After working fine for days, my Mac has started freezing temporarily. This is triggered by switching between applications. This freeze may last a couple of seconds to a minute or even more. After that, everything works as if nothing happened. When I switch to another app, it will happen again. I can only stop this by rebooting the Mac. Then it works fine again, even when switching between apps.
Some additional info:
- I was not able to pinpoint a single app to cause this issue. Once it occurs, it occurs on every switch, no matter between which applications.
- It doesn't matter how I switch, either CMD-TAB or by selecting an other apps window by mouse, the problem is the same.
- The problem occurs both with external monitors attached and when working "stand alone". (Before, I thought it had to do with external monitors, but recently the problem occurred when I was working "stand alone", so that theory is off the table.)
- The problem occurs every couple of days now.
- Normally, I never shutdown or reboot my Mac. I just close the lid and it goes to sleep until I open the lid again.
Details:
- macOS version: 10.13.5 (17F77)
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
Does someone have had a similar problem? If so, what was the cause en did you find a solution? If not, where do I start to look for possible causes?
Best Answer
TL;DR
I found out that my problem was caused by the no longer maintained MagicPrefs software. Uninstalled it, problem gone!
How I found the culprit
Today the problem occurred again, and I think I managed to find the culprit! Once the problem occurred, I opened Activity Monitor to see if I could spot some process doing weird. The first thing I noticed, was that the CPU load was low overall. No processes were taking up more than 20% CPU.
Then I right clicked on the column headers to add some more columns, hoping I would find a clue. I added the column showing if a process was unexpectedly stopped. (My MacOS is set to Dutch, the column is called Plots. beëind. in Dutch, I don't know the exact column name in English.) I immediately noticed that the
hidd
process had a "Yes" in that column.So I went Googling and found this explanation of what the
hidd
process is. It's the Human Interface Device Daemon. The article states:That made me think about software I have installed that has to do with Human Interface Devices. There wasn't anything installed recently, but I was using MagicPrefs for some years. I went to their website to see if there were any updates and saw this notice:
When I uninstalled MagicPrefs, the freezing problem immediately disappeared! I think that proofs that MagicPrefs was the culprit. A pity I can't middle click any more, but I'm relieved that this weird problem is gone now!