Troubleshooting macOS Sierra Problems

Sep 24, 2016 - 144 Comments

Troubleshooting macOS Sierra problems

For most users, installing macOS Sierra has gone without a hitch and they’re left with a trouble-free Mac that works great with the latest macOS system software release. But, not everything goes smoothly for everyone, and sometimes updating to macOS Sierra can lead to a variety of problems.

We’re compiling a list of common problems in this troubleshooting guide to remedy issues with the macOS Sierra download, installation, update, and post-install process. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for you readers), I personally have had the joy of encountering many of these problems during and after updating one particular MacBook Pro to Mac OS Sierra 10.12, so I have very recent extensive firsthand experience with troubleshooting much of what is covered here.


To be perfectly clear this is meant to be a compilation for potential issues experienced with the macOS Sierra update process. Most of this will not be encountered by the average user, and is in no way suggestive of what to expect during the Sierra update or installation process. The vast majority of Macs update to macOS Sierra without any adverse incident.

macOS Sierra Download Stops with “An error has occurred” or “failed to download”

Sometimes when users attempt to download macOS Sierra from the Mac App Store they will confront a “An error has occurred” red message and the download stops.

The solution to this is fairly straight forward: Delete any existing Sierra installers, whether they are half-downloaded or not, reboot the Mac, and try again.

Sierra failed to download

I ran into variants of the download trouble several times. What finally resolved it was to delete the half-cooked “Install macOS Sierra” file from Launchpad (which had a big question mark on it), then rebooting.

Delete Sierra from Launchpad

Unable to Download macOS Sierra, shows as “Downloaded”

If the Mac App Stores shows that “macOS Sierra” has “Downloaded” and the button is not possible to click again, you likely had one of the beta or GM builds and you will need to remove any existing “Install macOS Sierra” application installers from the Mac, or any connected drives. That last part is critical, because it appears the Mac App Store has no trouble locating a named “Install macOS Sierra.app” located on an external volume. Yes this includes even the GM builds which share the same name as the installer app, and prevents the installer from downloading again.

Of course the other reason macOS Sierra will show as “Downloaded” under the Mac App Store Purchases tab is if you are actively running macOS Sierra, in which case you will not be able to re-download the installer easily.

Error “This copy of the Install macOS Sierra.app application is damaged, and can’t be used to install macOS.”

Something happened during the installer download where it was either interrupted or became corrupted. Typically this means the internet connection was disrupted, or the file itself somehow was interfered with during the transfer.

You will need to delete the “Install macOS Sierra.app” and download it again from the Mac App Store.

MacOS Sierra Wi-Fi is Dropping or Unusually Slow

Some Sierra users have found wi-fi drops or is abnormally slow. If this applies to you, you will likely need to trash the wi-fi prefs and then create a new network location to resolve wireless networking problems like this. We have a detailed guide to fix wi-fi problems with macOS Sierra here.

The good news is that wi-fi trouble is usually really easy to fix and the above article details specific steps to take which remedy the vast majority of wireless networking difficulties.

macOS Sierra Boots to Black Screen, Stuck on Black Screen

Some users have discovered that macOS Sierra will boot to a black screen and get stuck, unable to go further. This gives the appearance that the Mac is off, but it’s actually on and the screen is just stuck dark, with the Mac doing who knows what. This can happen right after the initial installation, but also during a standard Mac system restart after having updated to Sierra. I personally experienced this in the latter scenario during a regular reboot, and as you can imagine it’s fairly annoying to discover the Mac won’t boot up normally. Fortunately with prior experience handling a similar issue, I was able to resolve it with the following steps in this order:

  1. Disconnect all USB cables and USB devices from the Mac, aside from a mouse or keyboard if applicable
  2. Shutdown the Mac
  3. Reset SMC
  4. Reset NVRAM/PRAM
  5. Boot as usual

It may not be necessary to reset both PRAM/NVRAM and SMC, but since you’re already doing one you might as well do the other. You’ll lose a few basic power settings by doing so, but it’s not a big deal, and it resolved the stuck on black screen issue for me.

Constant iCloud Error and iCloud Authentication Pop-Up Messages

Many components of macOS Sierra are dependent on iCloud, and during the initial setup process you’ll be asked to enable various iCloud features including Storage Optimization and iCloud Documents and Desktop. Whether you want to use all of those features or not is up to you, but an odd side effect encountered by some is constant iCloud error messages and pop-ups to authenticate.

iCloud errors macOS Sierra

Two persistent popups that I was running into were “This Mac can’t connect to iCloud because of a problem with (email address)” and “Error connecting to iCloud”.

I was able to fix the iCloud errors and make them go away by doing the following:

  1. Go tot he  Apple menu and choose System Preferences
  2. Go to “iCloud” and click on “Sign Out”
  3. Reboot the Mac
  4. Return to the iCloud preference panel ( Apple menu > System Preferences) and log back into iCloud

After logging out and back into iCloud, the iCloud error pop-ups went away.

Safari Can’t Find Server, Unable to Load Webpages, Links Don’t Work, Can’t Render CSS

Some users are reporting that Safari is problematic after updating to macOS Sierra, where links don’t work at all, or you type a URL into the address bar and hit return and nothing happens.

If you experience the unresponsive URL issue issue, you can empty caches in Safari for Mac, then quit and relaunch the app and it should work fine again.

Another separate problem with Safari in macOS Sierra seems to be sporadic difficulties loading webpages and contacting servers, leading to an inability to load any webpage at all.

Safari cant find server failed to open page macOS Sierra Safari networking issue

A quick side note: the “can’t find server” message can be due to wi-fi dropping, so if the connection difficulties are not limited to Safari you may want to use the wi-fi fix mentioned above.

Another odd variation of this is Safari failing to load webpages repeatedly, but after persistent refreshing, Safari may be able to successfully load a webpage but minus CSS (CSS being what styles the majority of webpages).

Safari unable to render CSS Sierra

Additionally, another oddball Safari problem is when the browser URL bar and buttons vanishes entirely and no webpage loads at all.

Safari losing URL bar in macOS Sierra

Sometimes quitting and relaunching Safari will remedy these issues, but usually you will need to reboot the Mac to get Safari working again for a while.

Another unusual error message you may encounter with Safari problems in macOS Sierra is an inability to load a webpage, where the tab or window renames itself to “Resources” and you get a blank page loading stating: “Your copy of Safari is missing important software resources. Please reinstall Safari.”

Sierra Safari broken

Since you can’t really “reinstall Safari” in macOS Sierra, the error recommendation is not particularly helpful, and instead you’ll likely want to reinstall all of macOS Sierra or revert to the prior Mac OS version from a backup.

Spotlight Doesn’t Work with macOS Sierra

Some users, myself included, have noticed that Spotlight just stops working entirely at random in macOS Sierra 10.12. Sometimes Spotlight will sort of half-work, but the results returned are completely inaccurate and don’t match the search term. This is not because of indexing, mdworker, or mds, however. You can kill the Spotlight process, it will spin back up, but the Spotlight search ability does not regain functionality.

Spotlight not working at all in macOS Sierra

Spotlight not working properly in macOS Sierra

The only way to return Spotlight functionality in this situation is to reboot the Mac. Inconvenient, a bit Windows-esque, but it works.

You can also try to rebuild the Spotlight index directly, but you’ll still likely need to reboot the Mac to have Spotlight start working again as expected.

Mouse Not Working, Mouse Functionality is Erratic with macOS Sierra

Some users have discovered their mouse is not working at all, or the mouse may be working erratically after updating to macOS Sierra. For example, the scroll wheel functionality may become unresponsive or not work as intended. Some of these mouse issues have been narrowed down to Logitech and Razor brands, perhaps pertaining to drivers or software, but some of the erratic mouse behavior can occur with generic USB mice as well.

One possible fix for these issues is to connect the USB mouse directly into the Mac, rather than going through a USB hub.

