MacOS Big Sur Lagging

I found some kind of solution for laggy interface on MacBook Pro 16: go to Settings -> Battery -> and turn off "Automatic graphics switching". This will set Radeon Pro as default graphics.

I bought 16" MacBook base model little over a year ago and did the mistake of updating OS to Big Sur. I didn't even care about everything being slower than it was in Catalina, but the simple case of typing lag was really irritating. Only solution after trying everything, was to clean install Catalina back and everything was ok again. I did this like few days ago, so I actually used Big Sur for 1 year without any solutions or improvements for slowness. I think Big Sur is just not for Intel Macs and Catalina is the last OS for them.

Few interesting points I noticed in Big Sur, that I have not found elsewhere from internet:

1. If you keep moving mouse via trackpad while you type, there is no typing lag.
2. If you keep YouTube video on screen while you type, there is no typing lag.

this can not be more annyoing...this is not what I wait of Apple, dealing with these kind of problems...

Reset your SMC, PRAM, make your discreet graphics main by switching off "automatic graphic", and still, it will keep lagging. If I connect external monitor, with "Automatic Graphics switching OFF", lagging is little better but not completely.

Even in text editors, typed keys are lagging behind. I am able to type few letters before it shows up in text editor. Is it related to some sort of excessive power saving? My Raspberry PI Linux is performing satisfactorily than this costly MBP.

Why isn't Apple even acknowledging this problem? Are they going to fix it or just shifted focus on M1 platform?

BTW, my MBP is just few weeks old, with fresh install.

MacBookPro 15 2016 Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2,9 GHz Memory: 16 GB

Same error here. Done the recommendations but it is still laggy, a little bit less. But still beach balling.

Someone wrote before me: remove the GOOGLE ACCOUNTS from System Preferances >>> Internet Accounts… and… it works for me! To be shure i reset the PRAM and SMC (did this only to be shure, like i said before).

I am waiting for you to write if you had the same result as me (elimination of the lag). Thanks!

Mouse regularly freezes for a millisecond and screens 'stutter'. Very annoying

•   Model Name: iMac
•   Model Identifier: iMac19,1
•   Processor Name: 8-Core Intel Core i9
•   Processor Speed: 3.6 GHz
•   Number of Processors: 1
•   Total Number of Cores: 8
•   L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
•   L3 Cache: 16 MB
•   Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
•   Memory: 128 GB
•   System Firmware Version: 1554.140.20.0.0
•   SMC Version (system): 2.46f13

After update to MacOS 11.6 my Mac comes to life again, at least at the moment. Anybody can confirm also?

I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 16". It had Catalina on it when I first got it, but I recently upgraded to Big Sur and was on 11.6.

I was having an issue and opted to reinstall Big Sur from scratch. I did that yesterday and made sure that 11.6 was installed with all available updates applied. Everything seemed fine yesterday, but I've noticed a lot of lag today. It seems to be largely dependent on the application.

My guess is some of the applications are making use of Metal and those are fine, but others are using a different framework and the performance is very poor. That's just an educated guess...I don't have anything scientific to back it up.

But the reality is I rebuilt and am seeing very poor video performance with a fresh instal of Big Sur 11.6. I was not having this issue prior to rebuilding the laptop.

This is very disappointing! At least I'm not alone in seeing this sort of behavior.

MBP 15' 2019

I intially noticed issues with my MBP connecting to external displays when it was not being charged. This was not big of a deal since normally I would have it being charged.

But here comes the real problem. Since Big Sur 11.6, I was not able to have stable and strong connectivity to my wifi network as well as full CPU performace.

I checked the latency and turns out that my MBP can't even keep up to a downloading speed of 300Kbps. Are you f**king kidding me? I'm a Korean and can't stand this type of lag while using the internet.

I also spent 4 hours trying to upload an app to the app store but could not succeed due to this outrage.

WHAT GOOD IS IT TO HAVE A MACBOOK PRO WHEN YOU HAVE AN OCTA-CORE CPU THAT WORKS LIKE SHIT AND WEAK WIFI CONNECTIVITY AS IF I WAS IN NORTH KOREA?

Be ashamed Apple.

I was having the same issue: MBP 16 i9, incredibly laggy when switching between applications, typing text would take a long time before accepting entries, finder was so slow I couldn’t seem to do anything meaningful without tremendous lag.

FIXED: After turning off “Allow wallpaper tinting in windows” (in System Preferences > General) everything was snappy again.

Same on my MacBookPro Late 2013. Hope to get an update soon.

Same here. I decided to update from Mojave to the latest one which is BigSur on my mid 2014 13inch 8 gb ram 256 gb ssd 2.6 GHz. My macbook pro was running just fine on mojave i was hesitating because of the 32 bit and 64 bit part however I decided I will go for it to see what Apple has done to the newer Softwares. This is a Big disappointment Sur. This was not expected of apple to release an OS which is incapable. I understand my macbook is 8 years old but this Big'headache'Sur is lagging worst than windows. Actually windows 10 runs better on it. Be careful old macbook users, this is not for old machines. Everything feels so glitched out. Thank Fully I don't have anything on my macbook so I can downgrade to Mojave whenever I want and thats what I am going to do. Its a long process but better than a bag full of lagged up Laptop. I love Apple I hope they send me a new Macbook as an apology because that sort of Apology is Approved by me.

If you are by any chance using "Turbo Boost Switcher", this is what caused the lag for me.

To solve it I did this:

1. Quit "Turbo Boost Switcher" (not just disable Turbo Boost)
2. Go to System Preferences > Displays and change the scaling
3. Change it back to how you want the scaling to be

The animations were not lagging anymore for me, I was able to replicate this 2 times. You can even start "Turbo Boost Switcher" again after going through those steps. But I don't know what actually causes the lags to start, because sometimes they come back.

Same here with my 16-inch 2019 macbook pro (2.3 Gh 8core i9, 16GB mem, Intel UHD 630 1536MB). I had no problems with lag associated with typing, clicking or mouse movement when I used Catalina. But once I upgraded to Big Sur, the lag is horrible and breaks my flow when trying to do anything.