Finder is too slow on El Capitan and constantly freezes

Question

Poubellator Author

Level 1

0 points

Finder is too slow on El Capitan and constantly freezes

Hi

Since I upgraded my Macbook Air mid-2012, every single action on the Finder lasts about 5 minutes.

If I open a folder, delete a file or anything else, it simply freezes.

The phenomenon occurs just on one session, the others don't have any problem.

I stopped all the extensions interacting with the Finder but there was no improvement.

There is something else I noticed ; in the sidebar list there are hundreds of blank favorites :

I thought that could linked to my problem, then I tried to delete them one by one but it takes 5 minutes for each one.

I tried to edit the file com.apple.sidebarlists.plist in my Library to erase all those blank favorites but there was no result.

I finally found out that the sidebar favorites where stored in the com.apple.LSSharedFileList.FavoriteItems.sfl (in this folder : /Libray/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/ ). I tried to edit this file, or even to simply erase it, but every time the Finder reloads this file is restored and the blank favorites come back.

I forgot to mention that I also reinstalled El Capitan but the problem still remains.

Do you have any suggestion to solve this problem ?

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 19, 2015 8:28 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 19, 2015 8:34 PM in response to Poubellator

Might be Finder preferences are corrupted ...

Open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder

Type or copy paste the following:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Click Go then move the com.apple.finder.plist file to the Trash.

Restart your Mac then try the Finder.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Oct 20, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Poubellator

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take an action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

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Answer 3

Poubellator Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2015 1:06 AM in response to Linc Davis

Here is what happens when I simply move from one tab to another :

20/10/2015 09:55:39,728 WindowServer[177]: disable_update_timeout: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

20/10/2015 09:55:43,006 WindowServer[177]: common_reenable_update: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Finder" after 4.28 seconds [0.23fps] (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds [1.00fps])

20/10/2015 09:56:31,330 launchservicesd[77]: BUG in libdispatch: 15A284 - 1631 - 0x0

When I try to delete one of the blank favorites, I have thousands of this couple messages :

20/10/2015 09:58:21,971 Finder[244]: [default] Failed to updated bookmark for item (null) [DE104C0F-5B2C-48BC-8682-6A60EC659DE2] - URL:file:///Users/poubellator/RKube with error Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "Impossible d’ouvrir le fichier car il n’existe pas."

20/10/2015 09:58:21,971 Finder[244]: -[SFLListItem synthesizeMissingPropertyValues] Failed to updated bookmark for item (null) [DE104C0F-5B2C-48BC-8682-6A60EC659DE2] - URL:file:///Users/poubellator/RKube with error Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "Impossible d’ouvrir le fichier car il n’existe pas."

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Answer 4

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Oct 20, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Poubellator

Back up all data before proceeding.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Trash. Log out or restart the computer and empty the Trash.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

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Answer 5

Poubellator Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2015 12:17 PM in response to Linc Davis

Just did that.

At startup the former com.apple.LSSharedFileList.FavoriteItems.sfl is regenerated and the problem still remains.

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Answer 6

Poubellator Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 20, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Poubellator

OK I just solved my problem :

In the sidebar there was a bookmark for a folder ( Users/poubellator/RKube ) that had been erased a few years ago.

I just recreated the folder and as a miracle all the blank favorites disappeared.

Now I have re-deleted this folder and everything goes well.

Thank you so much, you were very helpful.

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Answer 7

cetus547

Level 1

14 points

Oct 20, 2015 12:35 PM in response to Linc Davis

I was having the beach ball in finder when ever I changed folders Lincs fix worked for me.

Thanks Linc

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Answer 8

skip314

Level 1

6 points

Jun 2, 2016 7:30 AM in response to Poubellator

I was having a similar issue and I wanted to add my solution to the list. Everything Finder-related was extremely slow. When opening a folder that hadn't been opened in a while, it took about 30 seconds for the contents to appear. When taking a screenshot, it took about 30 seconds for the file to show up on the desktop. Trashing a file took about 30 seconds. Every other app ran fine. The sluggishness was only with the Finder. Also, immediately after restarting, the Finder was fine. It took about 5 minutes for the slowness to kick in.

Nothing in this thread helped my situation so contacted Apple support. After rebooting in safe mode, resetting the NVRAM, starting up in recovery mode and running first aid on the HD and various other attempted fixes, we discovered it was an issue with iCloud. Something was hanging when trying to sync to iCloud. I logged out of iCloud, restarted, logged back into iCloud and restarted again (I'm not sure all of the restarting was necessary but after working on this for hours I was willing to try anything). That fixed it. All is well now.

Hopefully this fix will prevent someone else from spending as much time on this as i did.

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Answer 9

Davert

Level 1

14 points

Sep 19, 2016 11:25 AM in response to Poubellator

I found it was the iCloud process. Followed the instructions at http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/17/fix-slow-folder-populating-cloudkit-macosx/ and solved it.

If a moderator doesn't like the credit line, try going into Terminal and pasting:

rm ~/Library/Caches/CloudKit/CloudKitMetadata*;killall cloudd

That worked for me - so far.

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