Slow file open dialogue box

Just to clarify- for anyone who has no idea how to do this- just search for 'terminal' in your spotlight search and copy this quoted text into the field in terminal. Then hit enter.

Close terminal and check your file locations- hopefully they will be viewable immediately.

Ric

I know this is an old post but the thread still seems to active so here is a possible solution I've found. I was suffering very slow file dialog in Mail after upgrading to Yosemite and I tried everything I could think of to fix it, to no avail. Then I noticed that there was a spurious entry in Finder sidebar - it was a (non-existent) document called f5e, don't know if that's significant. When I clicked on it I got beachball and had to relaunch Finder. I dragged that file shortcut off the sidebar (which also gave a beachball but eventually the pffft cloudburst) and since I did that my file open slowness seems to have gone away. Might be a coincidence but I thought it would be worth mentioning...

Kurt, it is NOT fixed as of 10.10.3. The latest theory is that it can be caused by a corrupted CloudKit database. I tried the fix in this link and so far it has worked but can't be sure yet. https://www.hbang.ws/blog/yosemite-slow-finder-fix/

I've been using Yosemite since 10.10.1. I've seen no slow opening of any dialogue boxes. That bug was in the initial release of Mavericks, and was fixed in 10.9.2.

If you've installed Yosemite over Mavericks, such a bug can carry though. It shouldn't, but weird things happen that aren't supposed to. It's one of the reason I never, ever install a new OS over an old one. I set up a new partition and install it clean, then add all of my third party apps as I have time, continuing to do all of my main work in the previous OS until I've got the new partition ready.

I did see that, but haven't had to do any such modification. Not in Mavericks or Yosemite.

There are two distinct bugs. Mavericks had an issue with dialogue boxes taking forever to open, which was fixed in 10.9.2. Yosemite has a different issue where folders animate in a very choppy motion when opening and closing (normally only the first time for each individual folder). I actually don't know if Apple has fixed the latter. I use OnyX to turn off all desktop animations, so folders just pop open and closed. So if the animation bug is still there, I'd never know it.

Okay, that was the Mavericks bug. I haven't seen that at all in Yosemite, or heard or anyone having that issue in Yosemite. As I mentioned, I installed Yosemite on an erased drive, then added all of my apps and settings. I partially do that so if there is a bug, I can say with complete certainty that it is being caused by that OS (or combination of that OS and certain hardware), and not being caused by installing over a previous OS and dragging some sort of incompatibility forward.

Try this fix: https://www.hbang.ws/blog/yosemite-slow-finder-fix/

Also (or perhaps related), I've seen posted a theory that the delay is because for some reason it's trying to connect with a network folder that it can't find so the Finder dialog doesn't open up until it's timed out and given up on that. I'm not sure how exactly that might lead to a fix though.

As far as I can tell, clearing the cloudd metadata worked for me. (I used cp ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata* ~/Desktop/cloudd; rm ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata*; killall cloudd)

Ah, okay. I just wanted to be sure what we were referring to.

No, I haven't seen that at all, or anyone mentioning it (until now) regarding Yosemite. Did you install Yosemite clean, or over Mavericks? If the latter, and you have some time and the space to do it, try installing Yosemite on a new partition. Test to see if it does the same thing.

This issue really bothered me too, and finally I've found the cause for my situation by looking into the system log messages.

For anyone experiencing this issue and has Dropbox installed, try quitting Dropbox or disable Dropbox finder integration and see if that helps speed things up.

In my case using 10.10.3, the slow open/save dialogs began a week ago on a 6 month old Mac which worked fine until then. The problem occurs after the dialog is opened - the file/folder list appears but clicking and scrolling appears to hang for up to 10 or so seconds while the beach ball twirls. Then clicking/scrolling is restored and I can open my file. But the problem repeats itself without end.

I ejected my external drive, which fixed the problem. When I remount the drive, the problem is back. I rebuilt the drive with Disk Warrior but DW reported nothing to fix. But I need to use the drive periodically and for scheduled cloning at the end of the day, which won't happen if I forget to remount the drive.

Using/quitting Dropbox had no effect.

I also logged into a special user that I keep for testing problems like this. The slow behaviour occurred with that user as well, so I've concluded the issue is somewhere in the system files.

I ran Onyx - cleaned every cleanable cache etc. - this did not fix the problem.

I thought about reinstalling Yosemite, but not as a clean install, I'm not that desperate yet. However, I doubt that reinstalling this way will do anything, it reminds me too much of taking a bath with clothes on.

It may be due to your settings in OS X. The default behaviour in one of the Energy settings is to spin down hard drives which have been idle for xxx number of minutes. So what you may be seeing is the lag of waiting for the drive to spin back up to speed when you access it.

Kurt, this fixed this issue for me. In Snow Leopard, I had the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" unchecked in the energy savings settings control panel. Mavericks, however, put this back on after upgrading and I had to uncheck it once more. I've been working with this setting off for several days and it's saved so much time and headache.

This issue is happening in Yosemite 10.10.5 as well. None of the fixes in this thread work very long, if at all. Very annoying. Even clearing all Cache directories completely, and all Log directories, then rebooting doesn't work very long.

None of the suggestions has helped me, either. One of the two volumes on my external drive appears to be causing the delays. I now keep Disk Utility open all day and have the problem volume unmounted except when I specifically need to use it. This "fixes" the problem.

Worse however is one of the people I work with, who has the problem constantly even when all peripherals are physically disconnected.