Finder quits responding

Update:

Safe Mode did not help the issue. Creating a temporary administrator account and logging in with that account did not help the issue.

I was able to drag the volume "Media Old" on the desktop which contains the Music folder (restored from Time Machine) to the Spotlight Privacy window, then remove it from the privacy window. I can tell that Spotlight is reindexing because the mds and mds_worker processes are using significant CPU cycles. I'll wait until mds settles down and see how things are.

Thank you. I will try Safe Mode. I actually don't have any 3rd party cleaners, VPNs, etc. (Other than One Drive and the Microsoft 365 apps Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, and Outlook, all installed from the Apple App Store)

For Brevity, I did not go into some of the detail. I actually erased and reloaded the OS early this week. I had all of the Music backed up to an external drive (using Time Machine) (5TB LaCie drive formatted APFS). All of my other data was either in iCloud or OneDrive, so the restore was easy and painless.

After the rebuild, I restored all of the music from Time Machine, not to the original location, but to another volume on the same external drive where Time Machine resides.

So, now, when I click on the Music folder on the external drive, Finder still "hangs" just like it did originally.

But, I will try Safe Mode to see if that helps.

Again, Thank you.

Update 2:

Well, rebuilding Spotlight Index on the folder did not solve anything. When I opened the Drive and the Folder displayed in list view with the subfolders expanded -- that part displayed a little faster than before. Subfolders displayed in about 1 second where before it might be 3 or 4 seconds. But then immediately finder quits responding. I cannot close or minimize the window, or open anything else. I can start activity monitor because I pinned it to the Dock.

I'm going to step away for a while. I'm open to suggestions. Eventually I'll try opening a case with Apple, but thought I'd see if anyone in the community might help.

James, Hmmm . . . I'll try that.

(Sorry this will be long, but it's hard to explain otherwise - I'm a bit OCD so I create extra work for myself ! LOL.

Let me explain why I'm even trying to be able to work with the Music folder, since normally it is created by and managed by the Music App (aka iTunes).

After getting my Mac mini and migrating from Windows iTunes to Mac / Big Sur, I decided to re-import all of my CD's as AAC 320 kbps VBR as opposed to 256 kbps fixed rate that most of it was in. (A few were 256/VBR). No problems there other than a few weeks where iTunes Match seemed to be having issues and importing one CD could take 2 to 3 days to finally say "matched" or "uploaded". A google search revealed others were having the same problem. But, one day it started working normally again.

Once I completed this, I set out to make sure that all of the songs had the correct album artwork. It seems that with the new version of the Music App, the expected album art is sometimes wrong. Some of the Albums that had been correct in Windows were changed to something else, often a picture of an artist from the present day instead of from the original album 20 or 30 years ago.

I had already figured out to turn off "Automatically download artwork", but even still, it would sometimes insist on using an incorrect picture.

So, I either downloaded artwork from Amazon (Sorry, Amazon, but I do work for them! lol) or scanned my album covers as PNG files, cleaned them up in Pixelmator Pro, then saved as JPG at 80% quality with metadata removed to keep the file sizes smaller.

Then in the Music app for each album I would select all of the songs, click on "Get Info" choose "Artwork", delete any existing artwork, then add the artwork that I had either downloaded or created my self. I figured out that this was the only way to always have the correct artwork. And if you copied any of the music files to an external location, the artwork would remain -- it is embedded within each file. It does make the file sizes slightly larger.

I wanted to create copies of these files grouped by year released / year recorded, copy to a USB key and play them in my car. A sort of "Walk down memory lane" year by year starting with 1955, the year I was born.

Now, yes I know I could connect my iPhone to my car and use the music app to do this by creating playlists. But my phone doesn't have enough space for all of my library and I don't want to turn on cellular data for the Music app.

I had read how to do this grouping by going to the top folder (Music in this case). Then in the Search bar within finder, enter "kind:music", then hit the + and add additional criteria, for example "Year recorded equals 1955"

I had done this for a few years as a test, but I would find songs with an incorrect "Year recorded" or a few that still had no album art. I was probably 98% finished with this whole project, just putting in new artwork or putting in newly scanned artwork to replace lower quality artwork that I may have put in years ago.

Then last Friday, September 3, the search would not work, Finder itself was becoming non responsive.

So, my question: Is there a limit on the file size of a JPG that can be embedded in a music file? Could one of these be too big, or corrupted somehow?

But I will do as you suggest. I have many years experience in Windows server (all the way back to NT 3.51) and some Unix / Linux experience. But its been about 7 years now that I've worked at the Unix command prompt. Time to clear the cobwebs in my brain.

Yes, I have heard good things about Plex Media Server, but I've just not been willing to spend the time to research it and set it up for myself.

I do pay for iTunes Match, but not for the Apple Music subscription, even though I tried it out at first while it was a free trial.

You are probably right. I've probably corrupted one of the files. The thought of importing all of my CD's again frustrates me, but I may have to do that. In my "Walk down memory lane" project, I only want pop, rock, folk, Motown, r&b, etc. I don't want Classical or Jazz except for a few very popular jazz songs from Kenny G or Chris Botti.

So I could just import those first, check the artwork, etc. That would limit the total number of files.

Thanks for your help.

P.S. My Mac mini has 16GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD internal drive.