Finder slow to show large folder contents - "loading"

[monokakata]

From the opening post

A thunderbolt NAS is nevertheless directly connected, isn't it?

In any case what I was trying to help with was your problem with a "network share," which I took to mean a NAS (or server) sitting out there on the network.

I'll just repeat that Forklift is many times faster than Finder when accessing files on my many-TB NAS and therefore I suggested you give its free trial a try, in case that solves your problem for only a few bucks.

 

[californiaburrito]

Update:

Within the limitations of my knowledge, I tested the cache theory.

I booted into Safe mode. Amongst other things, this cleans out some caches. The first time I tried opening my "test" folder that is located on an external HFS+ drive, Finder took a while to populate the list. Just like before the Safe mode reboot. But, guess what! The second time was much faster. It stayed at the faster speed on subsequent folder openings. I was a little happier.

That was on Friday.

This morning, I tried a different approach. I used Onyx to perform what they call Maintenance on the system. It cleans out caches and a bunch of other files. Guess what! After doing that, Finder populated the same test folder file listing almost instantly. Back to Mojave speed, pretty much. Imagine my surprise. I just opened a different folder with 2500+ files in it to check. It took about three seconds to populate the file listing. The Loading message barely stayed on screen.

OK, that's not a completely controlled test. But, it does show that this could be something to do with some cache file somewhere. I think. That could explain why updating to 13.6.1 seemed to improve things. Given what we know about Apple's approach to dodging bug fixes, especially in last year's operating system, it's almost certain that 13.6.1 didn't address this bug. Instead, the actual fix was that the act of updating wiped out the cache file causing the problem. I guess that should've been obvious in retrospect.

There's nothing we puny humans can much do about all this, except to apply Onyx when (if?) things slow down. Maybe. Time will tell. Things could go bad for me this afternoon. I guess that would give an opportunity to further test the Onyx solution, though. But, I'd rather that the problem is actually fixed. Fingers crossed.

Now, if I can find a solution for the dopey glitches Safari causes when typing a reply to a forum like this one.

I have the slow "loading..." folder problem on Sonoma 14.1.1, so I was pretty excited that you found a solve for it. Unfortunately for me, running Maintenance in Onyx didn't fix it. Testing on two external hard drives, both formatted APFS, a folder on the first drive with 6,000 items in it still takes 6 minutes to populate and a folder in the second drive with 10,000 items takes 12 minutes to populate. So, sucks to be me.

I notice your drive is HFS+ and mine are APFS, so maybe that has something to do with it. Did you change any of the Maintenance settings or did you use the default? I just used the default.

Using the default was a mistake for me because in my heady rush to fix this gd problem, I didn't look too closely at which caches and whatnot Onyx was going to clear and it deleted my Safari browsing history which really does suck. So warning to anyone who tries this method as a fix and wants to keep their browser history intact — Maintenance > Cleaning > Internet > Browser history > uncheck.

 

[BKDad]

I have the slow "loading..." folder problem on Sonoma 14.1.1, so I was pretty excited that you found a solve for it. Unfortunately for me, running Maintenance in Onyx didn't fix it. Testing on two external hard drives, both formatted APFS, a folder on the first drive with 6,000 items in it still takes 6 minutes to populate and a folder in the second drive with 10,000 items takes 12 minutes to populate. So, sucks to be me.

I notice your drive is HFS+ and mine are APFS, so maybe that has something to do with it. Did you change any of the Maintenance settings or did you use the default? I just used the default.

Using the default was a mistake for me because in my heady rush to fix this gd problem, I didn't look too closely at which caches and whatnot Onyx was going to clear and it deleted my Safari browsing history which really does suck. So warning to anyone who tries this method as a fix and wants to keep their browser history intact — Maintenance > Cleaning > Internet > Browser history > uncheck.

I modified the settings for the reason you mentioned. Sad experience from the past...

This morning, I tried my test folder again. It has slowed down a bit from yesterday. Again. Running Onyx restored the speed. Tomorrow, I'm going to be more selective in choosing what functions are performed in Maintenance. My hope is to narrow down what files are the problem. Perhaps a more directed solution can then be applied. I'll report on my progress.

