The excitement of installing a new version of macOS, especially if its a High Sierra 10.13, is only tempered by the possibility of it not working properly or not being compatible with the apps you use most.
Before you begin upgrade to macOS make a bootable backup
If you haven’t started the process of upgrading yet, check if the Mac is compatible with macOS High Sierra and make a bootable backup.
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Do it now, before you do anything else. If things go disastrously wrong at least you’ll be able to boot from macOS’ Recovery partition and migrate all your data back to your Mac. You can use any backup tool you like – Apple obviously favours Time Machine, but you don’t have to use it. You can use, for example, Get Backup Pro, which comes with your Setapp subscription. Don’t have a Setapp subscription? Click here to sign up.
While most new versions of macOS are relatively problem-free, it’s not unknown for users to have issues – particularly with a beta or .0 release. Thankfully most are easy to resolve. Here’s how to fix the most common High Sierra issues.
If you’re trying to download the macOS High Sierra installer, you’ll need to have signed up to App Store. If you’ve done that, and managed to start the downloading process only for it to fail, force quit the App Store app.
If the download completes successfully but the installation doesn’t finish, force quit the installer using the same procedure as above.
If that doesn’t work, try deleting the downloaded installer (it’s in your Applications folder) using CleanMyMac and download it again.
If you have a copy of macOS Server in your applications folder, that may be the root of the problem. Delete it and try again.
Check console.app and if you’re getting errors from sandboxd and hidd (IOKit), your problem is a third party software. It’s probably because it wasn’t supported by the new APFS file system. It tries to repeatedly update causing your Mac laptop to be stuck in an endless loop. To fix this issue, just find and remove this app and everything will be fine.
If your Mac hangs and you can’t do anything at all, wait up to half an hour to see if that helps. If not, force your Mac to restart by holding down the power button and waiting for it to shutdown and then start again.
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In case you’re getting tired of you new OS kicking you out of your account on random occasions, there’s a chance it’s pretty easy to turn it off. For instance, there is a setting in your Security & Privacy menu that is responsible for that.
You can go even further and turn off the need to enter your password every time you open your Mac or turn it on. In the same Security menu find General settings and uncheck another box, the one saying “Require password after sleep or screen saver begins.” As you can tell, though, that it not the most secure option, especially if it’s your work computer or if you can expect other people getting a hold of it.
If the problem occurs when you’re using Chrome browser, disable the hardware acceleration feature: look for Advanced menu in its settings and turn off hardware acceleration.
It’s not a nice thing to find out after getting a brand new system, but some Macs have been struggling with USB devices after the upgrade. If your Mac is one of them and refuses to see or read USB drives, external drives, and so on, try resetting SMC.
We’ve explained earlier in the article how to do it, but here’s brief instruction. For all laptop Macs like MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Air, simply turn it off and then on again, while holding Shift + Control + Option and the Power button for 10 seconds.
For iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, and Xserve, You start my turning off your Mac and then unplug the power cord. Chill for about 15 seconds. Look out of the window or something. Plug the cord back in, wait a couple of seconds and turn your Mac on.
If the problem remains, you can try to reinstall High Sierra or consult with customer support at Apple.
The only known and relatively famous security issue with the latest macOS is the password stealing code created by security researcher Patrick Wardle. Long story short, he showed that if he wanted to (and you allowed him by installing his malicious code on your Mac), he could extract your passwords from Keychain without having your master password for the system.
If you look into it, it all boils down to “Don’t get into white vans with strangers and don’t install suspicious software from shady developers on your Mac.” Basic safety precautions. Make sure you visit the developer’s website, make sure you install signed apps from trusted sources. That’s about it.
To check your safety settings, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General and see if ‘App Store and Identified’ developers is selected.
Meanwhile, Apple is reportedly working hard on patching up the breach.
In case you’ve just upgraded to the new macOS and your Mac runs slower than it used to, worry not. It’s common and it’s not exactly an issue. The thing is that your Mac is reindexing a bunch of files while running a new system and it slows down its productivity and performance.
For 12-24 hours your Mac could experience these trouble and they are still within the range of normal behavior. If your Mac is running slow a few days after the upgrade, try some Mac-optimizing utilities to fix it. For instance, there is an app called CleanMyMac that can remove system junk and speed up your Mac. It’s a Mac cleaner with a set of handy utilities, some of which might come in handy.
For instance, one of the reasons for your Mac slowing down could be that some apps hog too much RAM. To see if this is the problem, try opening Activity Monitor and see which apps take to much processing power. If some of them seem to be exceedingly greedy and you’re pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to be, you can reset them.
