My computer kept shutting down every 2 to 3 minutes even when not using SL 12. At first I didn’t relate the issue to SL 12 and thought I may have gotten some malware. After scanning for malware (none found) and researching on Apple forums and trying all their suggestions the one that worked was to delete new software that may have been downloaded. Deleted SL 12 and that indeed has seem to solve the issue.
MacBook Pro M3 Max chip Sequoia 15.5 O/S 36GB Ram
Have you reviewed your crash/system logs with MacOS Console? Those should tell you everything you need to know. I’m not sure what you mean by “shutting down” exactly (hard system crash vs an actual “shutdown”) but SL is just a user-space app, and if it’s not running, then chances are these’s something else going on. But the logs are your friend. 
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I have two of them (crash logs) but I don’t know how to interpret the info. By shutting down I mean the computer freezes (can’t move curser or keyboard commands) and the computer will shut down (turn off).
Yeah, that’s bad.
You can just post the .ips file here if you’d like - happy to take a look. In Console you can right-click on one of the crash files, and choose “Reveal in Finder.” Then just upload it. IPS crash files don’t contain “sensitive” information, but you can review the contents first to verify.
These are the only two crash logs and they’re from this morning. More shut downs since then but no crash logs. Problem is occurring again (twice in the last 10 minutes). BTW I really appreciate your help.
Tom
(attachments)
com.apple.WebKit.GPU-2025-07-06-103505.ips (72.2 KB)
com.apple.WebKit.WebContent-2025-07-06-105233.ips (41.2 KB)
Both of these are in from the MacOS Webkit - one relating to Javascript, and the other in the Webkit GPU renderer. SpectraLayers doesn’t even have MacOS GPU support, so the second report showing an exception while tearing down a rendering context doesn’t seem to be related. When actively running SL, I don’t see file references to any Webkit libraries at all, so to me, I don’t see a direct connection to SL in these files.
That said, on my MBP M3 Max and my Studio M3 Ultra, SL saturates 1-3 cores between 92-100% for several minutes on startup without even loading a project - just sitting there otherwise idle. So while there are indeed some issues with SL12, nothing I see in those crash files point to it.
The question remains, “what’s causing it.” Were you doing anything GPU related at the time? We’re kind of veering off topic for the SL forum, but figured I’d ask.
The only thing maybe that yesterday I did have my computer plugged into my Apple display so I could use a bigger screen. I don’t remember if the issues started before then or after. But that may have caused the problem when disconnecting from it.