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Slow loading Finder in Mavericks?

I bought the brand new Macbook Pro Retina that came with Mavericks plus I upgraded my old Macbook Pro Retina to Mavericks before my new one came. On both computers I am noticing a few different things that are rather annoying.


When attaching documents to emails, etc... it is taking my finder forever to load the contents of the directory I am trying to access. It is doing this on both computers, so I am assuming this is something to do with Mavericks and not the new computer. It is rather frustrating because for my job, I am contstantly attaching documents to emails every day, but having to wait a good minute or two for a directory to load to find what I am looking for to attach is getting rather annoying.


Even my stickie notes load slow now when opening them in Mavericks and it has never done that before. They kind of appear laggy when loading. Usually they just popped right up.


Is anybody else experiencing this problem? Any suggestions for a fix? I really enjoy Mavericks but it seems to be messing with the overall performance of some things.

Posted on Oct 30, 2013 8:05 AM

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261 replies

Nov 7, 2013 8:17 AM in response to kufan0001

I too am having the same problem. I am running mavericks on my late 2009 imac with a 3.06ghz intel core 2 duo. Whenever I try to save any of my files or documents from any program the finder takes at least a few minutes to populate so I can navigate to where I want my files saved.


I have yet to try the fix rubyreddevon has suggested but when I do I'll repost the results.

Nov 7, 2013 10:45 PM in response to kufan0001

I too have this issue, it has cause a few Finder crashes as well. While most annoying during "Open file" within an app, it's also done this just browsing through folders and even when I opened the trash to empty it.


Upon upgrade from 10.8, I thought perhaps somethings possibly got corrupted so I installed 10.9 fresh from USB drive after a couple days, but the issue is identical.


15" MBP 2012 w/256GB SSD, 8GB RAM i7-2.6Ghz Quad.

Nov 9, 2013 8:02 AM in response to kufan0001

Happens to me too. Brand new 27" iMac 3.5GHz i7, GTX780 GPU, 16GB RAM, 3TB Fusion drive.


When I try to open files in any app I get the spinning gear and it takes up to 20 seconds for the files to show.


I tried disabling app nap on indvidual apps via "get info" with no luck.


Can't even boot in safe mood. When I release the shift key I get the progress bar, screen turns black for a second, then it boots normally.


Someone mentioned clearing the kext cache and that didn't work either.


Hope they fix this soon.


Very aggravating...

Nov 9, 2013 1:03 PM in response to rubyreddevon

Upgraded the day it came out, Love it! Battery has dramatically improved! Only has one issue....when I would load finder it would take sometimes 15-30 seconds to load the few files in my documents folder.


I tried


sudo defaults write com.apple.Finder NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES


in terminal and it is fixed! Thanks rubyreddevon


Give this a try if you are having issues. It worked for me.


Spces: Mid 2013 Macbook Air i5 w/4 GB RAM

Did not upgrade, btut clean Mavericks install from USB drive

No other issues (so far)


Hopefully they will send out an update and fix the other problems you guys are having.

Nov 9, 2013 10:30 PM in response to kufan0001

I have the same problem on my machine too. 2012 MacBook Air, 13", 512GB, 8GB RAM. I actually had a chance to test the Mavericks beta in its early stages on my machine and this issue was present in the seed as well. I made Apple aware of it and I'm waiting for a response from their engineers to see what could be done about this issue. I find it rather annoying for when I'm using Photoshop or when I'm uploading a file in Safari. It happens all the time!

Nov 12, 2013 3:51 AM in response to kufan0001

Same here. Since installing Mavericks, it takes 10-20 seconds to load finder contents, whether in desktop or from within an app. It really slows work down. Very irritating at the least, and also creates (hopefully) unfounded concerns about the integrity of my HD. As others have said it drags down the good stuff about Mavericks. I tried trashing the finder prefs - no change whatsoever.

Nov 12, 2013 1:33 PM in response to kufan0001

It migth be a reach, but check out Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities). If you see a process called kernel_task using up huge amounts of memory, it might be the culprit for any slowing down of anything under the OS. Mine seems to hit a wall at around 1 GB. Before that it is slow but tolerable. The only fix is to restart the Mac. Apple has been aware of the problem for some time, but hasn't addressed it yet.

Slow loading Finder in Mavericks?

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