El Capitan has a ton of neat new features, but no OS ever arrives completely error-free. This year’s OS X update is no different — leading some impatient online types to go so far as to label it “El Crapitan.”
Some of these problems have been solved. Others haven’t. But we’ve compiled a list of some of the most widespread complaints. Check out the hall of shame below.
El Capitan is making everything run r-e-a-l-l-y, r-e-a-l-l-y s–l–o–w
Are you spending a whole lot more time with the Mac’s (redesigned) spinning pinwheel/beachball? Join the club. On Apple’s support forums, a number of users are taking issues with El Capitan’s apparent lack of haste.
“Is anyone else having the issue of your Mac running wicked slow after the new El Capitan update?” writes one user. “Word, Safari, Preview, and iTunes wouldn’t open — they froze and I had to force quit them. Even typing this there is a major lag and the pinwheel appears.”
Another adds that, since installing the last El Capitan beta in early October, their Mac, “runs as fast as a one legged donkey.”
This doesn’t seem to be a universal rule, though. Some other El Capitan users claim their Macs are running faster than ever. Whichever group you fall into (my personal experience has been a slight slow-down), you’re not alone.
Photo: Microsoft
Microsoft Office is anything but a productivity tool
El Capitan users have been having some major issues with Microsoft Office since the developer betas first dropped. One of the final betas suggested that testers should specifically focus on Office 2016– although that hasn’t stopped the official public release experiencing similar problems.
Microsoft has issued its own patch, as well as a fix for Microsoft Office 2011 installs — but there are still plenty of complaints concerning problems among the El Capitan early adopters.
To print, or not to print
It seems that a number of users running El Capitan are having issues printing landscape-oriented documents. The problem arises specifically when people try and print PDF landscape documents using Preview.
On suggested fix is to open System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, then select the Print tab. Once this is done, right or CTRL click the printer, then hit Reset Printing System, and finally restart your Mac and printer, before trying again.
iTunes is running into problems
Some users are having issues with iTunes not allowing them to click on anything, while also taking a long time to find music folders on start-up. You can follow an updated thread about the problem here, but so far at least there doesn’t seem to be an Apple fix.
Photo: Apple
WiFi issues abound
If you’re having some problems with poor WiFi connectivity, you’re not alone. Fortunately, this is one of the El Capitan issues that’s easy to sort out.
First of all, make sure you delete your current WiFi preferences, then create a new network location with DNS settings, and you should be up and running again. For a more detailed step-by-step guide to fixing the problem, check out the handy guide here.
Airdrop isn’t working properly
Some users are reporting that they are unable to make a connection using Airdrop between their iMac and MacBook, or their MacBook and iOS devices. While everything appears to be set up correctly — with WiFi and Bluetooth turned on, firewalls turned off, and both devices paired — the Airdrop feature still refuses to work.
Other problems?
Have you experienced any of these issues yourself? Are there any we haven’t mentioned? Better yet, if you’ve got fixes for some of the more widespread El Capitan issues leave them in the comments box below, and we’ll incorporate them into the list.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
172 responses to “‘El Crapitan’: The biggest problems plaguing early OS X upgraders”
Has anyone has a problem with the nsurlsessiond service, eating the entire Internet Bandwidth?
This is something very interesting that is worth paying your extreme attention ,a very good chance to work for those people who want to use their free time so that they can make some extra money using their computers… I have been working on this for last two and half years and I am earning 60-90 dollar/ hour … In the past week I have earned 13,70 dollars for almost 20 hours sitting ….
Any special qualification, degree or skills is not necessary for this, just keyboard typing and a good working and reliable internet connection ….
Not any Time limitations to start work … You may do this work at any time when you willing to do it ….
Just know how I have been doing this…..….see this (webiste-Iink) on my !profile!` to know how I am working` on this`
%66
Do you want to know something really interesting that is worth paying your attention right now,a fabulous online opportunity to work for those people who want to use their free time so that they can make some extra money using their computers… I have been working on this for last two and half years and I am making 60-90 dollar/ hour … In the past week I have earned 13,70 dollars for almost 20 hours sitting ….
Any skills, Degree ,Specific qualification is not necessary for this, just keyboard typing and a good working and reliable internet connection ….
Any time limitations to start work is not required … You may do this work at any time when you willing to do it ….
Do you want to know how I have been doing this?…..….see this {Iink} on my !|profile|!` to know how I am working` on this`
_67
Disk Utility has been over simplified, and no longer supports RAID drives. Now you have to do in Terminal which is ok for expert users which I am not.
I have RAID drives so I did not upgrade.
Thanks for that. I wasn’t aware of it and do have raid on my servers.
Apparently all the features are still present, just in Terminal. Apparently it’s a work in progress, and there will be follow-on updates that will improve the GUI of Disk Utility. Still pretty upsetting though…
Even worse, after opening my 1st Raid in new disk utility, it corrupted every single file on disk. 2,5 TB of data. Luckily I had a backup drive.
along with the network utility shuffle, I don’t understand the logic behind messing with these. Does Apple want to drive all of the more technically astute users away from Macs? If I am forced to resort to the command line for such tasks, I may as well be on Centos or Ubuntu.
My girlfriend and I share a 2013 MacBook Air and have had almost zero issues, occasionally we have to reconnect to our wifi (may just be an issue with our crappy router) but overall we’ve been having a good experience with it.
That’s just like my experiences with my 2015 Macbook Air, save for the Wi-Fi issue. I have yet to have any major issue with it, other than that it was an outright pain in the neck to install. Took me to ultimately have it installed through a mode I accessed via startup (don’t remember how I did it though).
