Mavericks files / directories in finder slow showing up

Definitely serious - maybe not OS bug serious, but nonetheless... While advising students, waiting for the better part of a minute to bring up needed files, for example, is really unacceptable. Also while in class. Or just to lose focus during normal work. (Some old research said anything over a second or so in response time, I believe, is sufficient to disrupt concentration -- 30 seconds will definitely do it!) So yes, let's all report it (I have already) and hope Apple provides a fix soon.

zentoner wrote:

If you use your mac to facebook and mail that's fine and i can understand the point that you could consider this as an annoyance, but when it's your work tool on a daily basis, it's a SERIOUS problem that slow you down and make you lose precious time.

Okay, I'm not sure how long you've been a Mac user for, but you're obviously new to the forums. I've literally used Macs religiously since System 6 (about 1990). I don't only use my computer (or my 15 Macs in my businesses) for Facebook and mail (other than hosting our mail server on on of my Macs)...I can guarantee you that I use it for much more intensive tasks than you could even dream of. Yes, this bug is an annoyance, but it is simply an issue with finder responsiveness when listing certain uncached directories. Does it cause kernel panics? No. Does it cause crashes? No. Does it permit viruses, malware, or introduce security issues? No. Does it cause hardware issues? No. Does it cause data loss? No.

The aforementioned examples are serious issues that warrant immediate attention, this just does not fall in to one of those categories. Yes, everyone with this issue should definitely report the bug to Apple (as I have), but claiming it's more than it is is just ridiculous. I'm just really tired of reading issues on the Forums and having users claim that it is the worst issue ever or that QC at Apple is falling apart, it's not. I can say from using the last 12 major system releases on the Mac that Mavericks has had a very bug free release relatively speaking.

I'm sure this issue will be fixed soon enough.

royturner wrote:

Or just to lose focus during normal work. (Some old research said anything over a second or so in response time, I believe, is sufficient to disrupt concentration -- 30 seconds will definitely do it!)

Anything over a second in response time is sufficient to disrupt concentration? Hmm, that's really interesting research...and by interesting I mean unbelievable. Considering that computers have only recently come to the point of doing certain GUI tasks in under a second, I find that nearly impossible to believe. The duration in most PowerPoint (or Keynote) slide transitions is more than a second, and I'm pretty sure it takes more than a second to flip a page in a book.

That is what I recall from psychological studies on human factors that I read when I was getting my CS PhD, but that was a long time ago, so I can't really put my hands on the paper at the moment. And we weren't talking about Power Point in those days -- more of editor responses, command prompts, or simple menu responses -- or even echoing characters. All of which were in the second or less range for most things we were doing. Compiling, of course, was (and is) another matter, as was LaTeX processing, etc., etc. Power Point is different in any case, as your audience is listening/watching material, not in the middle of "programming flow", as it were. Talking about real work here, not PP or the like.

Since snippiness seems to be creeping into this thread, let's just leave it at this, shall we? It's a side topic now in any case. Serious, not serious, whatever -- it's damned sloppy of Apple to release Mavericks with a glaring problem like this that really is easy to detect. Otherwise, the OS has been very nice and, as you say, bug free.

(Oh, and dang, but you flip pages slowly! :-))

I had this same problem, and tried changing the scrolling options as described elsewhere in this thread, but didn't have immediate success. A few minutes later I toggled FileSharing off and then on again, and got an immediate positive response. I don't know for sure if this is a permanent fix, but it makes sense that a problem with listing available network volumes (for example) would slow down the Finder drastically. I'm in a mixed environment, so perhaps the reason this problem got past Apple testing is because it only crops up when a slow samba machine is on your network. This is all just speculation on my part, but perhaps this will help someone.

Brilliant! That sped things up considerably. Don't know if there was a slow machine on the net (shared Wi-Fi on campus) or not, since it also was slow at home, but I'm hopeful this fixed the problem. At least temporarily.

Thanks very much.

Tried this, and you know what...in VERY early testing, finder does seem much faster. Actually, my file sharing was OFF, and bluetooth sharing by default was ON. I hate bluetooth so I turned it off, and file sharing on and them back off. Tested File/Open on word and Indesign, both were slow to react before, noth were BAm as fast as before Mavericks. Hmm, maybe this one might be solved?

I was hopeful after reading other's success, but no change here. Both Finder and Open dialog ( for example with the Preview app ) are slow to populate and show the spinning progress wheel. I have reported to Apple via their Feedback page and also filed a bug with Bugreporter.

I'm the author of Default Folder X - an enhancment for Open and Save dialogs - and have been fielding reports from my users complaining of this same problem in Mavericks, asking if my software's causing it. Are you folks running Default Folder X, or are you experiencing the same delays without it?

I've done a bunch of performance testing and cannot for the life of me get Default Folder X to cause any additional delays - however, I'm seeing some fairly long waits with Mavericks on its own, and want to confirm that you folks are seeing the same thing without my software.

For what it's worth, it seems to happen for some folders the first time you access them, but after their metadata gets into the disk cache, response is almost instantaneous. If you experiment with a folder on an external disk drive, you'll find that unmounting (ie. ejecting) the drive and then remounting it will reset this behavior and the first access to the folder will be slow again. Restarting your Mac will obviously have the same effect, since that will also flush the disk cache.

By the way, I think changing the scrollbar settings may be a red herring. The second time you access any folder, response will be much quicker because the information is cached - so changing the scrollbar setting and then going back immediately to test if it's faster isn't really a valid check. You have to change the scrollbar setting, then restart, in order to really test if it's making any difference. Using Instruments (one of the performance tools included with Xcode) doesn't show any appreciable difference in my testing.

Has nothing to do with Default Folder X. And agreed about scrollbars. It may appear to work briefly but it doesn't last past a reboot or two. I think it's an error related to caching file and folder directories, but I don't really know.

Same problem with all aplications that need dialog window searching files or folders...i tried all, indexed twice all disks, reinstalled mavericks and now i have "Always" in Scroll bars. But still waiting between 30 seconds and one minute to see files and folders in the dialog windows...Any news about the origin of this issue.

My suspicion is slow populating Finder windows are related to this issue. Building a simple program ( as posted in that other thread ) that uses only NSOpenPanel rules out a lot and I know St. Clair Software and I both looked at stacktraces and the issue, AFAICT, is clearly Apple code and not a specific application.

Anyone seeing this issue: please post to either Apple Feedback and/or their bugreporter so the issue will receive some attention. Thank you.

Hi ...i Tried all your indications and still the same problem... I do not have Default Foldr X installed...thanks for your help!

this worked for me to by showing scroll bars. but its a hack fix..