Finder stopped working after macOS 14 update

Disabling iCloud does seem to make the issue less frequent but doesnt seem to prevent it entirely. I wonder how many of us are using a Gen AI Art tool like Automatic1111 or InvokeAI? I'm curious if that might also be impacting things as they can be pretty heavy duty on RAM etc

I have a Mac mini M2 Pro. I’m on the latest Sonoma as of December 25. I go to Force Quit and select Relaunch Finder. After that Finder is screwed up totally. It’s like frozen. I start bash Alt + Command + Esc to trigger the Force Quit window, use arrows, select Finder, and relaunch it. Only then it starts working. The next Relaunch Finder and it will be frozen again until I use the shortcut on the keyboard. WTF? Really, it’s just one of many fundamental features. Why do you even screw these up?

I called Apple sales, as I am coerced into buying a new computer; the one I have works like a charm but cannot support Sonoma and with the many releases of the OS I am many versions behind... I wish this wouldn't happen as new versions come with new bugs and new headaches and most people do not use lots of the new features.

I did ask the question about the reported issues with Finder. The staff looked up an internal database and said that she sees a few related items pending but she has no ETA for when they will be worked on/fixed. She suggested that maybe I downgrade in the meantime the new computer to Ventura and wait.

Tercourt, you should read the entire discussion, there are 8 pages. Use the page forward and back buttons at the bottom of the page to go back to the start. It seems like the main solution is to disable iCloud, but other people have suggested different methods. It is worth reading everything in this discussion.

I disabled iCloud Drive which fixed my finder, but lost a lot of documents (weeks of work). I'm really sad right now. Contacted Apple and they told me there's little I can do to recover them since I was not using Time Machine. Oh well, really wish Apple took these things more seriously instead of focusing their time on stupid things that no one cares about like the new Journal app.

I am wondering if anyone from Apple reads these posts (other than maybe moderators) and if something like this gets to developers or is just sitting in this thread. I would hope that impacted people post at Product Feedback - Apple , which supposedly gets to Apple.

lisafromcanyonleigh wrote:

Steve626 thanks, I appreciate your thorough response and just wanted to ask if it is possible to change my external time machine drive to APFS format if it is already pretty full of data? Or do I have to wipe it and reformat again? How do I check what format my external drive is? Thanks in advance.

You can check the drive format by clicking once on it and selecting from the menu FILE => GET INFO

But if all you have is a Time Machine drive, I doubt that is the problem. iCloud Drive does not interact with Time Machine, although if you have partitioned the external physical drive into multiple volumes and one is used for your Documents or other storage in connection with iCloud Drive, that MIGHT be problematic. Based just on what I have read in these numerous postings.

Before doing anything to your Time Machine drive, just eject it and see if the problems have ceased.

If you decide you want to reformat the external drive, its misc storage contents need to be copied to another drive first. Otherwise they will be lost. As for the Time Machine backups, it is no longer possible to copy them to other drives and keep them usable. So for that, I would acquire a new Time Machine drive, start using that, Time Machine will alternate between the old one and the new one, and when you feel you have everything suitably backed up on the new one, you can safely reformat the old one.

But as I said, i believe the problems reported here seem to be correlated with use of external mechanical drives HFS+ format for miscellaneous storage (not Time Machine) that is connected to iCloud Drive. I have no idea why that might be unless Apple has somehow optimized the iCloud synchronization for APFS, or if that process is just very slow with external HFS+ mechanical drives.

I have HFS+ as well as APFS external drives used with Time Machine and both work fine with no issues. Normally new Time Machine drives are force-converted to APFS by the MacOS before the first Time Machine backup but if you have "inherited" an HFS+ formatted drive for Time Machine from an older computer, under some instances the MacOS will allow it to stay HFS+.

I don't know if this helps with your question. Before doing anything to a working Time Machine drive, I would eject it and observe whether this improves the Finder behavior. If it does not, the Time Machine drive is not the issue.

Th3Cr0w: thanks for your detailed comment. I’ve been following this thread for months, since I encountered the problem early this year on a brand new 2023 21.5” iMac. Fortunately I’d made recent backups before I ceased using my earlier iMac. I made the decision to revert entirely to Ventura, because my new iMac does only have a 500GB internal storage and I really need my external 2TB drive for my large iPhoto Library. Since reverting to Ventura I have had zero hassles. I can use iCloud for calendar, contacts, & all those apps we need when travelling, and I can use my external drive for iPhoto and also for Time Machine. Problem solved. First time in my 40 years of using a Mac I’ve EVER had to revert to a previous system! Needless to say I’m not impressed.

Deleting .plist didn't fix it.

I was going to turn off iCloud Drive and it gave me this:

So something is "updating" (or not) in the background after the upgrade? Hmmm

Safe mode does not help. Same issue in safe mode.

Please escalate this issue. It is also happening on M1 pro.

Well, I am not even able to disable iCloud Drive. When I open iCloud in system settings, settings are frozen.

Did everyone experiencing this problem sent a message to apple.com/feedback? It might not do too much, but who knows.

Ever since I updated my macbook air (chip Apple M2) to Sonoma 14.0 my laptop has issues and isn't working properly. My work flow has been slowed down and the system has ridiculous bugs:

• preview per space key not working - when space key is pressed the file actually opens. cannot be fixed by relaunching the Finder.
• an odd blue frame appears when moving cursor/mouse
• when changing from, say, Windows to Chrome and back again the cursor jumps either right to the end of page or top of page in either applications???!!!
• i have reinstalled and rebooted incl. deinstalling and reinstalling applications such as chrome, endnote, outlook etc.
• i have shut down and launched in safe mode - problem occurs in either mode

With every update OS gets worse and worse. I was increadibly happy when I bought the airbook only a few months ago...now i am frustrated on a daily basis! bloody nuisance!!!

Alexaafiya - I’m a bit confused by your comments; you said that "with every update OS gets worse and worse", but then "I was incredibly happy when I bought the airbook only a few months ago". How many OS updates have you had in the few months since you bought the laptop? You mean…one? Or are you including a couple of OS 13 security updates before Sonoma came out? Did those minor little updates cause you issues in macOS 13?