Mac is Hot, Mac Fans Running at Full Speed After macOS Sierra Installation

If the computers fans are running after updating to MacOS Sierra and the Mac feels hot to the touch, it’s very likely to because the Mac is indexing. This is not indicative of a problem in and of itself, and it’s perfectly normal for the Mac to require reindexing the entire hard drive for features like Spotlight and Siri to work. Additionally, the new Photos app for Mac index the Photo library to identify places, features, faces and people, and other landmarks, which can also take a while. It’s also likely that Time Machine will be running to backup the Mac again after updating the system software. Just let all of these processes complete, do not intervene.

Thus, if the Mac is running warm or the fans are blazing away after updating to macOS Sierra, the best thing you can do is simply wait. The vast majority of the time the indexing process simply needs to run and complete, and the Mac will become usable with low fan usage and a cool temperature again.

For most users this process can take an hour or so, but with many documents or Photos, it can take quite a bit longer. If the Mac is still misbehaving after leaving it to index overnight, open the “Activity Monitor” application (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and sort by CPU, so that high CPU usage is at the top. This will tell you what (if any) applications or processes are consuming the processor and could give you an idea of where to look to troubleshoot further, which is typically an errant task or process.

macOS Sierra Video Problems, Hypercolor Rainbow Display Craziness

This is a weird one that I experienced on a Retina MacBook Pro: the built-in display suddenly encountered severe video display problems, ranging from improperly rendered drop-shadows to – and here’s where it gets really out there – psychedelic hypercolor rainbow display oddness, permeating throughout various onscreen elements.

macOS Sierra video display problems with psychedelic colors

In addition to the psychedelic color experience, dropshadows and other UI elements would appear obviously broken and display errantly:

macOS Sierra video problem drop shadow weirdness

Here’s a brief video demonstrating what the crazy video situation looks like on a Retina MacBook Pro display when it’s changing wallpapers:

The solution? Another SMC reset.

And yes, if you’re following along, that’s two different occasions where trouble after updating to macOS Sierra was resolved with an SMC reset…. hmm.

Finder Not Responding, Apps Crashing Constantly, Apps Won’t Open, Constant Beachballs

Finder not responding? Apps not responding? Apps won’t open? Apps say they are damaged? Constant inappropriate beachballs for no apparent reason? Well, you can temporarily remedy these issues by rebooting the Mac. And then rebooting the Mac again. And again.

Finder not responding Sierra

But here’s the bad news; if you are experiencing those type of issues consistently and have to reboot once or twice a day as a temporary workaround, you should give in and reinstall macOS Sierra.

Apps endlessly bouncing without launching

Speaking from direct experience, I battled and troubleshooted for several days the unresponsive apps, apps unable to open, inappropriate beachballing, but no matter what I did, no matter how many caches and app data was trashed, whatever troubleshooting hoops I jumped through, the problems returned in a matter of time after the next reboot.

The only way to finally remedy these problems was to completely reinstall macOS Sierra via Recovery Mode. It takes a little while, but it seemed to have fixed the problem (for now anyway, knock on wood). Update: reinstalling macOS did not fix this problem on my specific MacBook Pro, your results may vary.

“The application ‘name’ can’t be opened” or Error -41

A variant of an aforementioned error message where apps don’t open is when the application reports a direct error message when trying to open, often in the form of an onslaught of error pop-ups stating “The application (name) can’t be opened” and sometimes accompanied by an “Error -41” message pop-up message. This seems to occur after macOS has

macOS Sierra app launch failure meltdown

The only solution to this particular meltdown of macOS Sierra is to reboot the Mac. If you continuously experience this error or variations thereof it is likely a good idea to wipe the drive and clean install macOS Sierra.

Kernel “File: table is full” Errors Filling Console Log

On some user configurations, there appears to be a problem with Mac OS not properly closing files, though it is unclear what the cause or solution is. Eventually this can lead to “kernel file: table is full” errors flooding the Console log, requiring a manual forced reboot.

Time Machine Stuck “Preparing for Backup” in macOS Sierra

A fair amount of macOS Sierra users who rely on Time Machine for backups have discovered the Time Machine backup is perpetually stuck on “Preparing backup”. There are several possible reasons for Sierra and Time Machine to not work well together. One of the most common causes is a third party app, typically anti-virus software from Sophos or elsewhere, which seems to interfere with Sierra and Time Machine backups.

If you have Sophos Antivirus or any other Mac antivirus or similar scanning or “cleaner” software installed, disable it. Time Machine should resume backups once the software is disabled.

If you have disabled all antivirus software on the Mac and Time Machine is still not working in Sierra, try this fix for when Time Machine is stuck on preparing backup which involves disabling Time Machine and trashing a temporary file.

Sierra Bricked Mac Completely

A bricked Mac means it won’t boot up at all. This is very rare, but there are varying reports online of Sierra just outright bricking a Mac after a failed install.

If this happens, you’ll almost certainly need to initiate a reinstall process of macOS or Mac OS X, though some users have had to go so far as to take their computer to an Apple Store for hands-on support.

Troubleshooting Difficult macOS Sierra Problems

One of the best ways to troubleshoot some of the aforementioned unusual or more difficult Sierra problems is to create a separate Administrator user account on the Mac, and use that new separate account exclusively for a few days while performing regular computing activities. The reason for this is quite simple; if the problem does not occur on a separate user account, it suggests the underlying cause is related to the other user account, perhaps in the form of a corrupt preference file or a process that is unique to that user account.

The key is to create a brand new user account, then log out of any other user accounts on the Mac. Only use the newly created user account as you attempt to reproduce the problem.

  1. Open System Preferences from  Apple menu and go to “Users & Groups”
  2. Add a new user, named something obvious like “Troubleshooting” and set it as Administrator
  3. Create new Admin account for troubleshooting and testing on Mac

  4. Log out of the existing user account (and log out of any other user accounts as well)
  5. Log into the newly created Administrator test account and try to reproduce the difficulty here

If the problem still occurs in the new user account, it suggests a deeper issue with the Mac OS systems software, an underlying system-wide process, or even the specific installation of MacOS.

Backing up thoroughly and then performing a clean install of macOS Sierra may offer a resolution or improvement to an issue that is reproducible from a new fresh user account.

If the problem returns after a clean install, there may be an outright bug with macOS, or there may be a problem with the Mac itself. If possible, contact the official Apple Support channels for further assistance. Downgrading macOS Sierra to El Capitan or Mavericks may offer a solution as well.

Should You Wait for macOS Sierra 10.12.1?

It’s easy to read this article and conclude that macOS Sierra could be a pain-in-the-behind to deal with and troubleshoot. The good news is that the vast majority of users won’t experience any of these problems, most software updates go without a hitch.

Nonetheless, the difficulties described offer further evidence to support why you should always backup before updating any system software. Backing up is arguably the most important part of preparing for and successfully installing macOS Sierra (and any other OS for that matter), as it insures your data will be there in the event something goes wrong and you need to roll back or restore.

For me personally, updating a 2015 13″ Retina MacBook Pro to macOS Sierra from OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 has proven to be an unusual headache. As seen in this article, the problems have been pervasive and arrived as a deluge, with one issue appearing after the other. (For some background, I run a very vanilla and boring OS for my work machine with very few third party apps on this Mac). Ultimately I have reinstalled macOS Sierra and things are working more smoothly (at the moment anyway) but if the same variety of problems crop up again I’ll either perform a clean install or downgrade back to El Capitan and wait until 10.12.1 comes out (which is currently under beta development). Some Mac users routinely wait for the first major point release to install a major software update anyway. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that conservative approach to software updates, but obviously in the interim you’d be missing out on any of the great new features in macOS Sierra.

Anyway, what has your experience been with macOS Sierra? Did it go great or did you have any difficulty? Have you experienced problems afterwards? Did the troubleshooting methods outlined here help? Let us know in the comments.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS X, Troubleshooting

144 Comments

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  1. AJ says:

    MacOS Sierra updated on every Mac in the office without a problem. Nothing unusual to report yet. But, I couldn’t get the Apple Watch unlock feature to work initially.

