Mac is running slow

Part 1 of 2

Yes. The version you provided is over 5,000 characters and can be substantially tightened without losing the important diagnostic reasoning.

Here is a more concise version that preserves the key evidence, removes repetition, and keeps the troubleshooting sequence logical:

Your EtreCheck report shows some evidence that macOS 27.0 is currently under more activity than your Mac was under with macOS 26.6, but it does not show evidence of a failing SSD, insufficient RAM, or an obvious hardware problem. The timing is important: macOS 27.0 was installed only on September 20, and this report was generated September 21.

I would not try to improve the EtreCheck score itself. “Below Average” is a performance measurement, not a diagnosis.

The hardware indicators are reassuring. The SSD reports 100% health, only 3% used, and good read/write performance. The report shows 7.44 GB of available memory and 0 B of swap, so it does not indicate memory pressure. The 16 GB of RAM is therefore not, based on this report, an obvious explanation for the slowdown.

The main issue is the software activity and crashes following the macOS 27 installation. The report records crashes involving Safari, iconservicesd, nsattributedstringagent, textunderstandingd, AppleIDSettings, TextInputMenuAgent, and Arc. Several are Apple processes and Arc is third-party. The report cannot establish their cause, but the timing makes a software/OS-transition issue worth investigating before assuming a hardware problem.

macOS may also still be performing post-upgrade processing. Apple notes that Spotlight indexing following a software upgrade can take hours or even days, depending on the amount of data. Your report also shows photoanalysisd using CPU, which indicates additional background processing, although the report alone cannot establish that it is causing the slowdown. Apple Support: About Spotlight indexing

For now, I would restart the Mac normally once, then leave it running and use it normally for a while rather than repeatedly restarting it or running EtreCheck. Keep it connected to the internet and allow background processing to finish. Afterward, see whether the actual sluggishness improves and, if necessary, run EtreCheck again under similar conditions.

The 99.09 system load should not by itself be interpreted as the Mac being overloaded. That figure was recorded shortly before the snapshot, while EtreCheck's CPU snapshot showed 85% idle, no swap, and moderate CPU activity. EtreCheck itself was also using about 1.13 GB of RAM during the test.

When the Mac actually feels slow, Activity Monitor > CPU is more useful than repeatedly running EtreCheck. In particular, watch whether Safari/WebKit or WindowServer consistently becomes unusually active. Your report showed approximately 52% CPU for WebKit WebContent, CPU use by Safari, and about 26% for WindowServer, making those worth monitoring during an actual slowdown.

If the problem persists, temporarily disabling third-party login items and extensions is a reasonable isolation test. Your report includes BetterDisplay, Stats, Rectangle, Amphetamine, LocalSend, Canva, PDFgear, and Safari extensions. Their presence does not establish that they are responsible, so I would not uninstall them solely because EtreCheck lists them. Utilities that interact with displays, windows, or system monitoring are particularly reasonable to test temporarily.

The three configuration profiles also do not, by themselves, demonstrate a performance problem. I would leave them unchanged unless you know one is unnecessary or was installed by something you do not recognize.

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to run slow / beachball. 

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage. The absolute minimum is ~20-25 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. Terminology is important here – free space is not the same thing as available space. The one that matters is Free space, but what macOS shows in most places is Available space. Available space includes both free space and ‘purgeable’ space, the latter comprises system caches, snapshots and other data that macOS can delete if it decides more free space is needed. However, there is no way the user can force those data to be purged.

The place to check how much Free space you have is in Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it). For example, on my M4 MacBook Pro, the Storage settings pane and Get Info on the internal drive show 1.24 TB of Available space, whereas Disk Utility shows there is 1.15 TB of actual Free space, 90 GB less than ‘available’. Although 90 GB is a small fraction of my 2 TB internal storage, that would not be the case with 256 GB or 512 GB of internal storage.

Note that you can also see the Free space in the System Report (System Settings > General > About > System Report button, at the bottom > Storage). 

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

If nothing in the above reveals an obvious culprit, then appropriate troubleshooting steps are Safe Mode and creating a new user account to test. 

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode. That process performs some system cleanup and clears caches, and also disables 3rd party extensions that may cause problems.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If that does not correct the issue, test in a new user account. A newly-created user account will have all settings at default, and if the issue does not occur in that new account then it provides guidance on what may need to be changed to correct the issue.

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Once the testing is complete, the new account can easily be deleted.

Delete a user or group on Mac – Apple Support

If you have 3rd party ‘protection’ software installed, that may be the problem. That includes:

Cleaners (software claiming to automatically free up space)

Optimizers (software claiming to make your Mac run faster)

Antivirus software

VPN software (unless provided by a school/employer to enable access to internal resources from a remote location)

Such 3rd party system ‘helpers’, ‘cleaners’ and ‘protectors’ do more harm than good. In fact, such products are completely unnecessary for macOS and the only ‘good’ (if you want to call it that) they do is to put money in the developers’ pockets. Cleaners and protectors cause compatibility issues, often after macOS updates. Commercial VPNs claim to hide your browsing activity from websites, and while that may be true those VPN providers just sell your browsing data to others. For the user, all of these types of software offer only harm…and if that is limited to harm to your bank account, then count yourself lucky. If you have installed such software, follow the developer’s instructions to completely uninstall it (note that some developers fail to provide instructions and their software installs can be pervasive, meaning the only way to truly remove it is to erase your Mac, reinstall macOS then restore your user files from a backup).

As Luis Sequeira1 states, post the full report using the Additional Text button. No personal information is revealed. 

