Jun 22, 2018 - Unfortunately, this appears to be a fairly common problem for some when updating to the latest macOS High Sierra update. The update gets. If you have macOS High Sierra and facing all kinds of issues, then you are not alone. Fortunately, you don’t have to deal with it alone. In this post, we have listed some of the most common High Sierra installation issues faced by users while using the macOS along with the fixes.
Photos in High Sierra now has all the adjustment tools easily accessible on the side panel. Lori Grunin/CNET Now that they're free, operating system updates are often just as much about fixing the underlying plumbing of a device as they are about adding new and notable features. That's largely the case with MacOS 10.13, otherwise known as High Sierra. For the most part, don't expect jaw-dropping changes or totally new interfaces. Instead, you get new features such as Safari's autoplay blocking, the ability to edit iPhone's Live Photos in Photos, and really fast file copying on SSDs. On the other hand, that means no sea-changes to your existing workflows, and some nice quality-of-experience enhancements if you're a big user of those applications. Performance is virtually identical, at least on an up-to-date MacBook Pro (13-inch).
File moves are instantaneous under both High Sierra and Sierra, but copies of large files (like a 4.3GB ISO image) are instantaneous on AFS, the updating disk file system that's now default for anyone who doesn't have a Fusion drive or an old spinning hard drive. That's really important if you work with video and other massive-file generating tools. Battery life seems to be slightly better - we got about 30 minutes more.
![High sierra upgrade issues High sierra upgrade issues](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125515239/236247685.jpg)
But it also turns out that High Sierra breaks one of our benchmarks. 1:59 Just hours before the High Sierra update become available for download, a Keychain security vulnerability in MacOS. In response, Apple said the following: 'MacOS is designed to be secure by default, and Gatekeeper warns users against installing unsigned apps, like the one shown in this proof of concept, and prevents them from launching the app without explicit approval. We encourage users to download software only from trusted sources like the Mac App Store, and to pay careful attention to security dialogs that MacOS presents.' Apple did not provide a timeline for a possible fix.
However, because the vulnerability is said to affect High Sierra and previous versions of MacOS, waiting to update won't make you any safer. Should I update? TL;DR Yes, if you answer any of these affirmatively:. You're paranoid about security.
Some say that the update is essential in order to get a complete set of security fixes, but it's not like Apple is going to keep Sierra unpatched. Enterprises are running even older versions and they'll continue to be patched. But if you think the potential security advantages outweigh the possibility of running into application issues, then update. Your system has an SSD, not a Fusion Drive or HDD.
You've updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 11 and shoot photos and videos with the new file formats. You're a big Photos user. You have a complicated family to manage with iCloud. You've been screaming for the specific capabilities added in those particular applications Updating will also get you the latest security fixes (the Keychain exploit above notwithstanding). That said, my standard recommendation is to wait at least a month before updating and let the early birds find the most glaring problems and glitches, which are generally handled by followup point upgrades. Want a more detailed look at what you need to know about High Sierra? It's a free upgrade that works on 2010 and later Macs High Sierra has the same requirements as Sierra, so if you're running that now the answer's yes.
If you never updated to Sierra, check out. (If your Mac was built in the last seven or eight years, you should be good to go.) It flips the switch on overdue architectural changes There's a lot going on under the hood to lay the groundwork for future enhancements, though much of their benefit doesn't appear at the moment. When it comes down to it, many of them Apple really couldn't put off. In order to be able to work with iOS 11's new file encodings - the HEIF (photos) and HEVC/H.265 (video) which allow for better compression to save space on your iPhone - Apple had to update MacOS to understand them. The successor to the ancient HFS+ file system, Apple File System (AFS), was rolled out last year, but with High Sierra became the default. At the very least, AFS' 64-bit addressing is essential to the upcoming iMac Pro for many reasons, not the least of which is the ability to support that system's configuration with a 4TB SSD and higher.