Everything is slowing down considerably on my MBP late 2013 even just open System Preferences, it takes like decades to open its window. And yeah, AirDrop stop seeing my iPhone no more. Rolled back to Yosemite and all problems gone! Too bad Apple, too bad… >.<
Try clearing your Nvram and let me know if it fixes it.
Hi, Unfortunately, I already rolled back to Yosemite 10.10.5, and all are working well as expected. Bad experience for me indeed! Thanks for your advice anyway! :)
Thanks for this…this seemed to get rid of the “beachball of death” considerably.
how does one do this? My system is VERY slow and having a multitude of other problems.
A lot of this also happened when Yosemite was rolled out. I remember having big wifi issues but they ironed it all out. Pretty sure the same will be true for El Cap.
Yeah, it’s crap slow especially when it wakes up. It seems notifyd is hogging the CPU. I could live without the notifications, if only there was a way to disable them :)
Try clearing Nvram…
I’m having an issue with my Mac Pro when it comes out of sleep and connects to the WIFI, I can’t connect to any local resources. I cannot connect to my other Macs or Drobo. I have to turn off WiFi completely and turn it back on in order for local network connection to work again.
Time Machine won’t open my Yosemite backup(s). I can’t go back past the El Cap install.
You’re holding it wrong :P
use recovery partition works fine.
I did a clean install and don’t want to do a full restore, only some of the files and apps.
you should be able to use Migration tools in welcome screen haven’t tried it but I’ve tried a time machine back up to Yosemite using the Recovery Partition on my hackintosh. I’m running the 10.11.1 beta seems to have smoothed some things out but everything was fine in 10.11
Try clearing Nvram.
whats Nvram, please walk peeps through the steps!
Clean de NVRAM (Zap the PRAM in the old Macs)
shutdown
press Command + ALT + P + R
Press power button
Wait to sound the boot/startup sound 3 or 5 times
Release de keys
Done! you cleaned it!
Indeed , El Crapitan.
Destroyed my iTunes library (80 gig of a mess, though I’m gonna loose it all!) . and ask me change the partition before install. complicated and take time and risk . finder freeze all the time and need to relaunch . big disappointment for me.
macbook pro 15′, early 2011. (SSD 512g)
p.s after so much betas it DOES NOT supposed to happen. Yosemite was far more Good!
YES, YES!!! Finder freezes all the time on my MacBook Air 2013. I thought i was the only person. Sh!t
This is really El Crapitan I completely agree. Really sad!
Quit being so dramatic, you didn’t loose your iTunes library just restore it from TimeMachine.
My Mac Mini 2014 was ok with Yosemite, now on El Capitan is running very slow, looks like the hard drive is always looking for something (it remember me when I was on Microsoft Windows :(((( ).
Try clearing your Nvram see if helps.
Thanks for helping, but I have already cleared Nvram, smc, disabled SIP, disabled Spotlight, reenabled spotlight, reindexed the hard disk, cleared cache, created a new user, updated El Capitan with all the latest beta release 10.11.1. Nothing works, I think that if you have an SSD you can really notice the differences, but with a mechanical disk El Capitan respond very slow compared to Yosemite.
What about the good old zap the PRAM? Oh, that’s the same thing.
Permission to save documents ANYWHERE is denied and throws errors when saving from any MS Office 2016 program and Acrobat XI
you might want to repair perms, or simply go to the top of your home folder, get info (command I) and then apply read/write perms there or on any other NORMAL folders that you should have perms to. This is a common problem when updating OSX.
It’s slow, AirDrop isn’t working, and apart from that my Mac, which has been set to Danish, since I set it up in 2012, is now displaying most, but not all things in English. Apart from those annoying things, I like the new OS.
I am noticing it takes longer to wake from sleep then before – this on a brand new MacBook 2015 Retina.
Try clearing your Nvram to see if helps. Seems to fix issues after upgrading. Did with me on parallels on the windows side.
Thanks, but did a clean install
What he suggested (NVRAM) has nothing to do with your install method. Look on apples support site for the info on how to clear the NVRAM.
I found that after installing El Capitan, I was unable to play my music through an external, USB connected, digital to analog converter (Oppo PM-1).
When upgrading to El Capitan, my keychain was destroyed and not recognized after. I kept getting prompted to locate the different entries keychains stores. I ended up having to backup my Mac and performing a clean install with a bootable flash drive.
For some reason, I am asked to enter my keychain password for many applications and processes.
And after changing my OSX password, I cannot update my keychain password.
I am running an “ancient” 2008 Macbook pro. I have been beta test and have the current Build on El Capitan installed on it.
No Problems. fast smooth and not seeing any of the above issues. Clearly there are always issues with new releases. But for me this “Article” highly over states them.
I am also running a early 2008 MBP and haven’t had any issues with it slowing down or lagging. But I have had a lot of problems with finder windows freezing, programs unexpectedly quitting, printers dropping, my air card is not compatible, and at least once a day I have a random critical error that shuts down my computer. I would not have updated if I knew would have had so many issues.
I wonder if that could be disk related? It seems odd that two of the same model would have such a different experience. You could use the disk utility in Applications to check the SMART status of your disk drive. Also, it’s super easy to swap in a drive (in the battery bay).
I recommend trying a new disk drive with a clean install.
OK, got a problem with the mail app. Although I didn’t allow it to start up with the system it does that and becomes unresponsive. When I turn on iMac it shows the main mail windows and thats it. In order to be able to select any message or to write a new one I need to manually quit and restart Mail app after which everything becomes normal. Other that this problem I don’t have any other issues with Capitan. I am using early 2008 iMac with 2.4ghz and 4gb.