Have you tried the test a second time? One of the default tasks performed by Onyx Maintenance is to delete APFS snapshots and some other APFS related functions. Perhaps Sonoma takes its time rebuilding something or other before populating the folder file list. It might be helpful to know this. For reference, my test folder contains around 2000 files and takes about two seconds to populate the listing after an Onyx cleanup and reboot.

Full disclosure: I am not one of those guys who somehow magically knows that you need to set this or that parameter in a preference file or somewhere to get a desired result. (I always wonder how they figure that stuff out without inside information.) So, I am just experimenting amidst a lot of speculation.

Edit: Since your external drives are APFS formatted, that throws out one theory that people have had. It seems to come down to a fault in Finder (or feature, if Apple is trying to kill the use of connected external drives) or something similar. Since Forklift and some other applications get around this problem, that points to Finder and applications that use Finder to, ahh, find files.

 

[MapleBeercules]

After the upgrade to Ventura file operations on large directories (~10000 files) can be very slow. Opening a folder in finder, or in an application which opens a finder window, I get a "loading" message. Have never seen this message before. This can last for a few seconds or several minutes before the files in the directory show up. After the first population it may or may not happen going back into the directory at a later time.

Demonstrated problem on 2 different external thunderbolt RAID devices as well as a thunderbolt NAS. The problem doesn't seem to happen with files on an internal SSD.

Duplicated with Apple support after wiping an external SSD and doing a fresh install of Ventura. They took a screen recording and ran capture data which is being sent to development.

Wondering if anyone else has seen this problem.

Add network drives to the list, I have a plex server with over 1500 movies in a single folder, while each movie has its own folders it can take FOREVER for the network drive to show files. It has to do with the way finder loads data from a folder, I have yet to find a fix for this.

 

[BKDad]

Add network drives to the list, I have a plex server with over 1500 movies in a single folder, while each movie has its own folders it can take FOREVER for the network drive to show files. It has to do with the way finder loads data from a folder, I have yet to find a fix for this.

That stinks.

I wonder if this has something to do with the Quick Look Agent thing or if it's just unintentional or deliberate coding in Finder.

That it hasn't been fixed across a couple years of operating systems is discouraging, especially when it all worked great previously. That something this basic wasn't found in internal testing is discouraging. That so many people have sent feedback though the online feedback system and through the AppleCare network and that hasn't gotten the right people's attention is discouraging.

The operating system upgrades may be cheap in terms of cash paid to Apple, but they aren't when you count people's time. If Apple computers were the low priced spread, OK. But, they aren't.

 

[BKDad]

OK, Yet Another Update. (YAU)

I let the system run overnight. Again, Finder started taking maybe 8-10 seconds to populate my test folder that is located on an external RAID drive connected via Thunderbolt. Same symptoms as what other people have reported.

So, based on some ideas over at The Eclectic Light Company, I tried just force quitting Finder. The thought being that if what we are experiencing is a memory leak in Finder, that would restart the process. No effect from a force quit.

So, before running Onyx again, I had a thought. Why not just try a restart? After all, that's the last step in an Onyx Maintenance cycle. Maybe the restart is the solution, not Onyx's file cleaning.

Guess what! Finder populated the test folder file listing almost instantly. So, I guess that means that it isn't a cached file that is messing things up. After all, none were deleted on a simple restart.

Tomorrow after another day of the system running, I'll examine the memory usage of everything I can with Activity Monitor, before and after a restart. It could be a memory leak, but not specifically with Finder.

Again, there isn't much that can be users about this, so it's kind of an academic curiosity.

So, everybody, just try a restart to see if that helps with your rendition of this nuisance problem.

 

[californiaburrito]

Have you tried the test a second time? One of the default tasks performed by Onyx Maintenance is to delete APFS snapshots and some other APFS related functions. Perhaps Sonoma takes its time rebuilding something or other before populating the folder file list.

