All apps in dock bounce forever and fail to launch. Restart required.

That sounds incredibly frustrating, especially on a Mac Studio with 64 GB of RAM. The fact that everything works normally for a day or two, then apps start bouncing endlessly in the Dock until you restart, is a useful clue.

The troubleshooting steps suggested above are a good place to start. I'd follow them, with a couple of additions to help narrow down the cause.

1. Start with Safe Mode

Restart your Mac in Safe Mode, then restart normally and use it as you usually would.

Sometimes this alone resolves the issue. If the problem returns, however, further investigation is needed.

2. Test with a new user account

Follow Apple's instructions for setting up another user account.

Log out of your usual account, sign into the new one, and see whether the problem returns.

• If it doesn't: Something in your normal user account may be responsible, such as a login item, background utility, or user-specific setting.

• If it does: The problem is more likely system-wide, potentially involving macOS or software running in the background.

Since the issue can take a day or two to appear, give this test enough time to be meaningful.

3. If it happens again, check Activity Monitor before restarting

This is particularly important because restarting may clear evidence that could help identify the culprit.

If possible, open Activity Monitor using Spotlight (Command–Space, then type Activity Monitor).

Check for:

• Processes marked Not Responding.
• Processes using unusually high CPU or memory.
• Memory Pressure and Swap Used in the Memory tab.

If you can, take a screenshot before restarting. If Activity Monitor won't open either, make a note of that.

Apple's Activity Monitor guide explains how to inspect unresponsive processes.

4. Check for macOS updates

Check System Settings > General > Software Update and install a newer stable release if one is offered. If this is a macOS bug, an update may help.

5. Run EtreCheck

I'd also recommend EtreCheck, downloaded directly from the developer.

It's a diagnostic tool that can help identify potentially troublesome background software, login items, extensions, and resource issues. It won't necessarily find the cause, but its report can provide useful leads.

Run it while the Mac is behaving normally, then share the full report for analysis. Review it for personal information before posting.

What might be causing this?

My first suspects would be a background process or launch service getting stuck, a third-party utility interfering with app launches, or a macOS issue. The fact that a restart fixes things temporarily suggests that something may be getting into a bad state over time, but we need more evidence before drawing conclusions.

Three quick questions

1. When the Dock icons are bouncing, can you launch apps through Spotlight, or do those fail too?
2. Does Finder continue working normally, or does the whole Mac become sluggish or unresponsive?
3. Did this start after upgrading to macOS 27, or was it happening on earlier versions too?

Those answers should help us narrow things down without resorting to a long game of twenty questions.

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for Macs to fail at launching apps (continual Dock bouncing). 

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. Make sure that View menu > All Processes is selected, so you are seeing everything.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage. The absolute minimum is ~30-40 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. You can check the amount of free space you have on your Mac in a variety of ways:

• Select your internal drive then click File menu > Get Info, check Available space
• Go to System Settings > General > Storage, check the graphical display at the top of the settings pane
• 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)
• In the System Report – hold the Option key and click the Apple menu > System Information (the top menu item), look for the name of your internal drive (Macintosh HD, unless you have renamed it as I did)

Note that on versions of macOS prior to Golden Gate, the ‘available’ space reported with the first two methods above was greater than the ‘free’ space reported by the second two methods. Apple corrected that confusion with Golden Gate, and as shown in the above screenshot, the available/free space is consistent across the different methods. For more details, see this User Tip.

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).

It might help to download and run EtreCheck, written by a long-time forum member. The free version is fine. Post the full report using the Additional Text button. No personal information is revealed. 

1 I have not tried that so I will if/when it happens again.

2 Finder works fine. Apps all work that have been opened.

3 I've had 27 now for quite a while.

thought perhaps updating from 27.0.1 to 27.2 might be helpful but I want to first try some steps and get it under control before further updates. Off to etre check and post the results. Running in Safe Mode for that test.

I started to post the Etre check but it's some 50,000+ characters so here's a link to a google doc doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iowqnPuEAjUds3SyKZOGLFlZ7vccLh96mXB5urxXqcw/edit?usp=sharing

If you take the time to look at this and find something...wow...much appreciated (find or not find :) )

When the computer was run in Safe Mode and when you launched the Etrecheck Application 

Was it launched from Finder or from the Dock

In either case,  when launching Etrecheck,  did it too continually bounce and bounce before it would launch ?

We shall await the results