Finder constantly shows no files in folders with lots of them, especially folders within icloud drive. It happened with Application folder as well.
Exactly my problem, driving me nuts. Only thing I can do is restart, but I’m afraid that will quit working at some point… Then what? :/
The battery is running out so fast than osx yosemite
lol wut. If there’s anything El Capitan is, it’s faster than Yosemite. At least on both my iMac and my MacBook Pro. It’s not even close. Co-sign on the Airdrop issues though, at least between OS X and iOS, not really a problem for me though.
Graphics in Chrome browser go nuts: strobe, break down. Started after I installed el capitan
If you’re a Premiere Pro or After Effects user, stay on Yosemite for now.
My MacBook Pro Retina has been slow to power down ever since the update. It used to be almost instant. Now it’s about 10-15 second shutdown time. (That’s after a clean update.) Before that, it was 30 seconds or so and my mouse pointer was lingering around for half of that time, allowing me to move it around and even jiggle to enlarge. Aside from that, Logic 9 doesn’t seem to like my Native Instruments stuff right now.
Try clearing Nvram see if helps. Let me know. Would be curious.
Sorry. I meant to reply sooner. I did try that, but it didn’t seem to help. Either way, this was before going with a clean install. Since then, it hasn’t been bad.
The only thing I can think of is that something was running in the background and I just couldn’t find it. I tried closing various background apps (Dropbox, etc.) and couldn’t pinpoint the issue.
It’s resolved now, but I resorted to that clean install (never fun).
There is no such thing as a “clean update”. It’s either a clean install (not an update) or an update.
no problems here I’ve got 10.11 running on my hackintosh and everything works perfect don’t use Microsoft office crap. also got 10.11 on my macbook mid 2010 works fine no issues.
Handoff and continuity aren’t working for me. Tried everything from a simple reboot to reinstalling OS X to iCloud logging out and back in… All doesn’t seem to be the problem.
Weird… been running / testing the beta and haven’t noticed most of the issues mentioned here. I’ve reported a lot too… just not these.
I get an error when I put in a blank DVD or CD . . . It won’t let me open it “in the finder”. I tried the default DVD & CD settings to “ask me what to do” but it still won’t allow me to open in finder. I have a feeling it will allow me to open in iTunes only. I think Apple it trying to control users from “pirate behavior”.
I had issues with my USB ethernet adapter not working on El Capitan, along with my label printer not even showing up. I also saw a lot of people commenting about issues with R on Mac. I got fed up with this half-baked release and rolled back my system last night.
I have it installed into 2 computers, one still in the public beta @ 10.11.1 and the other is final @ 10.11. The beta runs really well and speedy on a 2011 MBP, whereas the non-beta(final) on a 2013 MBP is a bit sluggish. Office 2008 run fine on both, but the new Office(2016) take a long time to open, and most of the time slow to use. Airdrop, I’m having issues with half the time nothing shows up–i’ve done many tricks to solve, but since I don’t use it all the time I’ll get back to it; Disk Utility I don’t like, overly simplified-lacking options that once was there; Apple Music aka new iTunes I don’t like. Too many features, overloading the simple function that many use it for. Wifi connectivity isn’t a issue on either of the MBP, but on my iPhone running IOS 9.. not sure if 9.1 will solve that.
Try clearing Nvram see if works.
I am having none of these issues. The only issue I had was with gaming, but with a video driver directly from NVIDIA the problem went away.
I did clean install. And I had most of this issues.
I think depends on the model of MAC too.
I’m almost sure, new iMac have no issue with 10.11 ))))))
The only problem listed is with Microsoft Office applications being really sloooooow to start up. Office 2011 applications still start up fast. The one problem I do have is sometimes the mouse really slows down and a reboot is necessary. I think the problem is with Safari. I can’t say for sure but I think after I click on some links the system is messed up. Quitting all applications and logging out and back in doesn’t help, I have to reboot.
I have to say that my two macs running El Capitan are much snappier.
After upgrading to El Capitan, I used my computer for a day, something made it reboot (not sure if it was an update) and whammo NO OS. I then booted to the recovery partition perform some disk utility which has been overhaul and I agree with the previous post… nothing… reinstalled the OS nothing, finally I restored from my time machine backup and I have Yosemite back on and staying this way for awhile
Safari crashes my whole system for about 3 minutes when I try to load a new page (not everytime though). I cant even force quit it until the wheel stops, because every single thing stops running but the mouse. Cant click anything or do anything in other stuff. Other than that, Capitan is faster and this bug forced me to use Chrome.
It seems to be the worst OS X since 10.1. I’ve had several apps crash; a couple of accounts in Mail are acting very strangely, attempting to send the same message multiple times; the Activity Window in Mail is useless — I can’t see what each account is doing and can’t stop an e-mail from going out right after I hit Send (could do that in Yosemite); Photos has trouble recognizing and importing photos from my iPhone; iTunes asked for my Apple ID password repeatedly the first time it ran; another time, iTunes worked except that I couldn’t get to it using cmd-tab, I had to use Mission Control, and when I got to it, the main window never showed as active; the Extensions pane in System Preferences refuses to load at least half the time; Spotlight is slow and does not do what Apple claims (weather, for instance); I totally agree with someone else that Disk Utility’s interface has been dumbed down way too far; Terminal commands that I could run previously now require ‘Root’ access, which means turning off System Integrity Protection; my fan runs almost continuously; battery life is awful; the list just goes on and on.
Try clearing Nvram see if it works.