What happens for me usually, is that once the folder populates after the initial 6 or 12, etc minutes, it doesn't need to go through that process again if I close and reopen. In other words, after opening the affected folder once, I can close it and it reopens close to normally. However, scrolling through those folders is super clunky. I use list view almost exclusively, and the scroll bar seriously lags behind when I click and drag it up or down. Also, I've noticed a new problem such that using the "home" or "end" key rarely brings the view to either the top or bottom of the window as it should. Instead, it pretty much just goes to a random point in the list (but in the correct direction). So if I'm at the bottom of a window and I hit "home," the window should instantly go to the top of the list, but instead it will jump only 1/5 of the way up, or 3/4 of the way up, or whatever. I don't know if the clunky scrolling and home/end problems are related to the slow folder "loading..." problem, so I'm just throwing it out there.

So, everybody, just try a restart to see if that helps with your rendition of this nuisance problem.

Actually, restarting is bad for me. Like I said above, once the folders take their sweet time to open, they generally open normally thereafter. But restarting basically seems to reset those folder back to their problem state - so every time I restart, I have to go through the lengthy process of opening the folders all over again.

As far as a memory leaks, I've definitely run into some problems recently with WindowServer eating up everything in site and then causing problems, particularly in Safari. Again, no idea if that's related.

I know I've shot down 2 of your solutions (at least, they don't work for me anyway), but I appreciate you offering them up.

 

[BKDad]

What happens for me usually, is that once the folder populates after the initial 6 or 12, etc minutes, it doesn't need to go through that process again if I close and reopen. In other words, after opening the affected folder once, I can close it and it reopens close to normally. However, scrolling through those folders is super clunky. I use list view almost exclusively, and the scroll bar seriously lags behind when I click and drag it up or down. Also, I've noticed a new problem such that using the "home" or "end" key rarely brings the view to either the top or bottom of the window as it should. Instead, it pretty much just goes to a random point in the list (but in the correct direction). So if I'm at the bottom of a window and I hit "home," the window should instantly go to the top of the list, but instead it will jump only 1/5 of the way up, or 3/4 of the way up, or whatever. I don't know if the clunky scrolling and home/end problems are related to the slow folder "loading..." problem, so I'm just throwing it out there.

Actually, restarting is bad for me. Like I said above, once the folders take their sweet time to open, they generally open normally thereafter. But restarting basically seems to reset those folder back to their problem state - so every time I restart, I have to go through the lengthy process of opening the folders all over again.

As far as a memory leaks, I've definitely run into some problems recently with WindowServer eating up everything in site and then causing problems, particularly in Safari. Again, no idea if that's related.

I know I've shot down 2 of your solutions (at least, they don't work for me anyway), but I appreciate you offering them up.

Well, like The Fortunes sang in that song, "You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine." (Heard that on the radio recently...)

My system's behavior is similar in that once the list is populated, it populates very quickly on subsequent views. The first time might take about two seconds for large folders.

What I noticed along the way was that after I used Onyx, the initial population of some folders that used to take 20 plus seconds came down to two or three. Smaller folders were almost instant. After some time, depending on actual computer use, not just time since boot, the listing time gradually stretched out. A redo with Onyx fixed that. As I said, I wasn't sure if it was whatever Onyx did or whether it was the restart. Now, I find that a restart cleans things up when Finder starts getting lazier. But, perhaps it was the combination action of Onyx cleaning up some cache file(s) and the restart that did it. I don't have any way to tell, unfortunately. Sorry.

Since Apple has either not recognized the problem to date or has chosen to ignore it for a couple years, I don't have much faith that it will be fixed soon. After all, at this point they'd be admitting that there is a bug. And, it seems like their culture is that there's no glory in fixing things. As HDFan reported earlier, Apple will spend a long period deciding whether to even vote on looking into a bug after it's been reported by a lot of users. Plus, Apple's general customer facing approach seems to always be "We're moving ahead, we don't care about the past. Hey! Look at all the new emojis!"

Forklift might be the real solution for users. Waiting on Apple probably is not. It probably shouldn't be that way, but I'm finding more and more that Apple's supplied application software is getting less and less useful as they "improve" things.

