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When opening some folders, the Finder takes a long time (30-60 seconds) to load all the files in it. Specifically, these folders typically contain 10-50 PHP files (which are text files), each about 10 kb.

I also notice that sometimes, after the files are listed, their icons are still loading and the "Kind" column is also still loading. (I've got the "Name", "Date Modified", "Size", and "Kind" columns showing; "Calculate all sizes" is enabled" while "Show icon preview" is disabled.)

In addition, when opening a directory such as this and viewing Activity Monitor, I see that coreservicesd is at 70% CPU and Finder is at 30% CPU. After all the files have loaded, both services are still at these CPU levels for about 60 seconds afterward.

Anyone know how I can fix this? I already did "Repair disk permissions" and "Repair Disk", along with a ton of miscellaneous Onyx tasks, but the problem still remains.

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  • How is the folder displayed (icons, list, column, coverflow)? Is it faster if you switch to another display style (especially column)?
    – nohillside ♦
    Sep 12, 2012 at 5:43
  • I always use List view. If I switch to Column view, Finder is equally slow at listing files.
    – Gary
    Sep 12, 2012 at 6:43
  • If it helps, I'm using TextMate to open PHP files. It's a pretty bloated and old piece of software these days, so perhaps it's somehow slowing down Finder from loading PHP files, perhaps due to QuickLook rendering or something? Also, one very interesting note: if I "Force quit" Finder to make it reload, the file listing will appear immediately. So clearly something is getting bogged down.
    – Gary
    Sep 12, 2012 at 7:14

10 Answers 10

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14

Hallelujah! I figured it out. Okay, so first thing I did was create a new account, as suggested by another answer. The problem did not occur in there, so clearly the problem was limited to my account. I then went into Safe Mode into my account. The problem did not occur as well. So clearly something was loaded in normal mode but not in safe mode that was causing the problem.

While in safe mode, I then cleared the caches (in Terminal, using sudo mv /Library/Caches ~/Temp/ and the same for ~/Library/Caches). Problem solved! I've had other problems as well in Finder so perhaps this will fix this as well. I'm curious as to why using Onyx to clear the User caches didn't clear these as well, but anyway, from what I've read online it seems like getting rid of these two folders is safe. Also, Time Machine never backs up ~/Library/Caches (but it does back up /Library/Caches), so that's reassuring.

In addition, while this post was made in 2003, it still applied to my situation and this was what convinced me to clear my Caches folders.

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  • 1
    Also, someone figured out that the culprit is often that the finder is waiting on another application for information. Please read about it here. It has solved the problem for many people.
    – mareoraft
    Sep 15, 2014 at 18:39
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There are many things you can try to fix this:

  • Trashing com.apple.finder.plist, com.apple.systemuiserver.plist and com.apple.loginwindow.plist (they will be recreated when you launch Finder) in ~/Library/Preferences and Force Quit Finder
  • Turning off Calculate All Sizes in Finder
  • Turning off Show View Options in Finder

Another thing you can try, is to create a new (test)account and see if the problem still exists there. Chances are good you'll solve your issue with this.
Worst case scenario, you can move your account to a new one to solve this issue.

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  • I trashed those three files, and then had them re-created, and I turned off Calculate All Sizes (not sure how I can turn off Show View Options?), but none of these worked. Creating a new account DID work, though, so clearly something is broken in my current account. I'd rather not move my entire account to a new one, though. If possible, I'd rather find the problematic plist file and trash that instead. Any more suggestions as to which one it might be?
    – Gary
    Sep 12, 2012 at 17:07
  • You can try to trash all the apple.**.plists...
    – Michiel
    Sep 12, 2012 at 17:11
  • Thanks I'll try that. I've got everything backed up to Time Machine so at worst I'll just restore them back if necessary (like I did with the Finder plist because I had a lot of things setup).
    – Gary
    Sep 12, 2012 at 18:50
  • This worked for me, except that when you say "Force Quit Finder", I actually had to kill finder from the terminal with "killall Finder". If I deleted the plists and then switched to the Finder app to force quit it, the problem wouldn't be resolved.
    – Jeremy
    Jun 22, 2016 at 18:47
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I had the same problem, but none of the fixes above helped. This finally did:

http://blog.hsoi.com/2014/02/25/my-slow-mac-mavericks-coreservicesd-iconservicesagent-and-how-fs_usage-saved-me/

Some issue with an application (in my case Xcode) and icons.