Clearing NVRAM may have helped some. Something’s messed up with iCloud and Keychain. After being asked by Mail to verify my iCloud Password in the iCloud section of System Preferences, I get the message that “Keychain ‘login’ cannot be found to store xxxxxx” That might be a conflict with Juno Pulse (VPN software). There are other internet accounts (both Google Gmail) for which I cannot verify the Password — System Preferences tells me it can’t access the accounts. Sigh.
Clear your Nvram and it should fix it. I had similar problems after upgrading and then using parallels on the windows side and clearing Nvram fixed my issues so it might fix the issues after the upgrade.
Sorry chaps. I can’t join in the whingefest because I’ve had absolutely no problems with my El Capitan install. Nothing is slower, no beachball, no crashes. Works like a charm. :)
My biggest problem has been Preview. If you open a large image in it, it appears all green until you resize it (using Image Resize, not just manipulating the window).
I did have a problem one day with Safari where watching a video slowed it down so bad that even quitting and restarting it didn’t fix it… a reboot was required. But it hasn’t returned since that one incident.
Now FWIW, I hate this new “SIP” feature because I had to disable it to get one of my favorite utilities to run (TotalFinder) which the developer now says he will discontinue support for it as a result (Grrrrr). That and in Mission Control, the spaces are now text-only until you mouse up to them. I hate that.
Installed El Capitan launch day and had issues from the get go. My RMBP dock would freeze for the first 5-10 minutes after starting up or waking from sleep. I cleaned NVRAM and it fixed nothing. It’s an issues with something that I have running even though I disabled all of my start up items as the guest account does not have any issues. I have the newest version of Office and didn’t even dare touch it after the issue I was having with my dock. I rolled back to Yosemite that evening and won’t even consider reinstalling until they fix the Office issue. I am hoping by then they will have resolved the other problems I was having.
For those in a Citrix environment, Citrix receiver is having issues with Safari. Alternate browsers work correctly.
My Mac mini has been pretty slow compared to what it used to be before the update. Also…. I made my own fusion drive and used to score (black magic) 475-520 on read and about 275-325 write. Now it’s like 100 read and 80 write. (Mac mini 2012,i7,16GB vengeance, Samsung 840/stock 1TB)
After upgrading to el capitan, everything looked fine until I turned off my iMac. When I tried to turn it on agin, I got an apple logo but no boot. I installed 3 times el capitan and with the same results. I was loosing my mind until I found a post in the web of some fellow mac user and he recommended to go to system prefs/users and go to the boot apps (I don’t know the English name) and I found out that I had an app (Cdock) that had an alert icon. I erased the app and everything works fine know. Some people say el capitan is faster than yosemite but I don’t see it on my iMac.
Google Chrome is crashing every time I try to open any website. Facebook, youtube, a normal google Search… (just some of the sites that keep crashing)
I find all the animations to be much more snappy. The only slowdown I’ve noticed is that there’s a brief wait after entering your password on the login screen to login, even if you’re already logged in and it’s simply locked. This is both on my iMac and my MBA….
I find it is pretty slow, definitely coming from Yosamite. Generally if you’re having issues, use disk util to repair your disk and restart, this fixes most of the permission issues and associated spinning wheels after an upgrade.
My MacBook Pro 2010 and Mac Pro 2010 are both suffering the same problem of massive slow downs on all usb drives. The max speed I get on the Mac Pro with a USB3 card in it is 30mbps, with a solid state external I would normally get well over 300mbps. A few of my mates have the same issue. Yet on Yosemite not a problem and always super fast speeds
Disk Utility without Software Raid on the Desktop = Bad. To use Software Raid run Terminal = Not that easy either, but manageable.
Naughty Apple !!
My only issue so far is that Screen Sharing turns off the display as soon as I exit the connection; this did not happen with any previous version I’ve used. pmset anti-idle does not help, disabling the screen saver and Energy Saver do not help. At least from outside my home LAN, ending the session = display is off.
Canon MP620 canner now doesn’t work. Probably need a new driver. Great.
Signatures won’t add to new messages in mail
I have El Capitan on my mid-2007 iMac (oldest iMac that will run it) and it runs like a charm. Faster than Mavericks and Yosemite. Try clearing NVRAM/PRAM
I have a DVR with a removable thumb drive formatted in NTFS. As soon as I connect it to any Mac, running El Cabron, Finder stops redsponding. I use the force quit menu to relaunch it, but none of the external HDDs nor the Desktop reappear. I, then, have to turn off the external HDDs, which, five minutes later, gives me the “disk not ejected properly” warning, when everything returns to normal.
I really miss Snow Leopard! All OSes since have been almost as glitchy as Windows!
Macbook pro isssss ssssssllllloooowww. Tired of spinning beachball. Biggest issue is inability to eject USB drives. Tried Apple suggestion and logging out. Did not work. Have reformatted USB drives and still have issues. Would roll back but fear many of the documents created since update might not open. I photo opens every time I connect my ipad….no matter what settings I try to change. Dont even mention iTunes issues! Lifelong apple user. What happened to apple quality control? iF your macbook pro is over three years old do NOT upgrade till apple gets it’s feeces coagulated.
Notes! It opens fine, but after being minimized, it won’t come back up. Every time I want to use notes, I have to close it, and open it again.
I have upgraded to El Capitan on my 2010 Macbook Pro the very first day. I have had zero issues with the OS and honestly felt some app behaviour and speed improvement. No problems at all.
I installed El Crapitan on my MacBook Pro (Late 2011) the day before yesterday. Even though I had lots of issues while installing it, yesterday it was working perfectly fine until it turned off by itself last night and every time I turn it on now, it now says Update Needed or Log In as Guest. I click the Update Needed option at start up and nothing ever happens.. It’s like it’s frozen or something. I checked the Disk Utility and everything is fine there. I don’t know what else to do.. Can anyone help me out? Thank You!
