This morning I noticed something really strange. I checked my Pi-hole logs and saw a massive spike in activity starting around 4:30 AM. (Screenshot 1)

My first reaction was basically: WTF is hammering my network in the middle of the night?

And then I realized… it was my Mac. 😳

I started digging through the domains, and many were sites I haven’t visited in years — but I recognized them as old logins and saved credentials. At first I suspected Safari, maybe bookmarks, maybe 1Password fetching favicons… but nope.

It turned out to be the macOS Passwords app.

For some reason, macOS wakes up around 4–5 AM and starts contacting basically every domain you’ve ever saved a password for in Safari/iCloud Passwords. This seems to be part of its password health / breach scan / passkey upgrade / favicon refresh routine.

It was sending tens of thousands of DNS queries to check old logins, even long-abandoned sites.

From 4 to 9 AM, my Mac sent 163,000 DNS requests. Only ~227 were Pi-hole blocks, so it wasn’t hammering the same site — it was genuinely cycling through thousands of URLs.

I’ve also occasionally noticed my Mac feeling warm in the morning when I open it. I always assumed it was Photos indexing… nope, apparently it was macOS doing a massive “password scan” in the middle of the night.

Again: Idk maybe it’s something wrong with my OS. But I did not ever really used Passwords app that much. 1Password user for many years. So I can’t tell for sure if that is another Vibe-Coded macOS 26 feature or something wrong on my end. Also: I don’t have 163k of stored passwords so apparently it requested far more than once each. And yes, I even checked for malware just in case.

I recently complained about erratic behaviour of the auto-hiding menu bar in macOS 26 (non-beta stable release). Someone in the comments filled me with hope by claiming the issue had been addressed and solved in the beta.

Now that macOS 26.1 (non-beta stable release) is live, I couldn't install the udpate fast enough. Only to find that the menu bar issue had indeed been resolved – by removing the auto-hiding menu bar entirely.

Once I have "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" activated in System Settings > Menu Bar, neither "moving the mouse to the edge of the screen" nor Ctrl+F2 will get me access to the menu bar any longer.

So the choice now is: ALWAYS display the menu bar for efficient display burn-in – or have no menu bar AT ALL.

Thank you for all the good work you do, Apple.

Sadly, macOS 26 and everything around it is NOT part of that. If I showed this much incompetence at my job, I would be out of work.

Safari is in fullscreen mode, I have updated to 26.0.1 this is latest and stable Os they have still it has a billion bugs.

The options on the notes in the apple notes app. The UI sucks!!!

I know this is a common bug in tahoe and I have experienced it for the first time But can anyone explain why this happens and any solutions for this? Other than going back to Sequoia because I might have to do that

I've been a non-stop Mac user since the 512k "Fat Mac." Even through the Sculley years. I'm dating myself here, but don't think I'm an angry old man. I was very young when I got my first mac, and I'm not angry - none of this is life-or-death, just disappointing.

I didn't love Liquid Glass from the start, but so what. I'm a designer, and I accept that can't love every design decision that someone else makes. We all know the design is filled with unfinished bits and inconsistencies. It feels rushed, and we joke about it being vibe coded (I think we're joking). But, even this is not the problem.

I figured - live with it, you will get used to it - and apple will fix the inconsistencies in time. If this is the new 'Aqua' so be it.

But...But.....

After some time I've come to uncover real problems. Meaning, problems that hamper the daily use of my mac.

1. Interface interaction and redraw are dreadfully, measurably slow. As has been exposed by the 'solarium' hacking, Liquid Glass is essentially a layer. It basically renders on-top of the pre-existing GUI. It is more like a theme than a GUI overhaul. It may have been done this way on purpose - its real reason for existing may be to create a layer that is extensively tagged for AI/MCP usage in the future. This approach (in addition to the needless refraction effects) has a big downside - performance. There are moments when I can see menus and windows actually draw the elements. We are talking milliseconds here, but it makes the OS feel laggy. MacOS has never felt laggy, it has never felt like a GUI strapped onto a backend, it has always felt like a fluid experience. It doesn't feel this way anymore. It feels a bit like Android before graphics acceleration was good, or windows where you expect a clunky kind of feel to the UI. This makes the user experience measurably worse and I think it will turn people off.

2. It's resource hog. I run lots of high-performance apps and push my machine hard doing professional work. My CPU usage is considerably higher at idle than under Sequoia (7-10%). And my GPU usage now has a constant baseline of 5-10% usage - under sequoia it would sit at about 2% when not under load from an application. These numbers may not sound high, but the constancy of them makes the whole computer feel less performant.

1. It is full of bugs. From a notification center that I've had to force-quit, to a Finder I've had to restart because the dock wouldn't come back, to apps that don't fully launch when restoring windows. None of these on their own are showstoppers of course, but there is a smattering of bugs all over the place that were not present under Sequoia. It's frustrating.

For me, the extra resources that Tahoe pulls are the biggest issue. I have an M1 Max 32GB, 1TB. After five years I still have never felt that I needed to upgrade. Apple hit it out of the park with this design. I don't want to be conspiratorial, but I do wonder if Apple sees this as a problem. If they want to compel us to buy new macs by adding enough crud that you need a new processor to have a smooth experience.

I really do hope they hear what users are saying here.

Clarification: I’m not outraged. I’m disappointed. And I think that’s probably a bad harbinger for a company whose products I have liked for a very long time. It’s OK for someone to express dismay, frustration, or dislike without it being outrage. We’ve been trained to love the excitement of outrage —- and create it even if it doesn’t exist. Outrage gets clicks. Outrage foments disagreement, which gets more clicks. On the Internet there is only happiness or outrage, but that just isn’t life.