    Here’s what’s necessary to fix that if your Apple Watch is not unlocking the Mac:

    – First, update to iOS 10, update to watchOS 3, update to macOS Sierra

    – Enable Bluetooth on Mac (and iPhone paired to Apple Watch obviously)

    – Go to Security preference panel and make sure the feature is turned on to unlock with Apple Watch

    Then it should unlock without a problem using the Watch. This is a really cool feature, probably my favorite in Sierra.

  2. Ron says:

    Update went well but I can no longer make any backups. Time Machine finds the disk and after a long period of “preparing backup” it sometimes starts backing up and sometimes don’t. But… When it does backup it does so at an incredibly slow pace, I had 6Mb over 12 hours.

    And as much as I’d love to restore, that doesn’t work either. So I’m stuck with this version which has hardly any interesting features for me to begin with. Never had problems before with updates from Apple but this time round my iPhone gave problems and now my MBP too. Very disappointed by Apple….

    • Eric says:

      Are you running Sophos web security?

      If so, disable it then re-try to back your system. Apparently there is a bug with Sophos and macOS Sierra. I ran into the same problem on both a Mac Mini and on an iMac. Unfortunately I fought the problem so much that I even deleted all my previous backups and re-started the backup from scratch, still would hang at “Preparing Backup”.

  3. Jon says:

    I have the exact same issue as Ron – time machine not working at all.. and my local CrashPlan backup is painfully slow…

  4. ED REAMES says:

    Key repeat on Apple hard wired keyboard attached to iMac (Dec 2012) fails to work even though configuration has not changed from previous OSX which was latest version of 10.11

    • dimaqq says:

      Looks like keyboard repeat got broken in many apps — Safari, Chrome, etc.

      However it is not broken in e.g. iTerm.

      I suspect Sierra introduced different types of text entry fields — for example press-and-hold c and you get options for ç/ć/č

  5. Wharf Xanadu says:

    I have the slow time machine backup as others mentioned and sometimes Safari doesn’t work properly without a reboot.

    To me Sierra feels like a beta release still.

  6. Ted says:

    Sierra was release, what, 4 days ago and already nearly a dozen problems are listen. Nice work, Apple!

    This is why I like OS X Daily. They stay on top of things and informs people about issues, problems and possible solutions, like nearly immediately. Good resource!

  7. Ron McCall says:

    Went totally smooth on my MacAir, which hd already been used to run public betas of Sierra. The desktop iMac, however, required a half dozen attempts to successfully download Sierra. Once it finally got the update, running it was uneventful. I do, however, have a stuck download file showing in LaunchPad, that I do not seem to be able to get rid of. No problems so far running Sierra for the past 3 days.

  8. rich says:

    Siri doesnt work on my my MacBook Air for nothing, I just removed it from the dock.

    • Lucius says:

      The same to me. But I later find that this maybe caused by external microphone. When I don’t connect my laptop with any external sound devices, siri works fine.

      • Don says:

        I found that I had to pick Internal Microphone within Siri preferences for it to pick up my voice. If I kept it at Automatic, the default, it would select USB audio CODEC and wouldn’t work. I’m thinking its picking up my CalDigit thunderbolt dock because that’s the only USB device connected.

  9. Vale says:

    To those having issues with extremely slow time machine backups: are you guys backing up to a disk directly attached to your macs (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt) or are you doing it on a network disk?

    • Eric says:

      See my comments above to Ron.

      I experienced the problem using both a network connected Time Capsule (WI-FI & Ethernet) and a USB connected external drive.

      My problem was related to Sophos virus protection.

    • BK says:

      I’ve gone for almost a week with no Time Machine backup (I have three backup disks; one a USB single disk, one a USB RAID, and one a NAS RAID). All worked beautifully for years before the Sierra upgrade, but none of them have completed a backup since my Sierra upgrade. I’ve spent many hours trying to diagnose.

      HOWEVER, as soon as I turned off the Sophos ON-Access Scanner I magically am getting normal performance on Time Machine again!

      It’s reproducible: If I turn on the On-Access Scanning, TM screeches to infinitely slow; turn On-Access back off, and TM goes right back to normal performance.

      FYI: Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition ver. 9.5.2; MacOS Sierra ver. 10.12.

  10. John says:

    It is reasonable to think that when 10.12.1 is released, all of the problems discussed above will be fixed/corrected? Or, are problems that started with the download/install of Sierra 10.12 becoming more complex and extensive with continued use of 10.12?

  11. Aydrian says:

    Siri freezes and prevents shut down. It’s useless anyway. Fails to understand about ninety percent of requests.

    • I had no trouble downloading Sierra but it took about 3 hours with installation. Pretty slow.

      Siri is working intermittently. Sometimes it says I’m not connected to wi-fi and when I check, the system is looking for my network; a click brings it back.

      I think the Photos changes are improvements. I still have to experiment with some of them.
      All in all tho not a very great upgrade to the OS after all the hype.

  12. Doug Grant says:

    Don’t forget the ScanSnap issues, which seem very severe, and will prevent me from using Sierra until I KNOW that they are fixed.

    Back in the old days, when a problem was fixed, there was normally an explanation as to what the issue was and what the fix involved. Unfortunately, the old days are over and we users no longer have a real clue what the problems are. The wi-fi issues with every single new version of OSx are a perfect example of this. Why can’t Apple get wi-fi more under control? What is going wrong?

  13. Charles Reich says:

    In the new Contacts list…All Contacts column, they have a new Group at the top of the column
    entitled iCloud, and below that title is another title All iCloud. This new listing contains all the email addresses accumulated on your Mac, Old & New.

    If you use Cloud, review your iCloud Contact list carefully to see if some are obsolete or needs correcting. You’ll find some addresses therein that are obsolete of which you changed/updated to a newer address and deleted the old from your previous Systems Contact list

    After the above listing in the All Contacts column is another title On My Mac followed by the title
    All on My Mac which contains exactly the same listing from your previous El Capitan system. (Check your Group listings to insure they are the same as previously – I found my SAMUG Board group only had four names, and had to refer to my Macbook to pick up and transfer over the missing additional eight names/addresses to update this folder.)

    I’m only a Mac user and have no need or desire for the Cloud usage as I don’t have an iPad, iPod, iPhone, iWatch etc. I declined to sign onto the Cloud during the Sierra sign-in. I therefore deleted all the email addresses under the Contacts list’s iCloud title as many were old and no longer valid.

    Be Aware:

    After I removed all the eMail addresses under the All iCloud column and prepared a few new emails I had some returned with invalid email addresses that were not on or in my iCloud or On My Mac Contact listing? Where in the heck did these come from ?

    Next Step:

    Open Mail and go to toolbar Mail > Window > Previous Recipients and you will find all the addresses you ever used on your Mac’s previous System(s) – New, Old, Deleted, Obsolete etc.

    osMac Sierra continued to pick up these addresses (many previously deleted from my Contacts list) and continues to implement them in email addressing. I strongly urge you to remove all email addresses within this listing as it will cause you many, many problems. Let it start creating a fresh Previous Recipients listing with your new contacts used hereafter in Sierra and the Cloud.

  14. Barry says:

    After installing, the installed windows compatible with macbook air did not work anymore. It works before on el capitan… Why…brought my pc ro powermac immediately.

  15. junebeetle says:

    Surprisingly, this OS is working great on my 2010 white MacBook, with no major glitches at all so far. I did have a lot of freezes initially, which were caused by Dictation and/or Siri and/or the 3-finger tap to look up thing, which are all easy to start by accident and seem to take a while sometimes. Disabling these helped a lot. Also, Chrome seems to be back to its normal behavior, which is nice!

    10/10 window snapping is AWESOME!

  16. mike sanders says:

    inadvertently removed some emails from my iphone and now cannot retrieve them, of course as they were with my .mac account they are gone from all devices. Any help or thoughts would be welcome, I think it’s my own stupidity associated with my advancing years though I truly do not have an excuse.

