Finder slow in 10.10.3

No, not here (rMBP 13" late-2012).

Have you restarted since you installed the update? Have you tried a VRAM reset?

It may not help, but for some reason sometimes it does.

You might also try moving your com.apple.finder.plist from ~/Library/Preferences out to your Desktop to save then restart. You will have to reset up your Finder Preferences, but maybe that will help too.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a test, not a solution. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

Step 1

The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account.

Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your documents or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this behavior; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac” is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

Step 2

The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.

Please take this step regardless of the results of Step 1.

Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.

Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.

Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.

The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.

Test while in safe mode. Same problem?

After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of Steps 1 and 2.

I'm having the same problem in column mode. I click on a folder and it may take 15-20 seconds to show the contents of a folder with 1 item. Sometimes I wait a minute or 2 and nothing shows up. This is a really annoying bug because it also shows up in open file / set folder dialogs.

My machine was fast until I upgrades to 10.10.3. I'm using an SSD for my boot drive and I'm storing a lot of my data on a 2TB Hitachi drive. I have an 8-core 2010 Mac Pro with 24 GB of ram.

I tried this out in guest mode. The SSD seemed a bit faster but the hard drive seemed slower. I tried unplugging everything but my monitor, keyboard and mouse and booted into safe mode. It's even slower then. I've tried several things on the internet including deleting the com.apple.finder.plist file, turning on reduce transparency and several other items. Nothing I changed sped up the file list showing up.

I've tried looking at the activity monitor and it's not helping me. There are no big spikes in the CPU section. Memory used is around 7-8GB out of 24 GB. I'm not seeing huge read-write spikes when I click on a folder to see the contents in column view. It varies between 300-400k / second up to 3 MB / second (i.e. not the whole bandwidth of any of my drives). Networks traffic is very lower or nothing (3-4k per second at worst). None of this seems to indicate anything should be going slow at all.

I went to the terminal and tried doing an ls -al on a folder then tried looking at the same folder in the finder. The list of files / folders comes up immediately in the terminal window and it still took a long time to come up in the finder, so I know that there is not a generic problem accessing the hard drive / SSD.

I also tried booting into recovery mode and fixing permissions on the boot driver and "Repairing" every drive I have. It fixed a few printer permissions and no drives needed repairing. This did not help the problem at all.

I did a speed test on the drives and they were not slow. The SSD average 310 MB / s and the hard drive just under 60 MB / s.

I hope Apple fixes this or at least someone has a clue how I can figure out what is causing the finder and file / folder dialogs to be real slow bringing up lists of files / folder.

Thanks in advance to anyway who helps / has ideas.

You could have a look at this:

http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/17/fix-slow-folder-populating-cloudkit-macosx/

Which appears to be fixing the problem for some people.

in my case it didn't help. What "fixed" it for me was closing the Dropbox app. Dropbox app being open or not (i.e. with the Dropbox icon in the menu bar) correlates 100% with the beachball appearing (or not) when apps launch a finder window to open or save a file. I've got a support ticket in with Dropbox and I'll report back with progress (or not).

Not completely unexpected; Dropbox support has blamed Apple - bugs in the Finder Integration Framework introduced in 10.10. They claim to be working with Apple, but if it really is Apple bugs I'm not holding my breath because I expect that the response will be the usual "everyone else is wrong" from Apple.

Dropbox tech suggest that I try changing the Finder view (icon list, column view) as a means of maybe reducing the problem.