Slow Context Menu Loading (Right click)

I am here just to say that the problem still exist up to this date. This is MBP mid 2012 non retina, where I just helped a friend upgraded the mbp with a new 240GB SSD with fresh El Capitan installation. Intel i5, 4GB of RAM. Running the latest 10.11.4 still doesn't make the problem go away. Updated the EFI manually as well. Tried all the potential solutions posted here but to no avail.

Frustrating.

Have exactly the same problem since upgraded to El Capitan. Hope to have the solution. Not a big problem but quite annoying.

I have the same problem, running El Capitan 10.11.5 beta (15F31a)

I also experience this issue, haven’t found a solution yet 😟

I’m running 10.11.4 on a 2010 MacBook Pro 15’’ equipped with a SSD

Maybe we should write bug reports as it seems to be an issue for lots of users: bugreport.apple.com

Just found this information on the issue, (it's on Mavericks, but It may work on El Capitan): http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mavericks-install-slow-right-click-menus.168 5615/

On simple steps it:

1) Open system preferences

2) Trackpad

3) Scroll and Zoom

4) Uncheck smart zoom

Thank you very much XavierX, your solution worked for me. (I am running OS X 10.11.4)

I can confirm that the method from XavierX worked for me as well! Thanks a lot!

I reported the issue to  (using bug reporter) and they nearly immediately asked me back for more details and wanted me to perform a „sysdiagnose“.

I updated to 10.11.5 and the issue persists, so I performed the diagnose and uploaded the result.

Hopefully this will help all of us 🙂

The „fix“ of XavierX might help, however, I don’t want to go without the smart zoom feature 😕

The method does somehow not work anymore. The issue still (again) persists.

Had no evidence of this problem on any Yosemite release thru 10.10.5 on 2011 Mac mini with third-party SSD and 8GB RAM. With El Capitan 10.11.4, the Open with on the contextual menu would lag with a Fetching… , and this seems to be a stale Launch Services database, which is fixable.

On slower hardware (read Apple internal, non-SSD drives), and initial OS X startup, there are a boatload of System services that run including Software Update, and Spotlight indexing (not only your hard drive, but the Time Machine disk too). These start up processes will cause interactive lag for a few minutes due to resource contention.

If you are attempting to run OS X on a 2GB RAM machine, it will crawl, all of the time. Not enough memory, and it is swapping (read dog slow).

Anyone knowingly, or unknowingly running anti-virus, security, or so called Mac cleaner applications will have operational issues with their Mac because these worthless, third-party utilities will interfere with the normal operation of OS X.

Some malware will also cause operational anomalies with OS X.

I have only now found this thread, and I see that it has been going on for quite some time.

There are two things that immediately occur to me:

1) Some trackpad settings - this was already suggested

2) Resetting the launch services database. It was never said, AFAICT, by any of the affected users, in which context, or even which application, they were using right/control-click when the problem occurs. If it was in the Finder, then for sure resetting the launch services database seems like the most obvious thing to try:

Here is how:

1) Open Terminal

2) Triple-click anywhere in the following line (it is a single, very long line) to select it; Copy (command-C):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

3) Paste (Command-V), and press enter

4) Log out and back in

@Luis

You are right, also not explicitly mentioning, for me the issue occurs in finder when right-clicking on a random file.

Just reseted the launch services, thanks for this advice!

Will investigate if it helps 🙂

Since I'm also experiencing the problem with a mouse I don't think it has something to do with the trackpad or it's settings.

Unfortunately your launch service reset does also not eliminate the problem on my MacBook Pro. The first context menu load is bringing up the spinning ball for about 3-5 seconds. After using the context menu once it is fast again. But it will come back every restart.

Safe Boot

1. Shutdown (not Restart) your Mac.
2. Power on and immediately press and hold the shift key until you see horizontal boot progress. This will be slower in Safe Boot mode.
3. At the login screen, reaffirm that Safe Boot appears in the upper right corner of the screen.
4. After you enter your password, press and hold the shift key again, before you press the right arrow to login.

   Continue pressing the shift key until you see your Desktop icons

5. Evaluate the right contextual menu performance. Any change?
6. Reboot normally.
7. Step 5 again.

Has the Safe Boot process resulting in normal contextual menu performance following a normal reboot, and does the sluggish performance vanish, after a second reboot?

Thanks for your suggestion. Although I already tried that I gave it another try with the shift key while login but the problem still persists. The context menu still needed up to 5 seconds until it shows after restarting or turning on the mac - in Safe Boot or Normal mode. And after the first time "Loading the context menu" it works instantly.