Problem solved! It is now working perfectly! :)
I have Mail issues (I can no longer send email) and Keychain problems ( constant login request from Messages on start up. PITA!
So far working fine on a rMBP. AppleScripts run even faster than before.
AirDrop is much more reliable. I have seen a few cases where it wouldn’t see the iPad. In those cases restarting the iPad solved it. This seems to be an iOS problem, not an OS X problem.
I never print so maybe I just haven’t had the opportunity to see that problem.
Shocker: New software causes *some* people problems.
Yawn.
Upgrading to Yosemite on my 2011 15″ MBP with 4GB of memory made it nearly unusable. Upgraded to 16G and it’s OK. I have an Air and newer 13″ Retina MBP with 8G and it performs fine. The difference seems to be flash storage vs. spinning storage in my opinion. I’m going to put of any upgrades as long as possible – I can’t afford the time to troubleshoot performance issues. I actually need to get work done with them.
El Capitan worked great for me for like two weeks after the upgrade then out of the blue it started running extremely slow. Also, it hanged during boot up once. I restored from backup and that fixed the slowness problem but now it hangs every time I start up in the morning. When the progress bar is at 3/4 of the way along it just stalls. Oddly enough after powering down and restarting it boots up normally. If I knew this was going to happen I would have stayed with Mavericks! Thank God I still have a backup of Mavericks, I may restore it if Apple doesn’t fix this mess soon.
I was very interested to read this post – I too had the upgrade work very well for me for two weeks and two days ago all hell broke loose – safari is especially bad but the most frightening thing that happened is that twice my finder went unresponsive. Aperture is virtually unusable, and other applications are spotty at best. My force quit function as been used extensively in the past few days (when it actually can be called up which is about 50 % of the time). I will try the update today and if no improvement will downgrade back to Yosemite.
I’ve had a good experience with El Capitan on a late ’13 2.15″ iMac. Installation went smoothly and everything subjectively feels a bit faster. The only minor annoyance is that my Time Machine disk’s icon no longer changes color after a successful backup.
Novell iPrint broken by the upgrade…
Both from 2011, iMac is running fine. No major issues so far. MacBookPro 13″, suffering with Spotlight. Start typing an app name, for instance, the icon vanish if I stop typing. Have to type fast and press RETURN as soon as the icon appear in the right.
My iMac is running slower than ever across all applications. Never seen anything like it. A brand new OS and its got me yelling at my computer. Really, Apple. This is about some crap!!
airdrop??? must be called FAILDROP. it never works. (85% of times you cant even connect to the right computer)
in my computer its really fast, the only problem i have is FAILDROP
El Capitan upgrade loaded great with no obvious problems using it until I shutdown. Wont restart just get white screen with unresponsive progress bar so have to boot in recovery mode and reinstall El Capitan and have done 5 or 6 times now and its killing my download quota. Spent 2 hours online with genius bar but still no good. Will be leaving computer on 24/7 for at least 3 weeks until I get new quota and maybe an update might come that will fix it. Wont boot in safe mode and if boot with option down on start, select startup disk but still nothing. 1st time Ive had any trouble with an OS upgrade and not happy. see plenty of others online having same problem.
Had same issue (as have many others according to a Google search). 1st shut down after update led to a week of hurt. Apple logo but no boot up. 3 restores (24 hr process and a day of lost productivity each time so the people who yawn and say just restore from back up like its no big deal are tossers).
Finally in desperation rolled back to a Yosemite back up and surprise surprise everything works.
Anyone with the failed start up issue should restore from a Yosemite back up.
Very slow. Also will not give me the option to mail a Safari page. WiFi issues also. Unable to get dual screen view. No real advantages, just lots of problems I didn’t have before.
2011 early MBP. for me, it speeds up everything…as a casual daily task mac, it works perfectly as I do not use many app, only browser and emails. I do heard some full screen application crash and even in many other ppl’s cases a slow down. As bezard as it is mine is perfect o.0
Glad to know everyone is having problems. My computer has been running at a snails pace since the update, and itunes refuses to cooperate.
For anyone who experience slow problem after update, just go checking the Activity Monitor. If the top CPU using process is ‘mds’ or ‘mdworker’, it means your system is rebuilding spotlight index. It’s the most FAQ after major system update EVERY YEAR since 10.6.
For most of the time you should just stop fighting with it and let it do its work, which may take 15 minutes of even longer to finish (it took 30 minutes on my old iMac 2010 before the CPU usage finally drops,) and you shall be fine ever since.
However, sometimes Spotlight index file is corrupted, and it will never stop indexing. You should manually clean the spotlight index with terminal commands:
mdutil -Ea
mdutil -ai off
mdutil -ai on
Some system maintenance tools (such as OnyX) also provide GUI version of these commands.
If it’s still not working, you should check the file system integrity using Disk Utility, which may requires you to reboot from Recovery HD Partition.
I “upgraded” to El Capitan on Friday 16th October, within seconds Mail had issues with the servers.
I’ve spent countless hours calling Apple for help, (the Apple store said they were amazed at the number of calls in the log on my case) only to loose all the data from my iMac & then last night at the Apple store Leeds I was advised that my Time Capsule’s corrupt & I need to seek data recovery advice.
This could literally put me out of business & all Apple said was that they’d replace the capsule (16 months old) as a gesture of goodwill once I’m back up & running.
My iMac is out of warranty, can anyone advise or help ref recovering the cost of the data if it’s even possible.