Plus, SSDs have different failure characteristics than hard disk drives - one bad bit and buh-bye - so the file system needs different types of redundancies and checks for reliability. And the company's Metal graphics programming interface really needed the Metal 2 update for several reasons, such as helping Apple overcome its reputation as a VR no-show and creating an efficient way to develop for both iOS and MacOS. To compete with Windows-based gaming laptops and mobile workstations, most which don't concern themselves with the thinness to the extent Apple prizes, the company had to add the ability to connect to an external GPU; we won't even see those until mid-2018. Most notably, though, without Metal 2 those pricey iMac Pros would be all dressed up with 18 CPU cores and Radeon Vega GPU but have nowhere to go.
AFS is a big win - for SSD owners In addition to the aforementioned reasons AFS is necessary, it also theoretically improves performance and security. That's always a nice perk. But despite having over a year to work out the kinks with AFS, Apple rolled out High Sierra with a big caveat: AFS will only work with SSDs for now. You shouldn't use it for HDD+SSD Fusion drives and regular HDDs (spinning hard disks).
Don't even think about it. When High Sierra went final, beta testers who had converted non-SSDs to AFS were greeted with a mind-bending list of instructions for banishing AFS from their systems. HDD-supporting AFS is definitely coming, but we don't know when. But it means the systems which need the performance boost the most don't get it yet. It also means you can't use it on most drives used for backup, so no performance boost there. On the other hand, if you do have a system with an SSD, AFS delivers noticeably better speed, at least for same-disk file copies for GB-size files, and security that's probably worth the update now rather than later.
Check your essential apps for compatibility before updating Architectural changes like a new file system or changes to permissions - yup, there are changes to SKEL (Secure Kernel Extension Loading) aka Gatekeeper - may make it difficult or impossible to install some applications in the beginning. Luckily, seems to still work. So make sure your most prized third-party applications will install before you commit. (Your currently installed ones should remain installed.) For instance, I use to run Windows and that won't be fully compatible until October. Update for Photos. Or not As I mentioned earlier, if you plan to take advantage of the extra space savings offered by the new photo and video file formats, you'll have to update to MacOS to be able to view or edit them on your Mac. You don't have to, though; if you prefer to keep it compatible, just go into Settings/Camera/Formats on your iPhone and change it from 'High Efficiency' to 'Most Compatible.'
If you're a big Photos user, Apple has certainly improved the organization and editing interfaces to make using the software more streamlined, and added the same Loop, Bounce and Long Exposure effects for Live Photos that you've got on iOS 11. (Unfortunately, on the bigger-than-phone-size screen of a computer, it's easier to see how the effects degrade the quality.) And now Photos has an extensions interface where other companies can serve up projects for creating books, cards, calendars and so on. All stuff you could do before, but now from within Photos. And it will happily tell you that the book you just laid out will cost $120. Want Safari 11?
You don't need High Sierra The latest version of Safari has some really nice features, implemented in a way I wish other browsers would - you can set default zoom levels on a per-site basis and quickly get to those per-site settings right from the main menu, for example, and the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (which expires third-party cookies used to track you across the web after 24 hours) is an easy way to take a basic step toward more privacy. And of course there's the ability to block autoplay videos as long as they make noise. Apple claims it's also faster, and it might be when measured in milliseconds, but in practice I really don't notice much of a difference bouncing back between that and Chrome. Updates to Safari and iTunes hit the Mac earlier this month as separate downloads.
On the other hand, some capabilities of Safari 11 do require High Sierra, however, most notably accelerated streaming HEVC video playback. But there isn't a lot of that content available yet to stream.
There are a smattering of other changes If you don't already use one of the myriad services available for collaborative editing - Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive and so on - Apple now offers basic file sharing with real-time updates. It also enables the 'universal clipboard,' which is essentially the same thing but across nearby devices you've got logged into the same account (sort of like Airdrop), but it's hard to tell what's new. And it makes it easier to manage your family plan. But the rest could have easily been slipstreamed into Sierra without fanfare. Do you use the Touch Bar? Apple has made some 'enhancements' to its operation.
