Slow Applescripts under Tahoe? Here’s how to fix it.

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Level 2

240 points

Slow Applescripts under Tahoe? Here’s how to fix it.

After upgrading to Tahoe a lot of my existing (compiled) AppleScripts would run extremely slowly. Anything that involved user interaction, such as clicking a button response on a dialog box, or entering text in a text box, or selecting from a list etc. would result in the spinning beachball for 10-20 seconds before the user action was processed.

The solution proved to be quite simple. Open the offending AppleScript App in Script Editor, copy the entire code, paste it into a new Script Editor document, and then save it as a new AppleScript App. This process recompiles the code.

Full responsiveness restored! In fact they seem to run a little speedier…

Mac mini, macOS 26.2

Posted on Jan 19, 2026 3:07 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 21, 2026 9:45 AM in response to Stan C.

Stan C. wrote:

Brendan Jones wrote:

After upgrading to Tahoe a lot of my existing (compiled) AppleScripts would run extremely slowly. Anything that involved user interaction… would result in the spinning beachball for 10-20 seconds….

Seeing that beachball with every user interaction was a pain, to say the least. I experimented and discovered another way to eliminate it. Just add "tell me to" before each command. Bam! Fixed.

tell me to display dialog "Hello, world"

Probably, this worked for the same reason it worked for the OP - by forcing the recompilation of the script.

If you were to remove the tell me part, would it revert back to slow behavior, or would it continue to work well?

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Answer 2

Stan C.

Level 1

4 points

Jan 21, 2026 9:15 AM in response to Brendan Jones

Brendan Jones wrote:

After upgrading to Tahoe a lot of my existing (compiled) AppleScripts would run extremely slowly. Anything that involved user interaction… would result in the spinning beachball for 10-20 seconds….

Seeing that beachball with every user interaction was a pain, to say the least. I experimented and discovered another way to eliminate it. Just add "tell me to" before each command. Bam! Fixed.

tell me to display dialog "Hello, world"

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Answer 3

Brendan Jones Author

Level 2

240 points

Jan 22, 2026 1:59 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

In my case, simply changing an existing script (e.g. by adding “tell me” to a dialog box) and recompiling and saving without creating a new document did not fix the problem.

Copying the code to a new document and saving as a new Application has fixed it on every occasion so far.

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