Not a happy Apple customer, their service support is an absolute disgrace
My USD hard drive doesn’t let write on it anymore, this happened after the upgrade
You probably left it as NTFS and used some software to allow writes. That software will need to be replaced.
I couldn’t even complete the installation of El Capitan. My 15 month old iMAC froze and wouldn’t reboot. I was on the phone hours with Apple, finally they sent me to Apple Store to have them wipe the hard drive.
No beachballs here, don’t use office so can’t comment, don’t have a printer, no problems with iTunes, Wi-fi is fine as is airdrop.
My FCP 7 suite didn’t not work correctly with Yosemite. Motion 5 of that suite won’t even install at all on Yosemite so I’m sure it will be even worse with El Capitan.
The only issue I have since I installed El Capitan, is reading those articles about problems with El Capitan, that I’m unable to reproduce.
Same here! :)
My iMac is slow. Mail app is horribly slow. I have files in my trash and yet it shows 0.. I am unable to empty the trash. Apple must sort out these problems fast. Its a nightmare! It reminds me of the old Windows blue screen error days…
The mail app hasn’t worked well since before Yosemite. I switched to airmail 2 and haven’t looked back. It’s lightning fast!
We have a network printer (Canon Copier / iR-ADV C250 /) with all its drivers installed and working fine for Yosemite, but now El Capitan won’t connect! Help! Tried the Control click suggestion, but no success yet.
On a better note, most things run faster for me (but I reinstalled fewer things!
I loved it when I first installed it on my 2010 iMac. Until I realized I couldn’t sign into iTunes or the App Store with my Apple ID (I had no problems with it on my iPhone or iPad). I tried every.single.thing I could think of, and all the suggestions on the boards, including a clean install. No matter what I did I ended up with a spinning gear and had to force quit the app I was trying to sign in to. If I purposely entered the wrong password it told me it was wrong…it just couldn’t connect me with the correct one.
I’ve now gone back to Yosemite, where I will stay until there’s a fix, or forever.
I like the name El CRAPITAIN. The worse part is Apple support count not give a crap. Everything is wrong with it. Audio and video does not work. Yes it slowed down the computer. Mail and to be deleted and reinstalled. No passwords work anymore I have had to redo them.The only thing I can do not is go back and lose all the work I have done since I installed it. I BEG people not to make the mistake of installing this awful upgrade. Apple will NOT help you and support you and they could not care less about what it costs you and your business. I am even more horrified by their not giving a s*(&
I can’t get the OS to even install it gets more than half way done and then it crashes and I have checked my hardware and even started in safe mode and I had to time machine back to Yosemite! I don’t know what is wrong but I’m NOT going to upgrade anytime soon until they fix the issues as I’m not the only one having an install issue!
If any of you use CleanMyMac and experience this issue, try to uninstall your CleanMyMac…
Helluva time for this to happen, huh, Apple? I mean, with the Surface Book and Pro 4 gaining so much acclaim (from what I’ve been reading) it would be such an opportune time for Microsoft to swoop in for the kill. Then again, is Windows 10 any better? On my iMac at work, Spotlight requires at least 2 attempts before populating results, and Mac Mail was nothing short of a nightmare to get started. Zapping the NVRAM, and resetting the SMC controller helped for this, as well as my iMac at home (mid 2007!) with wifi issues. Every time I would try to download the new Logic Pro update, it would disconnect from the Internet. My son realized El Capitan was not compatible with Native Instruments’ Komplete AU plug-ins, and had to revert back to Yosemite. My collegues at work (imaging studio) are complaining of the over-simplifying of the Disk Utilities. With all these problems out of the gate, I have two questions: why weren’t these caught in the beta stages, and where the hell is 10.11.1 with all the fixes??? The silence from Apple is deafening – and not very Apple-like.
Well this was a terrible artlcle by Fluke.
I have the same issue! I think it will be best of the Apple Support forums now to support video embed from YouTube as it will be easier for them to see these issues. El Capitan is really in beta quality, do they have quality testers at all?
My iPhoto library will not transfer to the Photo library. It will load to about 12% and stay there. Anyone?
El Capitan has greatly improved the performance of my older iMac and Apple fixed a lot of annoying little problems too.
Cannot connect to any of my El Cap Mac on the network using the regular admin passwords – UNLESS you disable windows sharing. Random and so annoying. The fact Premier CC doesn’t work is another pain whilst not an Apple fault – and solely Adobe, its another reason to hold off…
lost iPhoto
The score display is bizarre and unusable – someone tell me how to get back to Yosimite. What a rubbish o/s
The worst upgrade ever by Mac. My MacBookk Pro works well, but my desktop is so slow. Apple should be ashamed for foisting this on unsupsecting users
I have a problem with my MacBook after upgrading to El Capitan. When I do any work or use any of the apps, the Launch Pad Screen comes on and goes on flickering. The frequency is high, so I cannot do any work at all. Has anybody experienced this? Is there a solution to it?
El Crapitan is terrible,makes me miss windows and dial up. I do love how lifelike the spinning beach ball looks…
I started with beta version 5 of el crapitan. I thought waiting that long would work out most of the kinks. Obviously I was wrong. I have seen the rainbow flag beach ball so many times that I’m starting to think they designed it that way. After this I am swearing off of apple betas. In fact, next time I will probably wait until version 3 of the final operating system before considering installing it. Every day apple is becoming more and more like microsoft.
I’ve had to do a forced shut down with the power button so many times lately that I’m starting to wish that apple would put it on the front of imacs so it’s easier to reach! That’s SAAAADDDD!
