Slow file open dialogue box

The vast majority of people with this problem report that it was resolved with later versions of Mavericks or Yosemite. At this point, if you still have this issue, it is likely to be an issue with one or more hard drives or the enclosure and cabling if external. Certain types of disk formatting problems can also cause slow performance.

I recommend you verify the format of every hard drive in your system, and repair any issues found as the first step. Then check the Smart Status and see if any errors are reported. For external drives, try swapping cables, a poor quality cable can cause retries when sending data to/from the drive which will severely impact performance.

Nope there were no bad hard drives... tried all that.

However, I gave up on all the other fixes and tried a purge... Running these commands in the command-line has worked so far for me:

(shut down all apps except Terminal and close all windows)

sudo rm -R /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /System/Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /Users/<username>/Library/Logs/*

sudo rm -R /Library/Logs/*

sudo rm -R /var/log/*

(then restart immediately)

/var/log/ contained a couple of log files that were apparently not archiving correctly. One was over 40MB in size.

I tried almost every solution in this thread to no avail on my 2008 MacPro running 10.10.5. Creating a new user account removed the problem, but wasn't an ideal solution. Finally the only thing that made any difference was signing out of iCloud completely and not using it at all. Now any File>Open or Save As command is back to normal speed.

G J Piper wrote:

Nope there were no bad hard drives... tried all that.

However, I gave up on all the other fixes and tried a purge... Running these commands in the command-line has worked so far for me:

(shut down all apps except Terminal and close all windows)

sudo rm -R /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /System/Library/Caches/*

sudo rm -R /Users/<username>/Library/Logs/*

sudo rm -R /Library/Logs/*

sudo rm -R /var/log/*

(then restart immediately)

/var/log/ contained a couple of log files that were apparently not archiving correctly. One was over 40MB in size.

Update... this worked only for a day, then the slowness returned. :-(

Leaving iCloud turned off is not an option for me...

Try signing out then back in, for some reason once I signed out completely then signed back in it was still working ok, no lag at all. Doesn't make a great deal of sense I know, but it worked for me.

I had some other problems with my system as it turned out and after all the fixes I tried from this thread my mac eventually refused to start up, going to the circle with a line through it and hanging there. I couldn't even get it to boot in safe mode, or select an alternate startup disk by holding down option. I was forced to do a total system reinstall, which was annoying at the time but I'm happy to report that my mac is now running faster than ever, no lag on save as or file>open commands and generally feeling snappier, so perhaps it's worth taking the plunge and doing a reinstall of 10.10.5.

Bug still present in OS X 10.10.5. Workaround didn't work for me. All disks and permissions fine according to fsck, Disk Utilty, SMART, and my fairy godmother at this point, except that they're attached to a Mac, which seems to be the basic problem with my system.

Thinking the most expedient thing to do might be to get a sledgehammer and just destroy my Mac before it wastes a second more of my time, and get a computer with an OS that works right. I need to get my work done, not be Apple's unpaid beta tester for 15 years.

My very next browser tab had the solution. Courtesy of https://www.hbang.ws/blog/yosemite-slow-finder-fix/:

Enter the following in Terminal:
rm ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata*

and hit enter.

That's all.

Fixed the problem for me instantly.

An article today on the OSXDaily blog provided a simple "solution" for the slow open and save dialogs where the behaviour appears associated with an external hard drive or a volume on such drive, including backup drives. The solution is:

1. Open System Preferences (Apple menu)

2. Click the "Spotlight" preference pane

3. Click the Privacy tab

4. Exclude the suspicious external drive or volume by clicking the "+", then navigating to and selecting the drive icon

The downside of course is that Spotlight will no longer index the files and folders on the excluded drive. But this has completely eliminated my problem. Up to now, I was for the last year manually mounting a specific external volume on a Lacie drive whenever I needed it, and then immediately dismounting it after I finished with it. The slowness problem apparently relates to some file somewhere in my user folder, but efforts to track that down have been a waste of time, it's much quicker just to find a way to eliminate the problem.

(MBPro 2014, 32 GB, OS X Yosemite, but also occurred with Mavericks)

Upgrading to OS X 10.11.2 (El Capitan) will very likely resolve this problem. Until I upgraded, my solution posted here on October 15, 2015 had fixed the long-standing problem with an external drive caused the slow dialogs, but I no longer have to resort to that - telling Spotlight to stop indexing my external drive created its own problem, it was no longer searchable.

My solution was fixed by dumping the user caches. I created a new test account which had no problems. When I isolated the user library folder and tested folders I found the dumping the cached solved the problem.

Thank you so much!!!! 🙂

It is strange, because I have a Macbook Pro, too. Same upgrades, same iOS and that is working well. There I do not have to disable the Dropbox in Finder... I hope your solution will not be temporary.... Like the others were.

Just another data point - I'm running Snow Leopard on a late 2008 MacBook Pro and workaround of commenting out /net line in the auto_master file suggested by Snaggletooth_DE fixed the problem instantly for me.

It had been driving me crazy, so virtual beers to Snaggletooth_DE.

Working workaround:

Use the following statements in Terminal.

sudo vi /etc/auto_master

In this file comment out /net with # (#/net .....)

sudo automount -vc

Fixed.

@connorbfitz: if you have a chance, please report it to Apple too. This is only a workaround; a fix is needed. Thank you!

d60Dave wrote:

C'mon Apple, lets have a proper fix for this.

Apple does NOT monitor these lists, please submit feedback and bug reports to Apple for this issue. Thank you