I put 'enhancements' in quotation marks because some of them don't really feel like it. For instance, you can now flick the brightness and volume controls instead of sliding them. But flicking properly doesn't feel a lot faster or easier than just pressing and sliding. The expanded color picker options look pretty, but to use them you have to constantly look away from the screen.
Top Hits in Mail search results? Split screen message editing in full screen? A more compact message store? Hell yeah, at least for the few, the proud, the Apple Mail users. FaceTime Live Photos (to capture something on the other end of the call)? More of an iOS perk. The ability to pin Notes and use tables?
Big news for Notes users. For more details, here's a. Editors' note, 7:24 p.m. PT: This story has been updated several times since its original publication at 10 a.m. PT to incorporate news of a MacOS security issue, Apple's response and the resulting download recommendations.
The problems listed here are likely to be experienced by anyone installing macOS High Sierra 10.13. This is NOT a troubleshooting thread. Please do not ask questions regarding your specific problem in this thread. Open a separate thread instead. Only if you have a question regarding the content of this post, or have a an idea for an additional Q/A in this thread, reply here.
Special notes for 10.13.2 Lilu.kext must be updated. Lilu 1.2.0 is too old for 10.13.2 and will panic. Recommend update to (latest) Lilu.kext. Prebuilt Lilu.kext is available from here: If you neglect to update prior to the update (and now have KP), use an invalid ig-platform-id (to disable the graphics drivers) and specify kernel flag -liluoff such that Lilu.kext and the graphics kexts do not load.
Then you'll have an opportunity to install the latest Lilu (and other Lilu based plugins) in order to fix the problem. Slow boot with APFS and TRIM The new APFS file system is much more sensitive to SSD hardware/firmware compatibility with regards to TRIM than HFS+J. Incompatibility will result in slow boot and other problems (battery status not showing, trackpad prefpane not showing, etc). Two solutions available: - disable the any TRIM patch you may be using (eg. No TRIM support for your SSD in that case) - or, install on HFS+J For installing on HFS+J, read here: Problems booting the installer with dual-GPU (eg. Intel+AMD, Intel+Nvidia) There is an issue with the VESA drivers and the dual-GPU scenario.
It impacts laptops and desktops. Nvdisable=1 will not help. Instead you need to inject properties that prevent the VESA drivers from loading for the discrete graphics device and use the IGPU only. The new plists linked from my guide already have these injections (for Nvidia only; I will add AMD later). You can also inject the properties with ACPI.
Read here: Extra/new Preboot entry showing in Clover with APFS setup You can hide it with config.plist settings. Read here: Battery status not showing (even with correctly patched ACPI) Use ACPIBatteryManager.kext 1.81.3 or later: Also, if you installed on APFS, disable the trim patch.
TRIM and APFS can cause slow boot which contributes to a timing related problem with system battery status. Same goes for NVMe (TRIM cannot be disabled).
Also, HDD may be too slow and can cause startup problems related to battery status. With ACPIBatteryManager.kext 1.81.4 or later, you can also increase the FirstPollDelay (default 4000ms) by using RMCF (see SSDT-ACPIBATT.dsl in the ACPIBatteryManager github) or by using kernel flag abmfirstpolldelay. For example, to set to 16000ms (16 sec), use kernel flag: abmfirstpolldelay=16000 IntelBacklight.kext and ACPIBacklight.kext not working These kexts have been not working since 10.12.4. Read here: Black screen (or glitchy screen) on wake with Kaby Lake and Skylake graphics Looks to be an EDID issue.
Requires display override with patched EDID. Read here for solution: VoodooPS2Controller.kext versions prior to 1.8.24 will cause a KP Update to 1.8.24 or later. SysPrefs - Trackpad is empty Use VoodooPS2Controller.kext v1.8.28 or later.