As far as MS office not working well, REALLY? Isn’t that kind of like saying a politician lied to the people? I mean, yeah, you are right. However, doesn’t it go without saying and wasn’t it expected? One thing people haven’t considered is that why do you think apple software is getting released half baked the past couple of years? My answer would be is that they have pulled too many people and put them to work on the apple car software.
Tim Cook is a utter failure as a CEO. I can’t wait until people catch up to my thinking on this one. I’ve seen it for a couple of years now. If he would concentrate more on the company than thinking of himself as the new Martin Luther King (whose name he recently invoked), the company would be better off. People have short term memories and forget that when Steve Jobs died he had 3-5 years worth of products lined up already. Now we are at the end of that time frame and now we see what Tim is REALLY capable of. Or incapable of I should say.
What has Tim given us? My guess is the larger ipad with a stylus would be all his. Wow, I wonder how much brain power he spent coming up with that one? Lol. Also the watch is probably his idea. It’s worthless and WAY overrated. Apple hasn’t wowed the world in a while now. Just coming out with products that get faster and thinner isn’t rocket science. Those improvements are inevitable. It’s new products and ideas that matter and that has been seriously lacking since Steve died.
PS apple, JUST making a bigger or smaller copy of a product you already have isn’t inventing something new!
Using OS 10.11 (El Capitan) in a 12″ Macbook. I’m having several issues with my Seagate’s Personal Cloud (a Network Attached Storage) and Time Machine. My Personal Cloud isn’t recognized in Finder, so I have to make a direct connection with A 20GB backup lasts mora than 16 hours, yes 16 hours.
Airdrop not working at all.
WiFi is not connecting automatically (to my router) when I log my account and really slow.
My time machine backup process has always been so slow that I wouldn’t even know if were messing up anymore than it already is, lol. That’s with a lightning connected external drive too!
Outlook in particular fro Office for Mac simply will not work – help?????????
The best advice I can give you is switch to airmail 2. Avoid microsoft apps at ALL COST! Just because it’s made for a Mac doesn’t change anything. It’s still programmed by the same people who plagued the world with windows.
MBP 13 inch, early 2012.
Sloooow… beachball of death everywhere.
What is Apple doing? El Capitan should not be released unless it shows some benefit.
my MAC book Pro, 2012 is actually running faster. However, my mail program crashes almost immediately after opening and is unusable at this point! Very frustrating.
I cannot throw mac mail into trash, see attached. Also I can’t open excel spreadsheets from the cloud.
I use keyboard/mouse sharing through software KVM. Can’t get the mac to wake up using the shared keyboard. As a work around to keep burn in from happening I’ve had to turn off energy saver settings completely in exchange for screen saver. Half my recovery and disk repair utilities will crash at random now. Thank God my VM’s are still functional. Would have taken me a week to recover if those had smashed.
I think it’s been working great – noticeably faster than Yosemite, and Safari actually works again.
I was just in at the genius bar today because my macbook air 2013 will not restart or shut down. The find is hanging. Well, after doing a full time capsule back up and spending about 90 min at the genius bar, they said to erase and re-install. Got home, did the necessary updates and the problem is back so I suspect it’s a bug but it’s really frustrating wasting that time only to have the same issues.
El Capitan feels faster to me. That part I like.
What I don’t like is losing nearly 2 weeks of work trying to install a new SSD under El Capitan and having its new security features put me through Hell.
It took me a couple of days figuring out how to reinstall my Windows10 bootcamp image with WinClone thanks to Systems Integrity Protection that prevented me from changing the MBR even with full authentication. Rather than help me, Two Canoes tried to upsell me new software which they admitted does not yet work with El Capitan thanks to SIP. The solution turned out to be reinstall Yosemite, and then I was able to restore Win10 with no difficulty, and then put El Capitan back. Awesome learning experience.
I had incorrectly concluded that my homebrew Fusion drive was defective when after 2 days it stopped mounting while passing every physical hardware test. Analyzing the logs, I see lots of ‘deny’ this and ‘deny’ that look like they were the cause. I believe the drive failed thanks to the new security features that have locked down things a bit too tight. I gave up on Fusion altogether and tried to swap out the SSD just in case even though I could find nothing wrong with it. Wasted time trying to figure out to secure erase my SSD for shipping back, as Apple has removed this from GUI. El Capitan has greatly improved my knowledge of the UNIX terminal.
El Capitan also removes permissions fixing because apparently we don’t need it. Except, of course, when you do. My new setup had two brand new El Capitan installs and to move a single file from a folder to the desktop requires authentication and between disks as well. Spent several days trying to use Yosemite as a work around, resetpassword in terminal (recovery). and eventually ended up manually adding myself to each volume’s sharings to turn off the need to authenticate.
Now I can’t scan either because El Cap claims the disk isn’t rewritable. Never did that before. The solution was to create a new folder on that ‘unwritable’ disk and put the scans in there. Now it works again. So much for putting scans in ‘Pictures’…that is just crazy talk.
I applaud Apple making an OS that is leaner and faster (much as MS has done with Win10)–but these new security features have made my data less secure than it has ever been and forced me to lose nearly 2 weeks of productivity to come up with poorly or undocumented workarounds to SIP and unfixable permissions. It’s been a nightmare of an upgrade and not convinced all is 100% well.
I keep getting a black screen with “loading photos…” after not touching my Mac. Very odd, I have iClouded turned off.
Calendar is not reliable and running slowly. Email isn’t download attachments and is suffering other problems.
Fan speed going mental. seems to be related to the fan speed going mental. Any solutions?
