I am running an iMac ( retina 5k, 27 inch, late 2015)
3.2 gz core i5
24gb 1867 RAM
1TB internal with 2 external drives 4TB each
usually Mail is running. Hard to keep track of this issue because it happens out of the blue.
Will need to log the issues as they occur.
What else should i keep a record of when this happens?
Thank you for responding.
Your iMac17,1 is capable of running macOS 12.6.2 Monterey. If you are not up-to-date I recommend doing this first. The easiest method is through the Apple App Store. Do a search for “macos monterey” in the search field. The Monterey install should come up. Click on GET to start the download. It will download to your Applications folder and when done will automatically launch the installer app. DO NOT proceed. Quit out of the installer and make a copy of it to another folder for future use. Restart and if the installation does not automatically start, you can launch it from the Applications folder.
Even if you are already up-to-date with macOS Monterey, re-installing it will probably alleviate your problem from the “refresh” of macOS. That’s the main purpose of making a copy of the installer, because after installation from Applications, the files will probably be deleted.
24 gibibytes of RAM is good. Is the 1 terabyte of storage a hard disk, fusion drive, or SSD? I was thinking that a lack of free RAM and available storage was causing the slowness, but it’s not likely in your case. However, this is still possible. Use Activity Monitor to keep track of memory usage. The irony here is that Activity Monitor itself takes up a lot of CPU and memory, but it can show us the problem. Select the Memory tab in Activity Monitor. At the bottom you will see data for memory pressure, swaps, etc.
If the graph for memory remains low and green, and swaps is zero, then memory/storage shortage is not the issue. I’m hoping that the (re)installation of Monterey solved the problem for you.