UPDATE: Just did a little more research. It seems that I am really ignorant about Finder issues. I guess that's because its limitations haven't really annoyed me until now with this bug. But, a lot of people have been unhappy for quite some time. This is why there's a market for Finder alternatives. This article has a good summary toward its end that explains the problems with Finder, in very polite terms. Methinks that looking at alternatives to Finder may be in order. Apple has zero incentive to improve or fix its product, and they've demonstrated that. When I look at the Apple applications that I actually use now, it's down to Finder, Preview, Messages, Mail, and Safari. The last two are workable since I've found suitable extensions that get around the original app's limitations. (I'm not counting utilities like Terminal, Activity Monitor, and the other applications located in the Utilities folder.) The problem with Finder alternatives is that apparently a number of other applications use Finder to list files in a folder when you go to access them. So, the alternative doesn't help there.

 

[monokakata]

Well, like The Fortunes sang in that song, "You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine." (Heard that on the radio recently...)

My system's behavior is similar in that once the list is populated, it populates very quickly on subsequent views. The first time might take about two seconds for large folders.

What I noticed along the way was that after I used Onyx, the initial population of some folders that used to take 20 plus seconds came down to two or three. Smaller folders were almost instant. After some time, depending on actual computer use, not just time since boot, the listing time gradually stretched out. A redo with Onyx fixed that. As I said, I wasn't sure if it was whatever Onyx did or whether it was the restart. Now, I find that a restart cleans things up when Finder starts getting lazier. But, perhaps it was the combination action of Onyx cleaning up some cache file(s) and the restart that did it. I don't have any way to tell, unfortunately. Sorry.

Since Apple has either not recognized the problem to date or has chosen to ignore it for a couple years, I don't have much faith that it will be fixed soon. After all, at this point they'd be admitting that there is a bug. And, it seems like their culture is that there's no glory in fixing things. As HDFan reported earlier, Apple will spend a long period deciding whether to even vote on looking into a bug after it's been reported by a lot of users. Plus, Apple's general customer facing approach seems to always be "We're moving ahead, we don't care about the past. Hey! Look at all the new emojis!"

Forklift might be the real solution for users. Waiting on Apple probably is not. It probably shouldn't be that way, but I'm finding more and more that Apple's supplied application software is getting less and less useful as they "improve" things.

UPDATE: Just did a little more research. It seems that I am really ignorant about Finder issues. I guess that's because its limitations haven't really annoyed me until now with this bug. But, a lot of people have been unhappy for quite some time. This is why there's a market for Finder alternatives. This article has a good summary toward its end that explains the problems with Finder, in very polite terms. Methinks that looking at alternatives to Finder may be in order. Apple has zero incentive to improve or fix its product, and they've demonstrated that. When I look at the Apple applications that I actually use now, it's down to Finder, Preview, Messages, Mail, and Safari. The last two are workable since I've found suitable extensions that get around the original app's limitations. (I'm not counting utilities like Terminal, Activity Monitor, and the other applications located in the Utilities folder.) The problem with Finder alternatives is that apparently a number of other applications use Finder to list files in a folder when you go to access them. So, the alternative doesn't help there.

The last problem you mention vexes me, because Forklift can't fix it. Maybe somebody with solid under-the-hood knowledge knows how to make Forklit the default for apps. I have a couple of apps that need to wrangle more than a thousand images, and the job gets handed off to Finder and yay us it's the Finder problem all over again.

 

[BKDad]

The last problem you mention vexes me, because Forklift can't fix it. Maybe somebody with solid under-the-hood knowledge knows how to make Forklit the default for apps. I have a couple of apps that need to wrangle more than a thousand images, and the job gets handed off to Finder and yay us it's the Finder problem all over again.

I wonder if the problem is with Finder itself or with some lower level API that Finder and these other applications use.

Since Forklift and some other applications like Carbon Copy Cloner seem to have avoided this problem, there must be a workaround. No help for existing applications, of course.

Don't you wonder what Apple is thinking about this? You can find lots of comments about this issue going back a couple years. Many, many, many have said that they have contacted Apple in some way about it.

 

[monokakata]

It took me a long time to get around to connecting my M2Pro MacBook Pro, running Sonoma 14.0, to the 4 bay TB enclosure. But finally I did it a few minutes ago and HOO BOY the disk I asked for came up immediately.

I saw the disk's contents (it's a spinner, 8 TB) -- all the folders showed instantly.