Run Apps from Anywhere is now missing from SysPrefs - Security & Privacy - General If you had 'Anywhere' already selected, upon updating to 10.13, it will still be available. But if you did a fresh install, this option is no longer present.
Never mind though, you can enable it in Terminal. Sudo spctl -master-disable Caps lock is unreliable Use VoodooPS2Controller.kext v.18.25 or later.xcpm is no longer available for Ivy Bridge CPUs This flag was typically used with certain Ivy Bridge CPUs due to problems with ssdtPRgen.sh and native power management. See here for a potential fix: With recent versions of Clover (r4155+), you can also set config.plist/KernelAndKextPatches/KernelIvyXCPM=true.
Karabiner is broken Ouch! I really like that app.
Hopefully it is fixed soon with an update. Karabiner Elements appear to be a replacement. It seems to be a WIP and has some issues, however. HD4400/HD4600 crashing with Safari and video playback Install IntelGraphicsFixup.kext + Lilu.kext. Haswell (and Broadwell) lags/pauses/unresponsiveness shortly after boot (and after wake from sleep) Shortly after login (and somewhat prior to login), the mouse and/or graphics may seem unresponsive.
This usually clears up after about 20 seconds. The same effect is observed after wake from sleep. May be related to SMBIOS changes, as similar effects were observed when using MacBookPro11,2 with previous versions of OS X/macOS. But now the problem appears also with MacBookAir6,2 and MacBookPro11,1. The solution appears to be removing unused connectors from the ig-platform data in the framebuffer kext: Note: In some cases, this is issue from 10.12 is already fixed in 10.13. Brightness and Volume keys will not work The new VoodooPS2Controller.kext v1.8.25 or later maps the brightness keys to F14/F15.
As long as you don't re-assign them in SysPrefs-Keyboard-Shortcuts, this is a fine work around. Some audio codecs will require an additional patch (AppleHDA) If you are using target codec 0x11d4198b, you may need to also zero out codec compare 0x11d4198a (a new supported codec in 10.12). In KextsToPatch: Comment: 0x11d4198a to zero MatchOS: 10.12.x Name: AppleHDA Find: Replace: Some Broadcom WiFi no longer supported The drivers have been removed as these devices were included on Macs that are not supported by Sierra. Graphics boot glitch patch for 10.13 Install IntelGraphicsFixup.kext and Lilu.kext. You probably need them for other problems anyway. The patch is also present in configpatches.plist in the github repo linked from the Clover laptop guide: New USB port limit patch See guide: USB power properties injection method has changed (since 10.12) See guide: New patch for SMBIOS whitelist AirportBrcm4360 abgn WiFi eg.
In KextsToPatch: Comment: AirPortBrcm4360 whitelist patch (board-id), 10.13.beta9, credit RehabMan MatchOS: 10.13.x Name: com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4360 Find: Replace: New minStolenSize patches for Broadwell and Skylake The minStolenSize patch is used if you can't set DVMT-prealloc to the required value. You need 64mb or larger, typical PC laptop defaults to 32mb. See patches in configdeprecated.plist as linked from the main Clover laptop guide: Better than using the minStolenSize patch is to patch the framebuffer such that the assertion never fires. Read here: New mechanism for system logs Sierra uses a new mechanism for logging.
Both at the application level and system level. Logs created by kexts using IOLog are automatically redirected to the new mechanism. See this thread for ideas on access: Further details at developer.apple.com.
Problems booting the installer with dual-GPU (eg. Intel+AMD, Intel+Nvidia) There is an issue with the VESA drivers and the dual-GPU scenario. It impacts laptops and desktops. Nvdisable=1 will not help. Instead you need to inject properties that prevent the VESA drivers from loading for the discrete graphics device and use the IGPU only. The new plists linked from my guide already have these injections (for Nvidia only; I will add AMD later). You can also inject the properties with ACPI.