To fix RAM-consuming apps, use the special module in the CleanMyMac app that we mentioned earlier, Uninstaller. Simply open CleanMyMac, go to Uninstaller, find the app in question and click Reset. The app will then lose its preferences and stored info and roll back to default settings. It’s basically like reinstalling it but without the hassle.
If your Mac goes all the way and becomes completely unresponsive or even needs rebooting, follow the instruction in our guide on how to speed up a slow Mac after installing macOS.
With every macOS upgrade there are older versions of apps that are no longer supported by their developers. One casualty of High Sierra is Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft has said that it will not offer support for it running on new macOS and it’s likely you’ll have problems with it. The only solution is to upgrade to Office 2016.
For other apps, upgrade them and check the developer’s website for details of High Sierra support. Even if an app doesn’t work with the new version of the new OS, it’s possible its developer is still working on support and it will work by the time macOS ships.
If you want to delete an app – perhaps because you’ve replaced it with a newer version – use CleanMyMac Uninstaller to make sure you delete all the files associated with the app.
A few things can go wrong with your Mac’s display after the upgrade, so let’s see what can be done when they occur. You might experience troubles waking your Mac from sleep, when the display just never comes live or it does, but minutes after you’ve jammed every key on the keyboard.
Then you might also experience flickering of certain images while browsing the web. The last issue is a grey screen or a blue screen that signal something going pretty wrong with the whole Mac-to-display connection.
What you need to do to fix it is resetting your NVRAM. It’s that kind of memory that unlike regular RAM is non-volitile which means it keeps info when your Mac is turned off. That’s why simply turning it off and on again won’t help. Anyway, it’s a quick fix.
That should do it.
One of the issues that has been reported the macOS High Sierra is with wifi signals. To analyse your wifi network after installation, use WiFi Explorer or NetSpot, both available in Setapp. Both these tools map the wifi networks within range of your Mac and identify areas where signals are either strong or weak. By using one of these apps, you should be able to tell if your Mac is having wifi problems.
If you can’t identify a problem and can’t connect to a network, try switching wifi off in the Finder menu bar, waiting 30 seconds and switching it back on again.
Not much has been reported about Bluetooth issues on macOS High Sierra at the moment. However, there’s always one infallible piece of advice to give: re-pair your device. Find the Bluetooth icon in the upper right corner and open its preferences. If you can’t see it there, go to System Preferences and find Bluetooth menu.
Hover on the device in question and click the X-mark next to it. This not just disconnects the device, but removes it entirely from the list until you pair it back. To restore the device, set it into the painting mode and when it shows up in the list below, click “Pair.”
Ramping up performance and adding new features while avoiding putting more strain on a battery is tough. So don’t be surprised if your Mac’s battery (if it’s a laptop) doesn’t last as long after upgrading. Use iStat Menus, available in Setapp, to monitor battery life – as well as CPU usage, fan speeds, temperatures and a host of other data. That way you’ll be able to tell if your battery really is performing less well after upgrading.
Your Mac use more power when it’s processor is under stress – partly because it generates heat which needs fans to cool it. So quit any apps that are hogging processor cycles if you’re not using them. You should also update apps to their most recent versions, and could turn down your screen’s brightness and move somewhere cooler if you’re sitting somewhere that’s particularly hot.
If your Mac’s battery hasn’t been its best self since the upgrade, try checking where the problem is. Open Activity Monitor > Energy and see which apps take up the most. Browsers and rendering software is expected to be energy-heavy, so that’s normal.
But if you’re seeing some minor applications you rarely use taking up a chunk, consider uninstalling them. You can use the specially-made CleanMyMac's Uninstaller for the job, because just dragging an app to the trash doesn’t uninstall it fully.
In case you either see mail notification for less then a second or don’t see it at all, there might be a problem with settings. Try checking if you have the notifications turned on in System Preferences > Notifications. Does you alert style say “Banner”? If it does but the problem remains, change the alert style from 'Banner' to 'Alert' or 'None'. After that you can switch it to 'Banner' again and from now on it should work fine.
This part is for gamers only. If any of these names ring a bell for you, don’t rush to upgrade: 'Cities: Skylines', 'Civilization V', 'Team Fortress 2,' 'Half-Life 2,' and 'Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.'
Developers of these games and of the Unity engine, joined by threads on Reddit and Steam, have all voiced concerns about the APFS system and its compatibility with the main game engine and graphic controls. So, before you upgrade, hit Reddit or Google and find out if these troubles have been resolved.
If a force restart doesn’t work and you can’t get your Mac to run the new OS at all, the next step is to try repairing the disk on which it’s installed.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to reinstall macOS.
