program.