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I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

EDIT: several posters have suggested unchecking "Show Floating Thumbnails". This has never been checked on my system, as explained in my comment to an answer below. This suggestion does not solve the problem.

I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine. The delay is very annoying as when one saves to the desktop one usually needs the resulting file immediately, so I have to wait for it to appear.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

EDIT: as soon as I saved this question, it occurred to me from the solutions based on disabling certain services, that maybe something like that was involved. On a hunch, I decided to disable Spotlight indexing of the Desktop folder, by adding it to the Privacy section. After all, I don't really need Spotlight for the relatively small number of objects I allow on my Desktop.

Interestingly, this worked! Screen shots now save in about 2 seconds.

Putting this as an "edit" rather than answering my own question, because this is a workaround, and there might be a better solution.

I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

I very often take screen shots, and have my system configured to save them directly to the desktop, without the intermediate processes.

This question has been asked a lot. For example, see the following:

Capturing screenshots on macOS Sierra is very slow Screenshot taking a very long time to appear on desktop

However, none of the situations and solutions discussed there are applicable.

1. The questions above talk about 5-6 seconds to save. On my system it takes 15-20 seconds. This is a 2017 iMac; not a slow machine. The delay is very annoying as when one saves to the desktop one usually needs the resulting file immediately, so I have to wait for it to appear.

2. A lot of the discussion talks about Google Backup and Sync. I have never used these.

3. Some of the discussion talks about turning off anti-virus. As I test, I turned off Bitdefender. It made no difference.

Any other ideas?

EDIT: as soon as I saved this question, it occurred to me from the solutions based on disabling certain services, that maybe something like that was involved. On a hunch, I decided to disable Spotlight indexing of the Desktop folder, by adding it to the Privacy section. After all, I don't really need Spotlight for the relatively small number of objects I allow on my Desktop.

Interestingly, this worked! Screen shots now save in about 2 seconds.

Putting this as an "edit" rather than answering my own question, because this is a workaround, and there might be a better solution.