I opened a folder with 6 folders in it, totalling 33,947 Nikon D850 RAW images and they appeared very quickly.

So it seems likely that Sonoma 14.0 solves the problem.

I guess I'll upgrade the Studio, but doing so means I won't be able to use an app I very much like. Oh well. This is more important.

I know, I know -- we've been excited before (Onyx, reboots, etc.) but I think this is the real deal now.

 

[californiaburrito]

So it seems likely that Sonoma 14.0 solves the problem.

I'm on 14.1.1 and the problem persists for me.
2018 Mac mini

 

[BKDad]

It took me a long time to get around to connecting my M2Pro MacBook Pro, running Sonoma 14.0, to the 4 bay TB enclosure. But finally I did it a few minutes ago and HOO BOY the disk I asked for came up immediately.

I saw the disk's contents (it's a spinner, 8 TB) -- all the folders showed instantly.

I opened a folder with 6 folders in it, totalling 33,947 Nikon D850 RAW images and they appeared very quickly.

So it seems likely that Sonoma 14.0 solves the problem.

I guess I'll upgrade the Studio, but doing so means I won't be able to use an app I very much like. Oh well. This is more important.

I know, I know -- we've been excited before (Onyx, reboots, etc.) but I think this is the real deal now.

Well, let it run for a couple days and see if you still get instant folder display. It'd be totally great if you did. I'd really consider upgrading then myself.

Just yesterday I rebooted and got that fast response. This morning, it was back to slow again. The worst part was that I didn't use this computer much in between.

So, now I'm trying to remind myself to reboot every day.

UPDATE: I just tried a test folder again. This morning it populated the icons in about three seconds after the restart. Pretty decent. Just a couple minutes ago, the same test on an almost identical folder took 10 seconds. A reboot got it back to three or so. After the folder listing was populated once, it became instant. Again.

Fingers crossed on Sonoma.

I guess memory leaks and similar bugs have been routine with Finder over the years. Some get fixed, many do not. For every one that gets fixed, a new one shows up. Another Finder Memory Leak

 

[ericinboston]

For what it's worth...I had a similar problem on my 6 year old Win10 machine that hasn't been altered except Windows updates. As of about 1 year ago, when displaying some folders (mainly multimedia ones), Windows Explorer would take 10-20 seconds to display the folder when it used to be sub 1 second. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and thought it was a Windows Update but nope. Then I figured it was Windows Search, I disabled it, and meh it sometimes helped sometimes did not...totally random. Then I thought, heck, maybe something on the system bus was starting to flake out after 6 years because this affected my M.1 drive, SSD, and all external USB drives.

Then, a few weeks ago, I found the answer which was way way down on Google search results...it turns out that somehow the "Date" column/property was being used in Windows Explorer even though there are "Date Created" and "Date Modified" columns/properties being used. Well, the "Date" field is a very particular item where in that if enabled, Windows Explorer will open every single file in that folder and attempt to read more meta data from INSIDE the file to determine what the "date" of the file really is/was. This would be useful for certain types of files, including some multimedia, but the darn Date column brought Windows Explorer to its knees (and I'm on an i7 chip with 16GB RAM and blazing hard drives). My guess is that the Date column was somehow added to the default Folder View after some Windows Update and I simply didn't notice it. I know I didn't enable it because I would have remembered instantly "what changes did I make to my machine in the last 24 hours?!"

So it took me forever to figure it out but I am super happy by simply turning off the Date column. Maybe, just maybe, there is some part of my fix that will help you find your fix.

 

[monokakata]

Well, let it run for a couple days and see if you still get instant folder display. It'd be totally great if you did. I'd really consider upgrading then myself.

Just yesterday I rebooted and got that fast response. This morning, it was back to slow again. The worst part was that I didn't use this computer much in between.

So, now I'm trying to remind myself to reboot every day.

UPDATE: I just tried a test folder again. This morning it populated the icons in about three seconds after the restart. Pretty decent. Just a couple minutes ago, the same test on an almost identical folder took 10 seconds. A reboot got it back to three or so. After the folder listing was populated once, it became instant. Again.

Fingers crossed on Sonoma.

