Finder freezing on MacBook Pro 14" M1 Pro (macOS Monterey 12.1)

Yup… still having the finder crash on occasion (though not as bad with previews off). Sometimes it seems worse than other for some reason… haven’t been able to narrow it down. It’s a serious workflow/productivity killer for me. I wish this would be addressed.

Thanks for the correction - that makes more sense based on what I've seen. My non-M1 MBP has no issues at all.

I wasn't able to reproduce your PDF example. Do you have opportunistic locking (described above) enabled? I wonder if that's making the difference - since I have it disabled - or if it's due to the PDF, software version(s), or other factors. For reference, I used this single-page PDF form I grabbed at random from a University of Florida page (didn't have one on hand): https://registrar.ufl.edu/assets/pdfs/excesshours.pdf

My steps were:

1. Download PDF (in Brave) directly to Synology (excesshours.pdf)
2. Open PDF directly from Synology in Acrobat Reader DC (v2021.011.20039)
3. Without editing anything, Save As excesshours2.pdf directly to the Synology (same folder)
4. After filling in a form field, Save As excesshours3.pdf directly to the Synology (same folder)

I can open all 3 files directly in Reader, from the Synology, with no issues. My field value in excesshours3.pdf was preserved.

I figured I'd be able to repro your test and planned to compare the binary of corrupted and original files; I don't know how useful that would be for PDFs (maybe not at all - it's a complex format), but I was curious if it was a matter of an ending byte/signature not being added (i.e. the file not being finalized). I'm also curious if the two differ in size.

Also: yes, I was able to edit this post via the little arrow next to Reply/Helpful buttons (although apparently you can't do it too quickly after the original save).

Thank you, Prophasi, for your detailed reply and efforts. I've since learned more specifics about the actual workflow at hand:

Steps are:

1. Access existing PDF (non-fillable form) stored on Synology NAS from within Finder and opening with Preview
2. Rotate scanned document 90 degrees (due to having been scanned in wrong orientation)
3. Close modified PDF in Preview and when prompted to "Save or Revert" - Save option is chosen to overwrite original file

What happens with "some" files is that the PDF file becomes corrupted and can no longer be opened using any PDF utility

At this point, a workaround has been to copy the file to the local machine, make any modifications, saving the revised file again locally, and then drag the file back onto the Synology NAS. This seems to work reliability although it is extra steps.

It has also been suggested to try doing a "File, Save As" in Preview instead of overwriting the original file, but this has not been tried yet to know the outcome. I will have hands on next week and can report my findings assuming still an issue.

Opportunistic Locking is enabled on the Synology. Also enabled is SMB Durable Handles. I found a similar sounding post ending with the recommended fix being to enable both of these options. Note: they were already enabled in this case.

Brief update. First, I wanted to note that sometimes, even restarting both the Mac *and* the Synology leaves me in a state where Finder immediately freezes when I try to reconnect to the NAS (no opening files there or anything, just connecting). Not sure if that indicates caching of connection details on the Mac, file leases on the NAS that aren't cleared by a restart, or what.

I poked around in DSM and saw that, apart from AFP, my shares were (per the defaults) exposed on SMB as well (NFS is disabled currently). In Advanced Settings, I saw that "Enable Opportunistic Locking" was checked:

I figured this issue could be reflecting file locking issues, so I figured I'd give a shot. Things were still funky at first (I'd already frozen and killed Finder at least once), but after a restart of both systems, I can now open the problem JPG - and other similar files - without issue. We'll see if it lasts.

Note that I did get one quirk on my first attempt at opening the file after disabling opportunistic locking: the file opened fine in Preview, but the Finder window I was on bounced me up a directory level and showed the child directory with a minus sign on its listing. Trying to open that directory said I didn't have permissions. I thought uh oh, it now aggressively locks the entire containing directory and somehow doesn't know I'm the same user, I'll have to wait for some lease to expire (I'd already closed Preview, so the file should've been released), etc... but after that it never happened again.

I'm doing this at home, so you may find that in a multi-user environment (sounds like you're at work) this isn't feasible. I'd be interested to hear how gracefully the Synology handles non-opportunistic locking scenarios.

Given non-M1 systems don't have these issues, a real fix would still be ideal... but this may be a workaround, at least in single-user environments. If nothing else, it may point toward better solutions if file locking is indeed the problem.

Are you back in office?