Try this command in Terminal, which reports realtime filesystem activity from the IconServicesAgent:

sudo fs_usage -f pathname -w com.apple.IconServicesAgent | grep open

I got endless output like:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents 0.000009 com.apple.IconSe.429515:32:08.066965 open F=4 (R_____)
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Info.plist 0.000010 com.apple.IconSe.429515:32:08.067690 open F=4 (R_____)
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight 0.000003com.apple.IconSe.429515:32:08.092972 open F=5 (R_____)

I moved Xcode to the trash, and reinstalled from the AppStore. Problem solved, now I have a snappy Finder.

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3

This solved the problem for me on Yosemite, as described here http://furbo.org/2015/01/19/clearing-the-icon-services-cache-in-yosemite/

$ sudo find /private/var/folders/ \
  -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;

$ sudo find /private/var/folders/ \
  -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;

$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
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0

I tried @Gary 's answer, it didn't work for me.

My problem was only concerning Shared folders

After a lot of reading and searching, didn't try all solutions, but when i went into the settings-> sharing it was also taking a lot of time to load the settings.

So i disabled everything one by one, afp and smb and windows, and then turned off the sharing service alltogether These folders went fast again, Then i reenabled it, and the problem didn't reoccur.

Hope this helps somebody else.

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0

Starting up in Safe Mode solved it for me!

I had severe load on coreserviced and finder. Various applications crashed during this. Opening folders in finder took ages. Killing coreserviced and finder did not solve it. As soon as I opened folder in finder the load was back again and the CPU burning and the fan screaming ;-)...

Nothing written on this page solved it - Only restart in safe mode!!!

Why?

Ever since I administered UNIX systems a filesystem check (fsck) once in a while was always necessary. And this is what happens on a mac during the progress bar in save mode startup.

After failsave mode startup finished, I restarted normally. Then there was some high load for a minute or two for mds and others (icons..) to rebuild their caches. But from then on all was cool - load about 3% tops and only the apps I worked with caused load.

Now I can enjoy opening folders swiftly again! lol

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What I have is not a solution, but a way to speed up the process of loading a folder

In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder or type Shift+Cmd+G and then start to type the Path to the Folder you want to open in Finder. (e.g. /Volumes/Server1/MyFolder/Images/) While you are typing, Finder updates the folder as well and displays the content. This requires of course, that you know your paths relatively well, but you can use Tab for autocompletion.

In our company, we have the problem that shared folders on the cloud server are very slow when Finder tries to load them (with both AFP and SMB). The same folders are loaded instantly with Windows over SMB, even when Windows is running on a virtual machine on the Mac. Therefore neither a hardware nor a server fault.

I've tried to purge the Finder caches but without success. Strangely (and this tells volumes about the improvement of the services from Apple's side), as long as we were running some computers on Lion or some other wildcat, those were much less affected than those on the more recent OS.

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My problem was solved by starting up in Safe Mode (Safe Boot) I opened all the folders that were slow in finder. The first 2 or 3 of them were still slow. Then they started to open really fast. Did nothing more. Restarted my machine & then everything was great. Starting up in Safe Mode To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), follow these steps.

Be sure your Mac is shut down. Press the power button. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear). After the logo appears, you should see a progress bar during startup. This indicates that your computer is performing a directory check as part of Safe Mode.

To leave Safe Mode, restart your computer without holding any keys during startup.

Best wishes

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-1

I had exactly the same issue and this helped. In my case it was an OpenOffice installation causing the problem. I removed OpenOffice and the problem disappeared. I will re-install an updated OO.

Like you I tried all the other tricks in many other threads, to no avail. Many thanks for posting this.d

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-1 
sudo vi /etc/auto_master

In this file comment out /net with # (#/net .....)

sudo automount -vc
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  • This doesn't necessarily address the specific problem. It's just one way Finder can be slow.
    – Ian C.
    Jan 14, 2015 at 21:10

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