  17. B. Kline says:

    I installed Sierra in the afternoon and all was well until that night when my wife started to put my mac mini to sleep. Up popped the install screen and the dark part of install to reboot all loaded into my main hard drive. So far, that is the only thing that has happened. Most inconvenient having to stay up until 2am babysitting a second reload of Sierra.

  18. P Tucker says:

    I run 2 Mac minis on ext ssd drives via USB 3 – 1 updated perfectly, other refused to finish restart and I tried 3 different drives, enclosures and ports. I also tried the other drives on the machine that did work – and they then failed????????? Machine did boot on its original ext drive so I have no idea. A MacBook Pro booted from the ssd drive (via USB 2) that would not boot either mini.

    . Now will try the reset advice.

    • P Tucker says:

      Nope – resets didn’t work – I should clarify that I don’t get a black screen, I get a black screen with the slashed circle in white in the centre. The activity light on the drive enclosure indicates the is being accessed, but no flickering indicating actual data transfer.

  19. P Tucker says:

    Nope – resets didn’t work – I should clarify that I don’t get a black screen, I get a black screen with the slashed circle in white in the centre. The activity light on the drive enclosure indicates the is being accessed, but no flickering indicating actual data transfer.

  20. P. Renfroe says:

    I love it and hate it. I no longer have a documents folder in my finder sidebar, and when I tick it on it goes away if I try to reposition it. Now it’s in my dock. Also if I zoom on a page it stays, even the next day on any browser. I love the rest.

  21. P Tucker says:

    Backed up via Time Machine yesterday – just stopped a 384+ gig backup tonight – did nothing with the machine since yesterday”s backup so it is trying to back up everything.

  22. Ion kno says:

    The problems with macos Sierra are trickling into the mainstream. That’s indicative of a problem. Even unrelated political sites are talking about Sierra problematic

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-be-careful-with-osx-sierra

    The heat is on. What’s it tell you that Sierra trouble is mainstream? To me, it says avoid the update until they fix the problems.

  23. I updated my 2013 MacBook Pro 15″ Retina seamlessly. A few hours later, disconnected from power the display went blank, black after 5 minutes of use on my lap.

    The machine stayed on for 3 minutes or so and then switched off.

    It repeated this a few times. And then again when I connected power and screen and disks.

    I had backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner before I started, so restoring was simple. (Thanks for the reminder.)

    I am deeply grateful for 16 happy years of amazing Apple computing experience. This was my first real issue, and a little preparation prevented any fallout.

  24. Danny says:

    Ever since I upgraded to osSierra my bluetooth keyboard has been acting up. every several hours or so it starts to output special characters and show the bar on the keyboard when you click and hold a characters on your iphone which allows you to select the accented characters.

    I have to then either turn the keyboard on and off or plug in the usb cable.

    Didn’t have that issue before the upgrade

  25. John Wood says:

    Mac OS Sierra seemed to install just fine, but then I found a problem with Mail in that I could send but not receive. I had previously backed up to an external drive so I was able to roll back to El Cap with no worries. I think I’ll wait for 10.12.01 to appear!

    • Donna Legge says:

      Same problem, but I didnt back up – and now I cant access icloud, or mail… I tried to roll back but it wont and I need my emails asap! any advice…

  26. Genesis says:

    Hi all! I installed Sierra and everything went well, but I noticed that it kicks me off and goes to the log in screen whenever I’m watching full screen videos, especially if it’s something long like a movie on Netflix. Any idea how to fix that or should I wait for 10.12.1?

    • Lochie Donovan says:

      Happening to me too, haven’t found a solution yet, seems to happen to me when im watching the video and i try to then escape full screen, move the mouse, change the volume, ect.

  27. Davo says:

    I was running the Beta before the release, it kept on asking me for keychain password every time I opened Safari, and sometimes when using it. I thought this would be addressed when released but I still have the same problem. Very annoying.

  28. Bert Visscher says:

    Thanks for the article, but I would like to point out two mistakes in there.
    To my knowledge there’s only one Mac App Store, and also, isn’t Photos app for Mac actually singular?

    • dickhead says:

      Mate, what sort of loser corrects minor grammatical errors on a geek post….
      To my knowledge you need to get out more xxx

  29. Matthew Palmer says:

    Cannot make video calls through facetime, messenger or hangouts. A bit disappointed with Apple as this is important to me as I am working away from home. Have tried resetting computer, icloud passwords (which also gave me some grief as it was doing some strange things) Unfortunately nothing has worked. Does anyone have any fixes?

  30. Charles Reich says:

    Comments regarding mail problems are correct, Don’t understand your request advising: “Your comment requires moderation”? Why/how moderation?

  31. Charles Reich says:

    Next…

    Comments regarding mail problems are correct, Don’t understand your request advising: “Your comment requires moderation”? Why/how moderation?

  32. Josh says:

    I updated onto my ’10 i7 MPB and it went with out a hitch. TM works well, no wifi probs, Siri is accurate, all my SW seems to work, Not even a sign of a system slow down.

    Gutted that as the ’10 isn’t BT4.0 I can’t justify getting a Watch2 – maybe when this machine kicks it I can justify both :)

  33. Eddie says:

    I have upgraded ok, but I am having a lot of problems with my mouse.

    It doesn’t detect it, and it is acting like crazy.

    By the way… it is a microsoft mouse.

  34. Ixmntr says:

    I’ve figured out everyone’s problem. Install OSX. Ive heard it tends be a bit more stable and if you desperately need Siri, keep your phone near by and say “Hey Siri”. Rumor is that the phone will listen and actually respond – plus there’s this other app named Dropbox that places documents in the “Cloud”. OMG can you believe it a cloud! Ohhh and the fact that you can install any software you want! I mean yeah, Sierra does that too, but unless you’re comf with terminal say good bye to Free software + games, unless its been only approved by Apple. . . .

    • OSXKing says:

      It’s complete crap, what you say. You can open apps not approved by Apple, you just can’t allow them by default, but you can manually allow them by making a right click on the app and then click on “open”.

      This was already possible with GateKeeper before, when it was set on “signed Apps only” under El Capitan and before.

  35. James Ludtke says:

    First of all, Sierra was the first update in years, which I did not have download 3 or 4 times to get it installed. The installation went without a hitch, but was slower then any previous update, just shy of 1/2 hour.

    While using MS Word 2011, The pointer of my Logitech mouse MX-400 locked up after about 30 minutes of use. It was not just the mouse pointer, but the keyboard did no longer respond. When I clicked Quit Word from the menu the Quit dialog appeared.But when I clicked Return or Enter nothing happened. I had to shut down by holding down the power switch.

    I restarted, an gave it another chance. Same story.

    I do not know if it was the mouse or Windows 2011, which triggered the problem. I restored El Capitan. Won’t try Sierra for a long time.

    • hyperion says:

      Sierra has a known issue with many Mac mouses. My Mac mouse lost the ability to scroll (scroll wheel) after updating to macOS Sierra. This is a known problem with Sierra. Annoying, yes.

    • James Ludtke says:

      • In Sierra my file may have been opened by Word 2016, even though the default association of the file was to be with Word 2011.

      A few additional notes on getting back to El Capitan.

      • When from Sierra I tried to make a bootable copy of Sierra (to have it for future use, which now no longer exist) Carbon Copy Cleaner’s existing task where confused, and shown as “suspened task”. I eventually could make a copy of Sierra.

      • When in Startup Options, I tried to select the disk with the bootable EL Capitan, it was listed but could not be selected. I had to shutdown Sierra, and select the EL Capitan disk during startup.

      • After I was back in El Capitan, first thing it tried to do was to automatically restore my system from the cloud, even though I never back up to the cloud. Caught it just in time and cancelled before any harm was done.

      • When running from my restored EL Capitan bootable backup – Carbon Copy Cleaner was still confused, showing the suspended tasks. But the problem could now be fixed.
      – The default application for Word had changed to Word 2016.
      – The default application for Excel had changed to Excel 15.8, the version lacking the Macro language, which I never used.
      – Dropbox setting had been changed.

