The much awaited Mac OS Sierra update was officially made available on the 20th of September, 2016. The brand new Mac OS boast of an advanced and more helpful Siri, optimized storage management options, full compatibility with the Apple watch and highly improved Messaging features.
But then, what good is all that if your Mac started to act buggy right after the update to Mac OS Sierra. If you are one among those small groups of unfortunate users who are having troubles with Mac OS Sierra, here are fixes that will help restore your Mac back to normal!
First, please backup your Mac!
It is highly recommended that you first back up your Mac before you carry out any of the fixes below. Please note that the fixes below have been tested and tried by many who vouch for its safety. Nonetheless, it doesn’t hurt to take the extra precaution that will allow you to simply roll back to a restore point on your Mac, created through Time Machine. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to carry out Time Machine backups on Mac OS Sierra.
Fixing Wi-Fi issues in Mac OS Sierra
1. Deleting and force re-writing system files to fix Wi-Fi problems
A Mac without Wi-Fi is no fun. In fact, it could even almost be useless. If your Wi-Fi was working fine until before the update to Mac OS Sierra, apply the following fixes to revive your wireless connection.
- First, please quit all apps that are using or trying to use the internet connection (e.g. Chrome, Safari, iTunes, etc.)
- Turn off the problematic Wi-Fi connection
- Go to Finder
- Enter “/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/”
- Locate the following 5 files
- com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
- com.apple.network.eapolclient.configuration.plist
- com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
- NetworkInterfaces.plist
- preferences.plist
- Copy these files onto a flash drive (Precautionary step)
- Delete the files on your Mac OS Sierra partition, once you have a copy of them
- Restart your Mac
- Also, restart your Wi-Fi router when you restart your Mac
- See if your Mac OS Sierra Wi-Fi connection is back to normal!
Don’t worry about deleting the files mentioned above. Mac OS Sierra is designed to rewrite these files after a successful restart. There is a very high chance that your Wi-Fi problems will go away after you apply this simple fix.
If it still persists, try the slightly more complicated fix detailed below.
2. Fixing Mac OS Sierra problems by entering custom DNS
- First, please quit all apps that are using or trying to use the internet connection (e.g. Chrome, Safari, iTunes etc)
- Open System Preferences
- Go to your Wi-Fi connection and select the “Edit Locations” option
- Create a new Wi-Fi connection, giving it any name you choose
- Join this new Wi-Fi connection that you have created, by entering your Wi-Fi password if prompted
- After you have connected, go to advanced settings of this Wi-Fi connection
- Edit TCP/IP > Renew DHCP lease > Apply > DNS >
- Enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (DNS of Google)
- Edit TCP/IP > Renew DHCP lease > Apply > DNS >
- Click OK
- Go to Hardware > Configure > Custom > Edit MTU number to 1453
- Click OK and Save
Once all the above edits are saved, your Wi-Fi connection should hopefully be working well. If not, restart your Mac and your Wi-Fi router just to be safe and see if your Wi-Fi works normally.
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The above two fixes should give you about a 95% chance of restoring your Mac OS Sierra related Wi-Fi problems, especially if your Wi-Fi started acting up just after the update to Mac OS Sierra.
Performance issues after upgrade to Mac OS Sierra
After Wi-Fi issues, the second most common gripe for users who just updated to Mac OS Sierra is their Mac has become sluggish. Multi-tasking takes too long or the Mac just wakes up from sleep too slowly, etc.
There are fixes for speed issues as well. Some of the easy ones are detailed out below. For a comprehensive list of fixes, please visit this Mac OS Sierra performance troubleshooting guide.
1. Carry out an SMC Reset
An SMC reset is a soft hardware reset that will fix potential issues with thermal monitoring, the response of the power button, spin cycles of your hard drives, etc. Resetting this to factory defaults can potentially spring Mac OS Sierra back to life.
Don’t worry about deleting important user data when carrying out these resets. They are safe resets that might in the worst case scenario only require that you change your system time and so on.
To carry out an SMC reset,
- Shut down your Mac
- Unplug your Mac from the wall charger or outlet
- Press and hold the power button, for 15 seconds (use a timer!)
- Release the power button
- Reconnect Mac to the wall charger
- Wait for about 10 seconds
- Turn on your Mac like normal
Though very simple, this can be a miracle fix sometimes!
2. Carry out a PRAM reset
Quite similar to an SMC reset, you can also carry out a PRAM reset. Again, resetting PRAM will not result in any loss of personal user data or important system data.
- Power off your Mac
- Power on your Mac
- As soon as your Mac starts up, press the combination of the following keys; Option + Command + R + P (all together)
- Press and hold until your Mac restarts
- Once your Mac restarts the second time, release all keys and allow for a normal restart
Besides these fixes, it is also very important that you make sure your Mac is first compatible with Mac OS Sierra. As Mac OS Sierra is the latest OS out from Apple, it is more demanding on your Mac’s processor and memory than its predecessors like El Capitan, Yosemite or Mavericks.
Unless you bought your Mac in late 2009 or after, it probably isn’t good enough to run Mac OS Sierra. If this is the case, you have only the option of rolling back to your older version of Mac OS X, like OS X Mavericks, OS Yosemite or OS X El Capitan. Here’s a good resource on how to rollback from Mac OS Sierra to one of the older OS X versions.
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