The first time I saw your post, there was no report in sight - maybe I missed it or maybe you then updated your message to include the report; anyway, thanks for including it.

I noticed that there were several crashes yesterday, and that is also when an app called "Stats" was installed; there may be some relation. I am not familiar with it, but since it tries to access several pieces of system data, it is possible that it needs to be updated in order to work fully in macOS 27.

Also, immediately after an OS upgrade there are more things that need to run in the background, like Spotlight updating its indexes; thus maybe the extra load played some part in why the system was slower.

Note that Etrecheck reporting "Below Average" is just a function of how long the program took to do its job.

So how loaded the system was at the time can affect this classification, even if all is perfectly fine.

If you want us to help, you need to give us some information to act upon.

The easiest way is to post that Etrecheck report.

In Etrecheck, click Share->Copy Report; then start a new post here, click the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box (do not try to paste directly in the message, it will be too long).

Part 2 of 2

I would also make a Time Machine backup now. The absence of a recent backup is not causing the slowdown, but having a current backup is particularly useful after a major macOS upgrade. Apple Support: Back up your Mac with Time Machine

If the slowdown and crashes continue, test Safe Mode. On your M4 Mac mini, shut it down, hold the power button until startup options appear, select the startup disk, hold Shift, and choose Continue in Safe Mode. Use the Mac for a while and see whether the problem occurs there. If the problem substantially disappears in Safe Mode, that provides evidence that software loaded during a normal startup may be involved. Apple Support: Start up your Mac in safe mode

A temporary new user account is another useful isolation test. If the Mac performs normally there and the crashes do not occur, that would point toward something specific to your normal user environment, such as login items, extensions, preferences, or user-level data. Apple Support: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

I would not reinstall macOS yet. The Mac has been running macOS 27.0 for only about a day, and this report does not currently provide a strong reason for such a disruptive step.

If the problem continues after background processing has settled and Safe Mode and the new-user test do not isolate it, run Apple Diagnostics with unnecessary external devices disconnected. On an Apple-silicon Mac, shut it down, hold the power button to reach startup options, then press Command-D. Apple Support: Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac

Based specifically on this EtreCheck report, the logical sequence is:

Allow macOS 27 to finish post-upgrade processing → restart once → observe actual performance → check Activity Monitor during a slowdown → temporarily isolate third-party startup items/extensions if necessary → test Safe Mode → test a new user account → run Apple Diagnostics if the problem persists.

At this stage, the report does not provide evidence that your M4 Mac mini has a hardware failure or that 16 GB of RAM is inadequate. It provides more evidence of recent macOS 27 software activity and multiple crashes than of a failing hardware component.

I am not saying beachballing nor anything which feels slow; the report in the main text above the picture in the main post is saying that my computer is slower than average after the Golden Gate update after a day or so

neuroanatomist wrote:

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to run slow / beachball. 

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage. The absolute minimum is ~20-25 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. Terminology is important here – free space is not the same thing as available space. The one that matters is Free space, but what macOS shows in most places is Available space. Available space includes both free space and ‘purgeable’ space, the latter comprises system caches, snapshots and other data that macOS can delete if it decides more free space is needed. However, there is no way the user can force those data to be purged.

The place to check how much Free space you have is in Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it). For example, on my M4 MacBook Pro, the Storage settings pane and Get Info on the internal drive show 1.24 TB of Available space, whereas Disk Utility shows there is 1.15 TB of actual Free space, 90 GB less than ‘available’. Although 90 GB is a small fraction of my 2 TB internal storage, that would not be the case with 256 GB or 512 GB of internal storage.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/896f6fb1-ee55-454e-b59b-549f7557cf27

Note that you can also see the Free space in the System Report (System Settings > General > About > System Report button, at the bottom > Storage). 

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

If nothing in the above reveals an obvious culprit, then appropriate troubleshooting steps are Safe Mode and creating a new user account to test. 

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode. That process performs some system cleanup and clears caches, and also disables 3rd party extensions that may cause problems.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If that does not correct the issue, test in a new user account. A newly-created user account will have all settings at default, and if the issue does not occur in that new account then it provides guidance on what may need to be changed to correct the issue.

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Once the testing is complete, the new account can easily be deleted.

Delete a user or group on Mac – Apple Support

If you have 3rd party ‘protection’ software installed, that may be the problem. That includes:

Cleaners (software claiming to automatically free up space)

Optimizers (software claiming to make your Mac run faster)

Antivirus software

VPN software (unless provided by a school/employer to enable access to internal resources from a remote location)

Such 3rd party system ‘helpers’, ‘cleaners’ and ‘protectors’ do more harm than good. In fact, such products are completely unnecessary for macOS and the only ‘good’ (if you want to call it that) they do is to put money in the developers’ pockets. Cleaners and protectors cause compatibility issues, often after macOS updates. Commercial VPNs claim to hide your browsing activity from websites, and while that may be true those VPN providers just sell your browsing data to others. For the user, all of these types of software offer only harm…and if that is limited to harm to your bank account, then count yourself lucky. If you have installed such software, follow the developer’s instructions to completely uninstall it (note that some developers fail to provide instructions and their software installs can be pervasive, meaning the only way to truly remove it is to erase your Mac, reinstall macOS then restore your user files from a backup).

As Luis Sequeira1 states, post the full report using the Additional Text button. No personal information is revealed. 

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/36bdb296-265f-4480-9794-63c3224b6e01

I gave the report already;, Please see above the picture above.

Ok, thank you. Stats is an app for stats of the CPU, RAM, etc It is not that great to eat system memoryso i just deleted it. 😄