When it’s done, choose Reinstall macOS and select your Mac’s main drive as the destination. Wait for High Sierra to install and restart. When you see the Setup Assistant, choose the option to migrate data from another disk and choose the external disk as the source.
Installing a new version of Mac OS Sierra should be an easy job. Your Mac will simply tell you an update is available through a popup in the Notification Center. With just one click, you can go ahead and initiate the installation. However, in some cases, while updating your OS, things can get a little messed up. As a result, the Mac OS Sierra installation gets stuck.
There are many possible reasons why the installation is interrupted. It could be there has been a power shortage. It could also be there is not enough space available on your Mac. Perhaps, there are other issues with your Mac prior to updating. But regardless of the reason, we’re here to give you all the possible solutions for a stuck Mac High Sierra update.
Whenever Apple releases an update for High Sierra, many Mac users will rush to download it. Because of that, Apple’s servers slow down. Thus, your first course of action should be to check the System Status page of Apple and see macOS Software Update to find out if there are problems.
Believe it or not, downloading the update is much quicker when you use a wired connection than when you tap to a WiFi network.
Pro Tip: Scan your Mac for performance issues, junk files, harmful apps, and security threats
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One of the possible fixes for a stuck download is to simply cancel it. Start by navigating to the Mac App Store. After which, look for the update you are downloading. Finally, press the Option/Alt key. There should now be an option to cancel your download. Click the Cancel button, and you should be able to restart your download without any problems.
If you are still having issues with downloading the update through the Mac App Store, visit Apple’s website instead.
Generally, if there is a problem with the software installation, it will show on the screen. In some cases, an Apple logo with a loading status bar will show. Sometimes, you will see a “spinning beach ball”. On some other Macs, the screen will turn white, black, or grey that one cannot tell if the Mac is switched on or not.
Alternatively, you may also find your Mac frozen on the installation page with a message saying, “macOS could not be installed on your computer.” And if you click the Restart button, the same message will show.
As you can see, your Mac has many ways of telling you that the installation of Mac OS has stalled. But before you take action, you have to be sure that the installation is no longer running in the background. Otherwise, you might lose your data when you interrupt the installation process with a forced reboot.
Before you come up with a conclusion that your Mac has stalled during the installation, you have to be aware of certain things.
Sometimes, the High Sierra installation can take very long to the point that it looks frozen already, but when you leave it for hours, the process has eventually completed. So, it’s best that you leave your Mac overnight to complete the installation.
Generally, the installation of the updates can take 16 hours or more, and the status bar you see during the installation is only a guess at how long the installation will take.
To bring up the Log, press the Command + L keys. It should show added information and details about the total time left for the installation. It will also give you a better idea of what files are currently being installed.
If you think that the installation has not stalled, just be patient and wait for the process to be completed for a few more hours.
Press and hold the Power button to switch off your Mac. Wait for a few seconds and restart your Mac.
If you obtained the updates from the Mac App Store, go to the App Store and check Updates. The update or installation process should commence from where it has ended.
Once the progress bar shows, open the Log by pressing the Command + L keys. It should show what files have been installed and what are pending. If the Log screen shows that there have been no updates, proceed to the next step.
As mentioned above, the Mac App Store is not the only place to download the High Sierra update from. You can also download it from Apple’s website.
We highly suggest you get your update from Apple’s website if you are having problems with the installation. If you visit the website, you can find the Combo update, which contains all the files needed to update your OS. This update version will replace all your system files to ensure everything is up to date.
To install the High Sierra update in Safe mode, press the Power button and hold down the Shift key. Once your Mac has restarted, go to the App Store and install the update in Safe mode. Then, reboot.
One possible reason why the update failed is that there is not enough storage space available to perform the installation. While in Safe mode, you might as well start deleting some files.
If the installation in Safe mode still does not work, reset your NVRAM. Restart your Mac and then hold down the Command, Option, R and P keys. That should reset the NVRAM. Wait for a few seconds until your Mac restarts and wait if the installation starts.
You can also restart your Mac in Recovery mode by holding down the Command + R keys at startup. From here, you will be presented with a few options. But we suggest you select the Install new OS option.
While reinstalling your OS, your Mac will replace all the system files and overwrite the problematic ones which may cause the error.
If you are still having problems with installing High Sierra, you can try installing it from an external drive.
After you have successfully installed High Sierra, we suggest you run Disk Utility to see and correct any issues that might have caused the installation problem. It’s also a great idea to install Outbyte MacRepair to ensure your Mac is optimized and free of junk files.
Hopefully, we were able to give you answers and helped you fix your problems with a stuck Mac OS Sierra installation. If you have done all the steps above and you are still having installation issues, we suggest you take your Mac to the nearest Apple Store and have an Apple technician check it.