      It appears that some file association are automatically changed in Sierra, and these changes somehow get into the restored bootable backup of El Capitan. You figure.

    • Nathan says:

      I have a similar problem with word 2011, although mine is smaller

      When i try to scroll in word with the trackpad, unless i try to scroll very quickly, it won’t move the page, like it hasn’t registered that i wanted to scroll slightly.

      No problems on anything else, just word 2011.

      So ill try to scroll quickly down a few pages and it is ok. But when i try and scroll down about 1/4 of a page slowly as im reading, it won’t move.

      Does anyone else have this issue and how do i solve it?

      • Marilyn says:

        My MS Office 2011 programs (WORD, Excel) are not working properly with Sierra, in that , when I am in the document and want to move down with the mouse, the document jiggles and does not let me move down.
        I have to go to the scroll bar to force downward movement in the document.
        I quit WORD and reOpened.
        I Shut Down and Restarted
        The problems within these documents continued – and were present when I opened New documents.

  36. Suzi says:

    I updated on Friday and everything went well, but my iMac is sooo slow. I am getting more than my share of spinning beach balls when opening apps. Disk Utility, which took 5 minutes to open, did not detect anything. I have never had an update problem before. My iMac is only 18 months old, so I don’t think that is the problem. Any suggestions?

  37. Trevor Hyde says:

    Since installing Sierra I cannot get into Mac mail. When I click on its icon the computer closes down then I need to sign in again. Happens every time, so no Mac mail!

  38. John L says:

    Two-finger scrolling stopped working after the update.

    Today, Mail is not letting me delete messages! It shades a message out and the preview goes blank. Rebooting Mail works for a little while.

    I upgraded on 9/20.

    • John L says:

      Correction: I can delete multiple e-mails at once. I just can’t delete them one by one going down the list.

      • use keyboard (command+A) once all messages highlighted
        select delete

        • OSXKing says:

          To resolve scrolling issue, go to setting, touchpad and disable scrolling. Restart computer and reenable it.

          • John says:

            Just tried it, it did not work for me. Oddly, for a few moments after turning on, I can scroll with a single finger. The page moves rather than the arrow. Then it fixes itself but I have no two finger scrolling. I also have a hard time using the scroll bar and so mainly have to use the up/down keys.

  39. Thanks “osXDaily” for keeping up with ongoing issues, its been so helpful and right on point!

  40. Phil says:

    I’m still running Snow Leopard for the very kind of reasons you helpfully list above. Reliability and lack of hassle is the most important feature to me, and Apple seems to have lost the ability to provide that feature. After having read literally thousands of articles and posts just like yours above, I take little comfort from the notion that Mac OS upgrades usually work for most people. I’m not sure I even believe that anymore.

    We are actually contributing to the reliability problem by rushing to download every new OS Apple pumps out. This communicates to Apple that it’s ok for them to replace their quality control team with us. That’s the real problem, we consistently put up with this nonsense, and thus pretty much get what we deserve.

    • Kevin says:

      So you actually read thousands of posts did you? REALLY??!! Literally??

      I still drive my Model T Ford because all these new cars just keep crashing and crumpling. I think I’ll stay with my horse and carriage from now on. 😂

  41. John Kelly says:

    Reminds me of Microsoft Vista. I encountered most of these problems on my MacBook Pro. Restored from backup back to El Capitan.

    I do not reccomend installing Apple Vista – run away, run very far away!

    • Carson says:

      OK so Sierra installed, and was immediately problematic. Regret that decision. On recommendation of support, I reinstalled macOS Sierra, and within one day I am back to having many of the issues described here again. Very frustrating, downgrade is coming up, hopefully that works with Time Machine. I will avoid macOS Sierra permanently at this rate, highly unlikely that 10.12.1 is going to fix what is obviously a fundamental flaw in the OS.

  42. Gary says:

    You state “The only way to finally remedy these problems was to completely reinstall macOS Sierra via Recovery Mode. It takes a little while, but it seemed to have fixed the problem”, how specifically does one perform this action, please lay it out step by step? I think I may need to do this on my mid 2010 15″ MacBook Pro, it constantly crashes since installing Sierra, especially if I go into the App’s folder…….

    • P. Renfroe says:

      Just restart or on start up your computer, keep the OPTION key held down and select the recovery disk – follow instructions. Recovery mode never worked for me, good luck! with macOS Sahara and that’s no typo lol.

  43. Bryan says:

    Sierra installed without a hitch. Ran Geekbench 4 on my previous OS (Mavericks) immediately prior to installing Sierra, then ran under Sierra – Mavericks won the 32-bit number, but Sierra took the 64-bit by a pretty good margin.

    Surprising, since I have a mid-2011 Mac Mini, Core i5, 16gb RAM. I would’ve thought Sierra would run slower, but I do notice the speedup.

    The problem I’ve been noticing in the past few days is my sound will go out randomly when I’m watching a Youtube video. Usually switching to a different sound device, reloading the page and then switching back (Bose Companion 5 external speakers), will usually fix it. But I never had this issue under any previous OS.

  44. alex says:

    WORST POINTLESS “UPDATE” SO FAR FROM APPLE

  45. HBX says:

    On my production machine, I’ll be waiting for 10.12.5 of Sierra to install it. As for my other machine I installed Sierra, then since I’m a developer I got the notice to install 10.12.1-Beta, Everything is working fine no issues that I’ve seen. I’ve been testing it with several applications and they all seem to be fine. Both my machines are 2010 Mac Minis. I’ve noticed that the older machines seem to have fewer problems. Luckily for me I’ve taken stock and have a couple of other Mac Minis mostly 2011-2013 models sitting in my small rack here, all of which are all running El Capitan 10.11.6 with OS X Server which I won’t be upgrading to Sierra because they have been modified and are running beautifully.

  46. Fischi says:

    There are also a lot of problems with Time Machine.
    Users reports that Time Machine will hang on “Preparing Backup” state and/or with
    AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1
    and a huge load of backupd (99%) and logd (40%)
    There some workarounds for which helps more or less for this issues but there is definitely something wrong with Time Machine

  47. Fischi says:

    There are also a lot of problems with Time Machine.
    Users reports that Time Machine will hang on “Preparing Backup” state and/or with
    AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1
    and a huge load of backupd (99%) and logd (40%)
    There some workarounds for which helps more or less for this issues but there is definitely something wrong with Time Machine
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/30709356?start=0&tstart=0

  48. Fischi says:

    Another point should be remarked:
    Since MacOS Sierra comes with a newer OpenSSH old dss/dsa keys will not longer work for authorization agains Unix machines
    Two solutions:
    a) switch to rsa key (better and much more secure way)
    b) to get the old behavior
    place a file “config”in “~/.ssh” which contains the line
    PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-dss

  49. Dainius says:

    After installation of MacOS Sierra on my MacBook Air 2013 everything was perfect and I could use computer, but after I restarted MacBook there was only blank screen and nothing happened (only display has turned off, but the computer somehow was working). Keeping the OPTION key held down while starting computer and all other keyboard shortcuts did not work (screen was blank). Holding Shift, also holding Option, also holding Command (⌘)-R, also holding Command-Option-R and holding Command-Option-P-R while starting MacBook did not work (screen was blank). Only keeping R while starting brings to “Recover password” screen, but it is useless. I have managed to start a computer holding C while starting, but I have no idea how to repair my MacBook…

  50. H says:

    Everything worked smoothly, except all signatures disappeared in Mail…and can’t be retrieved via backup:
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6684136?start=0&tstart=0

  51. Miranda Welsummer says:

    After installing Sierra on my 2011 MacBook Pro 15″ I was unable to change desktops without getting a black screen and then the login window.
    I wiped my hard-dive and re-installed El Capitan. Working perfectly and fast, like new.