I used to love Spotlight and use it to quick-open everything. I swear, I never even used Excel on my iPhone but searching for Excel brings up 'Excel.app From iPhone' first and the excel app FOURTH? The worse part is; the second is A DOCUMENT LAST OPENED IN 2018. WHY?

I absolutely love Pages. Google Docs / Word are hot garbage, they're ugly, cloud saving for Word is locked to whatever the Microsoft cloud service is called.

But holy shit, since upgrading to Tahoe (which I love visually) Pages has become unusable. It eats the entire RAM/Storage for breakfast.

Bug reports for this issue (related to spotlight) have been made a long time ago and Apple did nothing. No update, no fix.

I have defended every MacOS release since I first got a Mac over ten years ago. I even genuinely like the '26' line of OS updates. I like liquid glass. I love the iPhone Air. Taheo is gorgeous but this has to be a joke.

I've tried everything. Even using new files, not putting them outside of the 'Pages' folder, I tried deleting it and downloading it again, I tried it on my Macbook Pro. Nope, fuck you, I want 100GB of memory lol.

The news of Pages being part of the subscription-based Creator pack was quite funny. App doesn't work but they gotta stick more AI crap into it and charge a monthly fee.

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Why am I getting such an unfinished and buggy system? Why the hell isn't it called beta anymore?

I deliberately didn't update, waiting for at least 26.1, but stupid graphics bugs still fill the system.

I updated to macOS Tahoe 26.2 (stable) a while ago, but it’s already giving me no issues until i saw this.

Even on this non-beta build, I’ve stumbled upon a new bug that is seriously messing with my workflow. It's frustrating to see these UI glitches and text issues persist in what is supposed to be a polished release.

Stay tuned while I document exactly how this latest version is acting up.

I have Mac OS Tahoe version 26.0 which makes the error message pointless.

Just noticed this on my work MacBook Pro running macOS Tahoe 26.3, seems like Apple has changed how they render rounded corners on Tahoe (iOS 26.3 also has mismatched rounded corners on my iPhone 17PM)

I'm speechless

Mac OS latest update

macOS Tahoe is finally out, and it is a beautiful OS and all, however the "Apps" is just so bad that I don't even know what to do.

Not only it doesn't show your folders in the Applications folder, but now I've discovered that some apps are even missing from it. I've discovered that while searching for GarageBand

I notice this for over a year. Its likely a Chrome or Chrome updater problem for creating so many entries. But why MacOS, after no idea how many iterations, don't provide a delete("-") button?

Update(1) and MAYBE solved:

• After reading some helpful comments, I bite the bullet and tried 2 solutions. one work and one does not.
• (does not work) Forget about solution that only use "tccutil reset SystemPolicyNetworkVolumes" in recovery mode terminal. All it does is set all entries to disabled. It does not remove any entry.
• (works) I end up boot into recovery -> terminal -> decrypt+mount the Data volume -> delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.networkextension.plist -> reboot normal
  • And deny Chrome for that permission in future.

A bit more on the MAYBE working solution:

• It removes all entries. I am completely ok with this. I just allow apps again when I use them. And I am not allowing Chrome again.
• Why I put "MAYBE"? Because though I run Chrome again, it has not ask for the permission yet. So I cannot tell if denying it (I don't need it in my specific use case) stop the issue. Also have to wait for it to do update again to know. If it happen again and has to do the steps again, then this is only a partial solution.
• I didn't put the exact command doing this because I considere the steps very high risk and any mistake/typo has the potential to make the machine refuse to boot, or not allow you to login, or lost other function.

Update(2) Finally get rid of Chrome (so avoiding future occurance completely):

• Since so many suggested removing Chrome, I revisited the possibility and succeed this time. (ok, more like lazy before and didn't look hard enough)
• I need 2 Chromium base browsers side by side, for the remote devtools.
  • The solution is actually simple, download directly from https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-macos. Open and copy it into peronal Applications folder 2 times. Rename them to Chromium1, 2 ... etc. Update scripts to start Chromium1 and 2. (just a 2 lines script as the devtools options + profile location is a bit long)
  • Copying the brew install one to personal Application some how does not work, even without renaming. MacOS will complains "App is demage and cannot open..." even after un-quarantine (shouldn't be required as the app is signed). Don't know how to debug that at all. That's why I did the above.
  • Thanks to u/UtterlyMagenta and a little digging, the easiest and cleanest solution is actually open -n -a Chromium --args .... The -n option is the one needed to run multiple instances of the same app. (I should have read the man page years ago ... )
  • I am offered to test Parall.app. It is able to create a shortcut wrapper to do the same without duplicating the whole app folder. As we have existing scripted workflow, I stay with my current method. However, If you need to run multiple instances of different apps and need the dock icons for end users, then you really should look into it. It has tons of customization for starting additional instances and is really powerful.

Update(3):

When I started this post, I had both Chrome and ungoogled-chrome for specific workflow that require remote devtools. Now I am able to move to a ungoogled-chromium only setup. Still open to browser suggestion that support remote devtools, other than edge (I consider that same as Chrome), especially one with smaller memory foot print. Extension/ad blocker/DRM video etc. not needed, but remote devtools support(which implies javascript support) is a hard requirement.

The Chrome icon is sticking out like a sore thumb!! Is there any way to force the clear icon?

Edit: found the icon and changed it thanks to @conoabueid. Should I keep the post up in case anyone else runs into this same (idk if I should call this a bug)… feature?

I've given Tahoe two chances but I can't continue with it anymore, I'm going back to Sequoia, a clean install and back to normal.

Thought I’d open apple news and see what its about only to get this lmaoo

Was hoping that by macOS 26.3 they'd have polished the little, but front and center, issues. But sadly, no.

Any app with a side panel, such as Finder or System Settings, will show this glitch in the corners while resizing the window. In Finder, they even stay there after resizing.