*seems to be related to not being able to log in to icloud
I have been having no problems with El Capitan. I love the upgraded Notes now that it has checklist-creating capability, something for which I previously relied on Evernote. True, Notes is to Evernote as Pages is to Microsoft Word – nowhere near the bells and whistles – but on the other hand I don’t really NEED all the bells and whistles and am happy to be able to consolidate my needs under the Apple Umbrella of Notes and no longer have to split my information between Notes and Evernote. I haven’t experienced the slowness problems – except for the fact that initial startup is slower – once my computer is up and running it is as fast if not faster than it was under Yosemite. I also haven’t experienced any of the noted iTunes issues. However, I was more than a bit miffed at how the latest update was handled – somehow I had the impression I was only updating ‘itunes” and don’t feel I was properly notified that this ‘itunes’ update was also including an update of the El Capitan OS. I was consequently puzzled over why an ‘itunes’ update was taking half an hour to load. Had I been more explicitly informed that it was also an upgrade of the OS I would have postponed upgrading to the following day when I had a more time to do it conveniently. I am also mildly offended by the way in which the first screen on both my iMac and mobile devices, immediately after upgrade, were not-so-subtle attempts to push me onto the Apple Music Bandwagon. Sorry, not buying. I OWN my own music, thank you very much, and I will NEVER be a ‘renter.’ My collection was built up over many years at great expense, and furthermore I refuse to ever buy a single tune from the iTunes store with its DRM. All of my digital music comes from Amazon and similar sources where I can keep the files, unfettered and untethered. And it’s backed up to CD as protection against any ‘games’ Apple might attempt in the future as far as shoving DRM onto music I already own.
I don’t know what people are doing because I’ve upgraded about 2 dozens client computers and my own to El Capitan and not a single issue, and it’s faster!
I wish you all the best to luck to fix your issues – first thing I would do is create a new user account and see if that fixes things which it probably will.
Apparently Apple introduced a new USB stack which has broken things for devices that use 340/341 chips instead of the FTDI chips.
My native VPN support has stopped working. It does’t even TRY to connect before giving the error message:
“The L2TP-VPN server was unreachable. Verify the server address and try reconnecting. If the problem continues, contact your Administrator.”
This happened immediately after I upgraded to OS X 10.11.1
After the “free” upgrade, it ran OK for a few days then on a business trip, refused to load. Long story short, I had to wipe the hard drive and restore from my time machine to an earlier back up (Yosemite) and then rebuild everything. I’m so traumatized, I’m afraid to ”
try it again”.
In security & privacy I can not unlock the lock to make changes. This means that I can not install/update programs not coming from app store, as for example Microsoft office
MBP Retina 2012. Have to reinstall the OS after each/any shutdown. No joy when flashing PRAM/VRAM or repairing disk. My MS Windows friends are welcoming into their fold with understanding nods and a beer to cry into.
Sounds like I am sticking with my current system OS for the time being.
Had same issue (as have many others according to a Google search). 1st shut down after update led to a week of hurt. Apple logo but no boot up. 3 restores (24 hr process and a day of lost productivity each time so the people who yawn and say just restore from back up like its no big deal are tossers).
Finally in desperation rolled back to a Yosemite back up and surprise surprise everything works.
Anyone with the failed start up issue should restore from a Yosemite back up.
I’m test-driving el crapy on an external ssd (usb 3). On an iMac i7. Installed everything from scratch. After the first update airdrop is functional again. (Doesn’t work properly under Yosemite btw). Quite fast, not as fast as internal fusion drive though.
I’m trying it out on an older MacBook Air with just 2 Gb Ram and it follies like a bird.
I’m trying it out on an older MacBook Air with just 2 Gb Ram and it flies like a bird.
This release was definitely not ready for primetime. While slowness hasn’t been an issue, compatibility definitely has, and it affected major applications — virus and firewall protection, cloud backup, and font management being at the top of the list.
After a great deal of work with the vendors, including Apple, there turned out to be several applications that gave up their efforts to remain functional under Apple’s often drastic changes (though, historically, most of the worst “evolutions” involved cable connections, such as the elimination of FireWire ports on Macs and the switch to lightning connectors on mobile devices — as if replacing all our hardware with those interfaces was a petty cash expense). The specific utility applications that caused problems were PTH Pasteboard (a fabulous clipboard management tool) and MouseFinder (which highlighted a cursor after a designated time of inactivity), though there may have been others, as well; I deleted a great many things as part of the trial by elimination and only reinstalled the essential security and protection programs.
Both Intego, which makes the security tools, and Code42, the developers of CrashPlan for cloud backup, went deep into the weeds of log files to find the likely culprits. Yet, after trying everything that seemed problematic and still not resolving the performance and activation issues, I double checked the compatibility of every background utility and process.
Yet, after getting the security, backup, and font manager to work, there was one new anomaly — the cursor kept snapping back into the upper left corner of the screen. Uninstalling and reinstalling the trackball software did nothing but, when I got out an Apple Magic Mouse and used it, the problem vanished… and the trackball worked normally again.
My 2010 macbookPro stucks at apple logo everytime i restart my device. Have to install a fresh OS everytime i restart. I’m hoping new update fixes it..
From a sleep start – lagging and keyboard issues – as I type it wants to keep repeating letters – this is across the board with keyboard shortcuts – press Commant Tab and it keeps repeating Command Tab … Press Volume Up or Down – and it goes to the extreme of each – Full Volume or No Volume … increments seems to have disappeared.
My Macbook Air (2011) keeps shutting down when only 20% of battery is left…
Everytime i need to plug in the charger and update the date as it keeps being reinitialized to Dec-31…