AFP/SMB Directory Listings very slow in Finder

knob1 - I've been suffering for years, like everyone else with SMB windows / NAS shares. I have several thousand files per share, and each resource would take anywhere from 6min to over 20min sometimes. I unchecked the "Show Icon Preview"...relaunched Finder, and the resources open in seconds. This was a remarkable find, thanks for your input.

This is the solution that helped me! Running 10.11 w/samba share on Raspberry Pi. Spent a LONG time searching - thank you!

I tried a 100 fixes that made no difference. This one worked for me. Am connected to a Linksys Wifi router with USB HDD plugged into it. SMB shares worked perfectly from Kodi or Windows machine but new MacAir was UN-USABLE it was so slow.

But now looks good!

Thanks! Resolved. Apple please fix 🙂

Alex Usov wrote:

Thanks! Resolved. Apple please fix 🙂

Apple is not here. This is a User-to-User forum

I would encourage you to file a bug or feature enhancement with Apple at either:

BugReporter

The more people that report a problem, the more likely it will receive a higher priority. Plus each report will have a different perspective that can help the developer identify the root cause.

Actually, I thought this had fixed it but after an eventual reboot the problem returned.

I have now permanently fixed the problem by:

1. Forgetting all my wireless networks (eg deleting the stored password)

2. Rebooting and performing an NVRAM reset.

How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

Not sure which of these (Or both) fixed it but it is working great now.

For anyone that is still searching for an alternative to Finder because of SMB slowness, unfortunately development on mucommander has stopped and the last version requires Java 6 runtime, which is a major security hole. There is a mucommander clone, trolcommander, that works on El Cap and is very fast. I'm not the developer, just a grateful user. It's available at github; the developer's website is TrolSoft.ru.

I filed a Bug report shortly after I posted my solution to the forum (November 26th).

But up until now theres no response. Maybe with 10.12 😉

Thank you Ronesy! Your fix worked instantly. I'm connecting to a Linux Samba share and it was horribly slow but your fix instantly made it snappy.

echo "[default]" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf; echo "smb_neg=smb1_only" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

This resolved my problem. Thanks!

Well I thought this had helped, but it seems not.

The first time I unchecked the previews option from view options, my large network SMB share folder opened in a snap and I was glad.

But subsequently, two things happen:

1. Finder does not keep the view setting persistent on the drive when it is unmounted and mounted again.

2. When I reset the previews option to off again, and attempt to reload the folder, it is again wretchedly slow to populate. That is to say after one positive result, I cannot duplicate the favourable outcome.

So back to the drawing board go I.

Somehow I have been unable to edit my above post. I was editing in a proper edit window, but when I clicked to submit a red error bar popped up bottom of screen suggesting I might have been signed out, although I wasn't. Now there is no longer an edit option. Ok, here are my edits:

Well I thought this [edit: this being the disabling of 'show icon preview' in folder view options] had helped, but it seems not.

[edit: I also tried the Automator workflow to set the option across all folders on the drive - although I eventually quit that process after it started looking like it was going to take a long time]

[edit: And I've tried the connection protocol and system default modification methods of utilizing SMB1 to no improvement. Neither has any good seemed to come from excluding the drive from Spotlight indexing or trying SMBUp or Finder alternatives. For whatever reason, Finder just takes an awful long time to populate a directory listing in crowded folders on my SMB network share, while my Windows partitions and iOs (3rd party app) media players cruise through them with no problem. I'm not sure what help it is to point out that once the directory has been brought up once, it generally seems to remain responsive until the next time I have to mount the drive. I've even scratched my head to wonder whether slow (relative to recent standards) transfer speeds of using USB2.0 to connect the device to a wireless-N router could have anything to do with it, but that's preposterous!]

[edit.edit: and so for the sake of argument, can I edit this post? it appears so]

Disabling the creation of .DS_Store files really sped up browsing my samba shares. This can be done at a Samba server level, or Mac Client level.

Add or edit this line in the Samba config file (/etc/samba/smb.conf):

veto files = /._*/.DS_Store/

Client level, input this in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores TRUE

From what I can see, the problem originally raised in this thread (slow folder content listing in network shares over VPN) appears to have been fixed in the latest OS update (10.11.4 on the client without any change at the VPN server end).

It improved, but it's not fixed. I've tested this on 2 macbook pros, one being brand new.