  52. Christopher Best says:

    I have an external NAS that used to auto-mount (in logins items) when i logged in. After upgrading to Sierra Im prompted for connecting user credentials. This also applies to shares on other local mac’s.
    The largest issue here is that my Photos Library in on the external NAS. When i option clicked the Photos app to select my library (after MANUALLY mounting it) i was able to select the external Photo’s library but the photo’s app opens with a blank/white screen with the busy ball in the lower right and just stay’s like that. I let it run all night (6+ hours) and it was still apparently hung.
    Might be two related issues; apparently Sierra has changed the share-connect process (even though my share user credentials are stored in the keychain).
    Also I’m noticing, every few seconds, these console log errors)(Diag and usage):
    Network file systems not responding
    com.apple.message.signature: /Volumes/ not responding
    then
    com.apple.message.signature: /Volumes/ recovered OK

    Have case opened with Apple; more to come.

  53. Wm Magill says:

    27 inch Mid-2010 iMac — update apparently went with no problems — until I ran EntreCheck – Wow!

    Every 60 seconds I’m getting a DiagnosticReport dump –
    Apparently the culpret is OSX Server.
    https://origin-discussions-us.apple.com/thread/7676050
    Yes, I had OSX Server installed several years ago, but supposedly un-installed it.

    Now I have to try to find the culpret!

  54. Wm Magill says:

    Does anyone know how to force those DiagnosticReports to be uploaded to Apple — maybe if they get swamped with them, they will fix the problem.

  55. Wm Magill says:

    I ran OSX Server back in 2014 and then deleted it – or so I thought.

    If you are NOT running OSX Server — using terminal visit:
    /Applications/Server.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/
    There are two files there:
    com.apple.serveralertproxy
    com.apple.serverd

    Move serveralertproxy OUT of that directory:
    sudo mv com.apple.serveralertproxy ~/desktop/com.apple.serveralertproxy

    That appears to stop the constant re-attempts.
    There may be a better solution, but this appears to work with no side effects.

  56. Fabiano says:

    Check app support for Sierra here, some apps aren’t compatible yet https://roaringapps.com/apps

    By the way, even The Great Apple Preacher John Gruber posted an article critical of Sierra iCloud integration, so maybe Sierra isn’t just FUBAR abandonware after all.

  57. Tim Halpin says:

    Installed on my MacBook Pro Retina with no issues, at least so far. Installed on my iMac at home and everything ran smoothly at first, but the last few days it will occasionally freeze up or have long delays — for example, when clicking on an icon in the Dock, nothing seems to happen, and then after a long delay the app will open. The cursor also appears to freeze occasionally and acts jittery — I’m using an Apple Trackpad. When I restart, all seems to be OK for awhile, but then it starts acting up again.

    • Andres says:

      Tim,
      This same thing is happening to me.
      Did you find a solution to this problem?

    • Bernard Betts says:

      I have the same disconnect problem with my Apple Magic Trackpad. It disconnects and has to be manually switched off and re-joined with my iMac. I’ve changed the batteries and restarted the computer, to no avail. I have taken to giving it a bash when it happens and that sometimes gets it to work again. All was fine until Sierra.

  58. Simon Anthony says:

    Sorry – Long message follows…

    I have just had a really nasty and confusing experience after upgrading to Sierra. I have only got the standard 5Gb iCloud storage and yet the system reported that my iCloud drive contained 169Gb. That worried me. Next problem – everything started running very slowly. Disc access was dreadful, beachballs all the time. When I moved files from the Desktop – where I keep a lot of stuff – and links to My Documents – there was a cloud icon next to everything in Folder Details view. Also, when I tried to move files the system asked me if I ‘Really wanted to remove files from iCloud’. I had no intention or desire – and I thought utterly no storage space to put all my files in the cloud and I certainly didn’t think I had done so. So, I turned it off.

    I lost all my desktop settings and all My Documents.

    This was somewhat of a blow… But, I had a backup in my Time Machine. However, the system was running terribly sluggishly and, to my horror – the ‘SSD free space indicator kept rising. I was losing more files by the second. But, I needed the WiFi to get my to my time machine backup. So, I disconnected the phone line to the modem to stop the loss of files to the cloud. I couldn’t stop the upload via Preferences as no buttons were responsive on the machine itself.

    I then left Time Machine to put my files back. I waited over an hour but I couldn’t even get as far as being able to start the transfer – getting a full screen display of my old files took ages and I simply don’t have the time to wait for something else to happen. But I waited anyway. Eventually after another hour I realised that Finder had ‘stopped responding’. I had to have another think.

    I did not have any internet to work with but it came to me that perhaps somehow my presumably 169Gb of files were actually on the iCloud – somehow squashed in to the 5 Gb space I had ‘free’. So, I put the phone line back in – turned on iCloud again and my files were re-displayed ! And, I think they all work.

    My relief is tempered by the horrendous attitude of Apple and the dreadful QA they must have for letting this happen. I have never been so upset by Apple before. I am now waiting for the beachball to stop spinning so that I can turn off ‘Optimize Mac Storage’ for EVER !

    I don’t want to have anything to do with iCloud, but, if I try to turn it off it says ‘ If you continue, documents on your Desktop and in your Documents folder will be visible in iCloud Drive only’ It does say ‘ No Documents will be deleted from iCloud Drive’. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE. I have eventually managed to turn off the ‘Optimize’ ‘Option’ but only by force quitting Preferences.

    Subsequently I went out and bought an external drive and – while I could see my files – with iCloud enabled – I copied everything locally. My Time Machine copies could still not be accessed while the system was ‘confused’.

    Then – I turned iCloud off again – and all my files vanished once more as expected. However, now that I had a solid local backup I could experiment. I let the Apple automatic process of turnimg off iCloud continue. It displayed two buttons, one of which said – ‘keep a local copy’. BE VERY CAREFUL not to tick the wrong box or you will lose your original files.

    Logic dictates that the Desktop and Document folders must still have been on the machine. The automatic process popup message says all files ‘Downloaded from iCloud’ will be placed in the root of your main drive – renamed Archive or somesuch. This is true.

    There will be a load of folders in there, one for each possible collection of files that iCloud stole. Copy them back to where they came from and all is well-ish.

    You will have lost your desktop settings, but all links will still work. Also, this process won’t take more than a few seconds. Apple says – in text on the machine and on the phone ‘ files will be downloaded FROM iCloud’. Well, they couldn’t have ever got up there in the time – so I knew they must be still on my hard drive but somehow hidden. Apple Care didn’t know this – they even phoned back to tell me they didn’t know.

    The process I describe just renames the folders back to your control. There will be a very few files actually on iCloud if you look for them with another device, but certainly not all of them !

    Further – after a day or so, I realised I had lost all my mail junk mail settings. I restored these from the now working Time Machine backup quite easily but all my Mail Flagged messages are no longer visible in the Mail sidebar. The flags are still there though.

    • James Ludtke says:

      Simon, your patience does you credit, but I do not suffer fools gladly. I will not go to Windows, but I wil l not consider Sierra for at least six month.

      Releasing Sierra, in its state of incompletion it is in, is the biggest mistake in Apple’s history. There is no other cure than to fire those responsible for the mess, and to hire some external QA experts to restore Apple’s reputation as a provider of quality operating systems, which will take two or three years.

      I worked as a director of QA (hardware and software) for about 30 years. I smell a rat.

      The modest amount of new features in Sierra can’t be the cause of all these problems. I suspect Apple released a largely re-written OS; maybe this is the reason for the new moniker macOS.

      They wouldn’t have mentioned the big OS rewrite (did they switch to SWIFT?) because they did not want to scare their customers. Now, because it is so buggy, they really scared their customers. The secrecy gamble did not pay off.

      BTW, I never trusted any Cloud storage. Always make local bootable backups.

    • Simon Anthony says:

      I just did another silly thing. I tried to enable iPhoto updates – yes, I know, well, I remember now. Two problems. One, iPhoto sharing only works with a NON journaled Apple Drive – not an external one – so I couldn’t have done it anyway. Two – I had to click the Desktop and Docs KILL button. I clicked it fast, then deselected the Documents button. But, I was not fast enough. I lost my docs and desktop again. No fear – I have three backups I thought. Fistly, the one Apple make – the Archive. Well, that was NOT THERE this time. I only had the cloud option. Writing this I had a thought – If I turn off iCloud again, will the archive come back? Answer YES. But – I have to wait an age for it to undo what it did in a fraction of a second.

