Contacts: Entry slow or sluggish

I have the same problem. It's impossible to work with Contact since OS X El CAPITAN. With YOSEMITE I haven't this problem.

I have the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) - OS X El Capitan 10.11.1

I have the exact same problem.

So are you using a carddav server for syncing your contacts? I am (owncloud) and when I tried disabling this account editing offline contacts worked just fine. iCloud contacts probably are fine too and that's why so little people complain.

The contacts app is pretty buggy anyway. The add account dialog is completely broken and it's a real pain adding carddav accounts.

I'm having the same problem on El Capitan. I didn't have it on Yosemite. I'm using carddav.

I have this problem on two Macs now, but only those that I've upgraded to 10.11.2.

As an experiment, I tried it on a Mac that was running 10.11.1, and performance was normal. I then upgraded to 10.11.2 and Address Book was nearly unusable just like the other two.

Inscribing cuniform would be faster.

I'm using carddav on a personal cloud server. Under Yosemite, performance of Contacts was generally fine. After upgrading to El Capitan (10.11.2) I get to see the multi-colored pinwheel of death for 30+ seconds between fields when trying to type/tab/type.

This helped me: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/el-capitan-contacts-app-freezes-when-editing -google-contacts.1945254/#post-22378892

I had exactly the same problem as described above - which was quite annoying!!

Changing the google account to a "stand alone" CardDAV account as posted by "amors2" above and described here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/el-capitan-contacts-app-freezes-when-editing -google-contacts.1945254/#post-22378892

"In a nutshell it's turning off contact syncing for the Google account and adding your Google contacts sync back via CardDAV:

1. Go to System Preferences>Internet Accounts
2. Uncheck "Contacts" for the Google account
3. Click the "+" to add a new account
4. Select "CardDAV"
5. Set Account Type to "Manual"
6. User Name is Gmail address
7. Password is password, or a new app-specific password if 2-factor authorization is "ON" for Google
8. Server Address is "google.com"

Now enjoy your responsive Contacts app."

" I had to turn on “Allowing less secure apps to access your account” in Google options. Otherwise impossible to create an CardDAV account."

These steps helped me as well!

Thank You Jose! Your steps above worked like a charm. I was on the phone with Apple support today for 45 minutes and said I would call back. In fairness to them, they had me test all the normal things, etc.

Anyway, you CardDAV and the note about 2 factor authentication worked!!

Thank you very much for posting this solution. I was getting the spinning pinwheel of death for an intolerable length of time. This worked straight away.

I'm experiencing the same issue except my delays are more like 2 - 3 minutes and I'm experiencing them only when editing contact information--especially when creating a custom field label. I'm running my own CarDAV server on my extremely fast (bonded dual GigE connections) 715 Synology NAS. Also, I'm doing the contact edits on the same LAN as my NAS (i.e. not outside my LAN). Since I was experiencing constant crashes within my Contacts app under Mavericks and Yosemite EVERY TIME I used the call hand-off feature on my laptop (both dialing and hanging up), I decided my i-net service provider was causing these issues (Exchange-based service provider). So, around the time of the release of El Captitan (10.11.0), I moved to my own CarDAV server. Well, I was right, switching to my own CarDAV server remedied the call hand-off crashes--what a relief. However, now I inherited a completely new issue--EXTREMELY SLOW CONTACT EDITING. But, here's a really interesting fact: when I perform the same contact edits on my iPhone 6+ (set up with the same CarDAV server), they only takes seconds or less. In my opinion, this is just more current Apple sloppiness with the OS X platform (there are still a lot of very silly and irritating OS X user experience issue to resolve). If you ask me, Apple has been paying way too much attention to iOS and leaving OS X in the lurch. Tim Cook is ignoring the very user experience details that got Apple where it is today--Steve Jobs would've never put up with this sloppiness. I guess we'll have to wait for another alleged bug-fix-only OS X release (perhaps they'll call it Denali) to finally regain a smooth running OS X user experience.

Gracias Jose!!

This method only works for contacts there aren't merged with other accounts. For cards that are linked to multiple accounts, e.g. Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, and iCloud, it's the same sluggishness that makes you wonder if Apple can do anything right these days.

I have the same issue using Mac clients (iMacs, Macbooks, etc.) Contacts app in conjunction with Mac Server (Mac Pro 16gb RAM). The server is also utilized as a mail server.

I've noticed the problem occurring will all versions of the Contacts app as far as I can remember & all versions of Server 5.x. I've properly opened all ports to the server (8800 & 8843), and I've ensured that DNS SRV records exist for carddav & carddavs. I'm using password authentication (kerberos is not feasible in this scenario) & all my Mac clients experience about 10-20 seconds of lag with each field input or saved. Mail works fine, but Contacts is SLOW SLOW SLOW!

In my case, this is sad because this is an Apple-to-Apple configuration - you'd figure it should work with minimal issues.