I'm getting similar behavior here: MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max, Monterey 12.1, DS412+, DSM 6.2.4-25556 Update 2. Like you, I upgraded from a 2015 MBP - now running Monterey 12.0.1 - that had (and still has) no issues doing the same tasks.

In my case it's a 250KB JPG that should be no sweat. When I try to open it directly from the Synology, Finder pauses, I get the beach ball, my desktop icons disappear, and I have the beach ball anywhere over the desktop or on a Finder window. Finder indeed shows in Activity Monitor as not responding. Sometimes force quit doesn't help, but other times Finder restarts immediately and I'm able to work as normal.

... that is, as long as I don't dare try to connect to the Synology again. For some reason, after the force quit I can't even browse the NAS and *see* files, let alone re-attempt to open that JPG. As you said, I need a full restart to get back to normal.

I saw elsewhere that it could be a problem with using AFP (vs. SMB) to connect to the NAS, so I disabled AFP in Control Panel on the Synology; but that didn't seem to help at all. I'll do some more experimenting with settings (also upgrading my 2015 MBP to 12.1), but official acknowledgment from Apple or Synology would be helpful.

I was encountering similar behavior until upgrading from DSM 6.2.3-25426 to DSM 7.0.1 which seemed to have resolved the spinning wheel / Finder locking up issue.

That shared, there is and was a little more to the story here. Multi-user environment with multiple newer Macs with M1 chips but this machine being the only one with the issue or at least being noticed. Problem PDF files show an extended attribute of com.apple.quarantine to which opening in Preview prompts with a security warning. Adobe Reader DC does not warn and after updating to DSM 7.0.1, the freezing issue is seemingly resolved. Now on to Chapter 2.

This workflow is as simple as: 1) Open a PDF from the Synology NAS using Adobe Reader DC 2) Fill out fillable PDF using Adobe 3) Save As new PDF on Synology

What happens now is that the new PDF is “corrupted”. This does not happen if the workflow is changed in Step 1 above to start from a local copy of the PDF file and then 2) Save As new PDF locally 3) Drag and Drop file to desired folder on Synology

IT thinks the issue is related to file locking.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)

OS X 12.2

Synology DS1019+

DSM 7.0.1-42218 Update 2

Correction: this is the only MBP with an M1 chip. I had incorrectly assumed several other newer MBPs were running this chip, but everything else as stated is correct to the best of my knowledge. (Is there a way to "edit" an existing post? That would be handy)

Yep, that worked. Viz. don't mount the Synology share using AFP, which is the default when you click on your Synology device in Finder. Instead use SMB3 - to do this, in Finder press CMD-K and smb://...... Your paths will all remain the same. Various Reddit threads also agree with this solution.

https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/ts0h9o/new_macbook_pro_14_m1_silicon_chip_finder_keeps/

Let's hope there is a better fix in the future.

P.S. The terminal command 'mount' can be used to double check how everything has been mounted e.g. smb vs afs

Ever since I got my M1 MBP I have been connecting through SMB with no issue. Just yesterday this problem started popping up for me as well. Problem seems to manifest itself mostly when trying to load pdf previews on the Synology.

Minimum SMB is set to SMB2 and Max to SMB3, Opportunistic locking enabled. Enabling handles doesn't seem to help.

I am connecting through a 10 Gigabit connection. Settings and connection are unchanged compared to a couple of days ago and since the beginning when I didn't have this issue.

Synology I am using is a DS1821+, OS X version 12.3.1

I ran into this issue a while ago when I switched to a 16" MBP with the M1max and connecting to our Synology NAS. No issue with older macs running intel chips (which there are ~ a dozen of on our network). I contacted Synology, and they claim it's an Apple issue. The solution seems to be turning off file previews in finder... which is less than optimal, since I'm a designer and I rely quite heavily on previews when looking through photos and files. Didn't seem to matter if I was connected SMB or AFP.

Though less frequent, I've also had this issue while connected to a Qnap NAS (though it seems fine when running SMB... this was connected direct using TB).

The other post for reference: Unable to edit files on Synology NAS afte… - Apple Community

We had exact the same problem. For us, the solution was to switch from AFP to SMB 3.0. Now much more stable and no more freezes or crashes. And as fast than AFP (maybe faster).

Regards,

Wouter

I have also found that turning off the thumbnail preview works better. But there are still crashes...