      My Time Machine backup again proved hopelessly slow and I am waiting for my new drive backup to fix things for me.

      THERE SHOULD NOT be a box I can click that destroys my computer’s file structure. I have turned off the Desktop and Docs option, but that should not have defaulted to ON in the first place.

  59. Patt Ward says:

    I had installation OS Sierra done Friday and everything is working well except my backup hangs up at 11.02 GB of 36.29 GB. (This is the furthest
    I have gotten so far. At first it would stall out at 1 GB.) I have never had an issue backing up until Sierra. I even backed up 2 hours prior to the update. I do have a case open with Apple and they have been very helpful. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

  60. Yunhaosong says:

    A folder that has gigs of stuff on my hard drive is showing up as a 0k blank folder on my MBA, not sure if it’s the new MacOS or the files. Every thing else shows up except that folder. And when I plug it into Windows laptops they show up just fine. Also the first I connected the hard drive after updating it asked the drive to be a Time Machine back up drive, like its the first time identifying the drive I’ve been using all day.
    Anyone know how to fix this?

  61. Wilson says:

    I had installation OS Sierra on Thursday, and my bluetooth stop to working… I had installation in my wife’s mac, and there are many fails in her laptop too. I missing Steve Jobs!!!

  62. Nick says:

    OS Sierra issues:

    – iMac freezes and stalls

    – Preview stops working

    – Dock keeps vanishing

    – Can’t stop Safari from opening at startup

    – Slow to boot / Launch pad (Applications Loading) for about 30 seconds

    – Bad/Slow performance

  63. wayne Ming says:

    Installed Sierra and can’t open Pdf documents from other MAC users who have not installed Sierra

  64. WowApple says:

    Wow. This is by definition, a clusterf**k. Apple basically eye-candied everything, then broke the rest.

    Showstopper bugs:
    – No more “anywhere” security option
    – No more mounting in /Volumes (but Finder still does – completely breaks automation).
    – App installers being randomly “damaged” (but working fine is ran through CLI)

    I wish Apple would start charging for the OS again and stop making subpar update that break everything.

  65. Steve Loughran says:

    So far:

    -major: retina laptop (with external display) failures to start in morning. Looking in system logs show powernap has been coming up every 30-60 minutes all night; it’s that final wake-to-S1 and user that’s failing. 3 external driver sets: Logitech, Karabiner (both keyboard management) and virtual box. I’m going to disable powernap to see if that has any effect.

    -minor: had finder lock up after ejecting a USB stick; it felt it was there, unmount on CLI failed, more and more of system slowly stopped working. Fix: reboot

  66. rali77 says:

    My only issue so far is Safari: I have LOTS of “dropped connections”, pages not displaying at all without reloading them a few times and CSS issues which persist even when reloading… All this issue occur exclusively on https websites. Cleaned caches, cookies, etc… to no avail.
    Upgraded directly to Sierra on my MBP, now, on my iMac I will first upgrade Safari, check the issue out, and then only upgrade to Sierra!
    Sucks… chosing a different browser in OSX should be a “choice”, NOT a “must”!

  67. Robert Creighton says:

    Running macOs 10.12.1 public beta. Cannot get 2 external displays to work, only one at a time. Did troubleshooting on cabling/ports/connections, doesn’t seem to be the issue, as I am able to connect external monitors one at a time using either lightning port, just not simultaneously. Any tips?

    • Andrew says:

      I have the same issue!! It wasn’t fixed by today’s update, either. I haven’t found anyone else reporting this problem, but I definitely am. I submitted the “feedback” to Apple.

  68. Rob says:

    My Keychain went missing, Keychain totally disappeared, Keychain was gone, after updating to macOS Sierra.

    This is what helped my keychain:

    Disabled keychain in iCloud System Preferences

    backed up, then moved the GUID folder inside ~/Library/Keychains to the Desktop

    Restarted my computer

    Re-enabled keychain in iCloud System Preferences

    Waited for sync to finish

    Then Keychain came back in MacOS Sierra.

    My Mac with Sierra crashes and requires a reboot once or twice per day, it is very unstable. I think I will have to go back to El Capitan because it’s interfering in my workflow. The only real requirement for modern computers is they should work and be stable, not interfere in your work, MacOS Sierra fails that test and directly interferes and is not stable. Very disappointing.

    Maybe only some Macs are worse than other with Mac Sierra? I have a MacBook Pro Retina 13″ model, it is a mess but was fine with Mac El Capitan 10.11.6.

  69. LD says:

    This is so helpful My computer got really hot after installing, and I immediately put it to sleep to “calm it down” – oops. Now it’s up and running and hot again, so I’m assuming it’s just finishing where it left off. Thank you very much!

    • Paul says:

      Yes typically if the Mac is hot after updating system software it needs to run through Photos scanning and Spotlight scanning. You can view the processes in Activity Monitor if you want, otherwise let them run as usual. It can take well over an hour or much more if you have a large amount of data.

  70. Carol says:

    Just had Sierra installed, and now the search feature in mail does not function. Any thoughts?

  71. Yuriy says:

    i have new problem after install this beta 10.12.1 beta 2.
    My printer Canon not work – write error – failed “filter”, when i want print documents.

  72. MN says:

    Downloaded Sierra imac late 2013 21.5′ 8gb ram 1tbHDD about 150gb worth of pdfs/documents about 50gb photos/itunes no hard core processing no photo/video editing programs. APPS take extremley long to load, time machine didnt work ‘preparing disk’ with nothing saved in the progress file over 24 hours running. Re-installed OSX Sierra using CMD+R. downloaded and installed faster than the first time. But issue still exists. PDF Preview crashes. Microsoft office products updated to sierra, over 5 minutes to open to blank document. Cannot open an older document. All other apps icons bounces for over 5 minutes. Beachball always , no time-machine. Internet browsing on safari/chrome have no issue at all. All the issues are with any app downloaded and any native app . Even System preferences takes minimum 5 minutes to start. And the shutdown process takes about 3 to 4 minutes when it was taking less than one minute with EL Capitan

    • what you describe sounds very similar to my experience (iMac late 2013 21.5 with 8GB RAM). I was encouraged to do a clean install by Apple Tech Support, but given the labor-intensive nature of that job I’m hesitant. Slow, sluggish, hanging. Can’t figure why yet–despite running etrecheck multiple times. Contemplating the new suggestion in the column of creating a whole new user account. But I’m skeptical.

    • Louis says:

      MN and Patrick, what you are describing is possibly the kernel and file issue discussed briefly here. Mac OS Sierra seems to not know how to close files after using them, and so the system inevitably runs out of resources. I have this exact problem on my Mac.

      This is a major bug that I think relates to WebKit, there have been some mixed reports about it here and there on the web and Twitter, the symptoms are more similar (stalls, beachballs, apps don’t open, extremely slow nearly useless computer) since most people don’t have the troubleshooting abilities to narrow down the cause.

      In Terminal you may be able to narrow it down with:

      ps -Ac|grep com.apple

      And look for tons of repeating WebKit entries. If you have them, next try:

      lsof +c 0|grep com.apple.WebKit|wc -l

      Basically after a reboot my Mac spins up WebKit, whether Safari is used or not, and starts opening files that it can’t close, eventually there are 15000+ files opened and the system totally hangs and fails. Of course this could be a symptom too and not the cause, I don’t know for sure. You can’t track the activity in Activity Monitor you have to use lsof, iosnoop, and dtrace and see what is going on behind the scenes. CPU appears normal.

      Huge headache, wish I never updated to Sierra.

  73. Sunel says:

    Since upgrading, I cannot download my emails. It says that it cannot confirm the identity of my mail server. Even after I confirm to always trust, it still does nothing!! It also does not pick up my external hard drive if I plug it in, the one I have been using on this Mac before! Please help me!

  74. Nina says:

    My screen is going crazy. The video is scrambled with rainbow colors as soon as I type in my password. Already tried the reset recommended here at least three times but screen still won’t work.

  75. Ivor Janči says:

    My issues appear to be the following:

    – After starting up or each re-start, a message appears asking “Do you want the application “xrdd” to accept incoming network connections?”

    – I’ve 1 external Firewire drive, a LaCie Quadra D2 1.5TB. Accessing the 3 partitions is very slow, and even when the folders appear choosing a folder shows 0 items but after a minute or less the items appear.

    Regarding the 1st partition of the external drive, I have a clone of my iMac with El Capitan, but have not tried to clone since upgrading to Sierra 10.12. And won’t until issues are rectified.

    Previous updates of MacOSX were relatively without problem, but this Sierra has a few.

    Ivor

  76. Ivor Janči says:

    I’ll also add that I’ve uninstalled Sophos software, which may have sped up the startup process.

    Now, I’m going to open my Adobe Creative Suites applications to see if there’s a problem.

    Ivor

  77. Caroline says:

    Don’t think this has been covered here yet..

    I am at the installation phase, it prepares for installation, the tells me it’s installing macOS Sierra and has about 34 minutes are left, but then stops with a message “macOS could not be installed on your computer. File system verify or repair failed. Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.”

    Which I’ve done several times to no avail.

    I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro currently running on OSX Lion (10.7.3)

    • int says:

      If you’re having problems at installation I’d take it as a big hint and abandon the idea of Sierra entirely. Go with El Capitan instead, it is far more stable. 10.11.6 is a good release, 10.12 is an incomparable mess of bugs.

  78. Ian Dermot says:

    There is a thread on Hacker News discussing the calamity of macOS and the terrible lack of pro Mac hardware from Apple. Heat problems from trying to do pro work on weak computers with poor ventilation, poor software quality, etc

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12593867

    The money quote: “on the software front, macOS has become an unstable and unpredictable platform”

    BINGO!

    Apple is ruining the Mac, will they save it?

  79. Kyle McGee says:

    I installed Sierra on my MacBook 2010. I have max RAM and a 1 TB SS drive. The computer has always worked quite well until now.

    Since installation, my MacBook has one major issue. When I use a four finger swipe (as I often do), then screen changes color and essentially goes to sleep. I have to type in my password again and it essentially restarts. It also opens iTunes for some reason every time even if it was closed.

    I tried zapping the PRAM, but that didn’t help. I also tried booting up without extensions, but that made the graphics go crazy often leaving shadows on the screen when I moved my cursor.

    I also used Time Machine to go back to El Capitan. I tried to install Sierra again and got the same problems.

    Has anyone heard of these issues? I left a message on the Apple OSx user forums, but have received no response. :(

  80. Tom says:

    Looking for the caps to place on each corner of my IPhone to prevent damage if dropped. Any help?

  81. Michael says:

    Since Sierra, email flickering as I scroll up and down. Started as soon as Sierra OS was installed.

  82. Donna Legge says:

    help help help… updated and now I cant send or receive email or sign in to Icloud… just gives me verification error.. I need my emails working on my mac as I have to invoice out this weekend and cant do that on my phone… :((

  83. David Stephenson says:

    I installed Sierra yesterday on my 2 1/2 yr. old Pro, and now the trackpad won’t work — I can mouse around, but absolutely no scrolling or other gestures work.

  84. Lance DIXON says:

    MBPro 500Go SSD Retina late 2013 8Go RAM
    Update from El Capitan.
    Installation 09/30/16 by LAN cable.
    All software works fine – a MainStage file called MS V2 instead of 3.0.3 on start-up but running it by loading it into MS3.0.3 then saving it back out fixed that. SIRI didn’t understand my English – as it was set up in French – understandable. (I live in Paris)
    None of the above gremlins have shown themselves .
    So — all good.

  85. Corben says:

    I have a 15″ macbook pro with sierra and theres a problem when i switch between pages on full screen it logs me out! Not sure if im the only one with this problem but its annoying in school when switching between documents or class pages.

  86. Larry says:

    Since installing MacOS, wheneverI open any of my MS Office apps, I get the message telling me I’m open for the 1st time. Looked it up and it appears to be a longstanding problem that I have never experienced.

    Worse, whenever I print from any of my MS Office apps, the app closes, I get an error message and any unsaved work is lost – not recoverable. Another problem, I have never experienced.

    Any Tips?

  87. ok says:

    Installed Sierra and can’t open Pdf documents from other MAC users who have not installed Sierra

  88. Updateed 99% ok on a new iMac.
    Updated the mini 2012, now have a machine thats about 70% reliable.
    Quicklook errors
    Keynote audio issues
    Wiped out some user names/passwords
    Odd unexplained errors is random places with no explaination.

    Frankly, I think its very poor quality. Reminicent of early Windows upgrades.

  89. Tom says:

    Updated my Mid 2014 MBPr 13 today after a Carbon Copy Cloner backup. Download and installation went smoothly and took 90 minutes to complete. Everything seems to work good and is quite zippy. This is not a work computer and does not get pushed hard, like many others used at their employment. Overall I’m happy so far, as I had not updated since 10.11.3 because of reported bugs. I suggest making a good backup and giving Sierra a try.

  90. Ryan says:

    This upgrade is bs. I have a old black MacBook that works fine. A little slow but still serviceable. After this upgrade my printer drivers were unavailable and my office suite out of commission telling me I need to reinstall. Apple owes me the $150 for the key code now I need to pay Microsoft!?!?! WTF THIS IS BS!!!!!

  91. Chris says:

    Updated to Seirra from El Capitain.

    Still showing as El Catpitain and no different to as before. ?

    • Mike says:

      If the OS version does not show Sierra and shows as El Capitan, you did not update to Sierra. Backup the Mac and try again.

  92. Rosemary says:

    MacBook Pro 2012 Upgrade to Sierra went OK but now when I try to make anything go to full screen, such as Pages and FaceTime it takes me back to log-in screen. Hopefully this will be remedied in the next update.

  93. paul says:

    Installed Sierra on late 2012 iMac with no notable problems and seems to runs much smoother.

    some strange things happend or noticed processes on the way:
    1)
    The iMac did not wanted to restart (after installation) due to an app preventing to quit. This was an app that I couldn’t force to quit in the force window as there was nothing to quit.
    I resolved this by using “sudo shutdown -r now” in terminal.
    Restarting is normal now. I have tried to find out which app and I think it has to do with Launchd (as i quit the process once and the shutdown went on)
    2)
    After restart/start and typing the password there seems to be a very slow response of the keyboard.
    Password returning from sleep is ok.
    So only on first login I experience problems .
    3)
    Launchservicesd (up to 50%) and loginwindow (uo to 15%) take a good amount of CPU%.
    I have no idea what they are doing but i don’t think they slow the mac down.
    I never saw them with constant high cpu% before I updated.
    4)
    I had some trouble with rapport/trusteer but i succeeded to install and uninstall it. Does not work in Sierra!
    How to do my internet banking is a question and no I can’t change bank (even as I wanted it badly)

    Hope someone can respond to one of the point stated here.

    Thanks and good luck to you all

  94. JL says:

    Hi all!

    Had the Finder freezing issue which the Apple Care tech helped me get rid of by cleaning out a number of apps, including a anti-virus software I had previously used that worked fine under previous OS’s.

    But for the moment the Siri, Spotlight and Mail searches for mail between two dates is still an issue that hasn’t been solved yet. Awaiting a reply for the tech. since on his MAC “date: XX/XX/XXXX-XX/XX/XXXX” works.

    After reindexing everything, Spotlight worked fine (though not for my specific dat/mail issue).

    And I was wondering, as for Siri’s mail searching, is it perhaps limited in the number of hits it can bring up? Every mail search seems to be 25 mails for the given search, whether for one day or between a range of days.

  95. Ale says:

    I have problems too.
    Finder can’t read external drives after the mac has been put on sleep mode, then it gets stuck and relaunching it doesnt solve the problem.

    :(

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