I guess memory leaks and similar bugs have been routine with Finder over the years. Some get fixed, many do not. For every one that gets fixed, a new one shows up. Another Finder Memory Leak

The MacBook is my travel machine (sometimes that only means traveling to another part of the house) so if I leave the TB external connected to it, obviousy the Studio can't get at what's there. I guess I'll do the Sonoma upgrade even though I'd prefer not to. Maybe this week.

And I haven't swapped out the cable yet.

 

[martinomac7]

This morning, I tried a different approach. I used Onyx to perform what they call Maintenance on the system. It cleans out caches and a bunch of other files. Guess what! After doing that, Finder populated the same test folder file listing almost instantly. Back to Mojave speed, pretty much. Imagine my surprise. I just opened a different folder with 2500+ files in it to check. It took about three seconds to populate the file listing. The Loading message barely stayed on screen.

I created an account just to thank you! Not all hero's wear caps

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this thread. I've been dealing with this same issue using my OWC Thunderbay IV RAID 4 (using softraid 7.6) since Ventura and it was driving me crazy. As a photographer, I need to access raw folders often (~50 GB/2000+ files) - waiting 15-20 seconds was unacceptable.

I even brought this up with OWC support, they acknowledge the issue and recommended DiskWarrior. After running DW, it did fix some permission issues and other items. Shaving off about 50% of the lag in Finder.

But running Onyx really did the trick. My large folders display almost instantly (in Column view). Must be some cached files hanging Finder and now I restart every could have days as well.

Rig: M1 Mac Studio, 32 GB Ram, Ventura 13.6.1, Thunderbay 4 - 24 TB (14 TB free), HFS+, RAID 4, stripe size 64 KB.

I'll report back after a few days of testing.

 

[HDFan]

Using the default was a mistake for me because in my heady rush to fix this gd problem, I didn't look too closely at which caches and whatnot Onyx was going to clear and it deleted my Safari browsing history which really does suck. So warning to anyone who tries this method as a fix and wants to keep their browser history intact — Maintenance > Cleaning > Internet > Browser history > uncheck.

Has anyone figured out which of the Onyx maintenance settings is the one that reduces the problem? Working with Apple Support again and it will help to know the specific setting that helps.

 

[BKDad]

Has anyone figured out which of the Onyx maintenance settings is the one that reduces the problem? Working with Apple Support again and it will help to know the specific setting that helps.

Initially, I used the Onyx default settings EXCEPT I turned Internet cleaning off.

But, that doesn't provide much insight. That's kind of all inclusive and doesn't eliminate many candidates. I didn't think to try each individual maintenance tool one at a time to eliminate them systematically.

Since doing that initial maintenance I've found that just doing a macOS restart cleans up the problem. Whether Onyx deleted a problematic file that allowed for a restart to fix things, I have no way to tell.

This detail may help - after a number of hours, the problem creeps back. This is especially true when the computer runs overnight. A test folder that might take two seconds or less to populate the file listing after a restart takes 20-30 seconds after the computer has been running for that time. Aside from Mail and macOS background tasks running over that time, not much is happening. Certainly no interaction with the Finder. There may be a clue in that. Is it a thing that happens when macOS takes an APFS snapshot? What?

Also, force quitting Finder has no effect. If the problem is a memory leak or something similar in Finder, you'd think that a force quit would resolve that. It certainly reduces the memory used by Finder by quite a bit.

UPDATE - After posting this, I had a thought. I tried just deleting the APFS snapshots using Onyx. No other actions and no restart. No effect. A restart then did get back to 2-3 seconds to populate the file listing in my test folder. Hope that helps some.

 

[monokakata]

I just updated my Studio M2Max to Sonoma 14.1.2 and my externals open instantly.

But...who knows? It may not last. At the moment, it's great.

 

[BKDad]

Any issues?

Good luck! Keep us posted.

 

[BKDad]

I just updated my Studio M2Max to Sonoma 14.1.2 and my externals open instantly.

But...who knows? It may not last. At the moment, it's great.

So, should I be updating to Sonoma?

 

[monokakata]

So, should I be updating to Sonoma?

Finder continues to behave. I did reboot once, but not because of anything Finder was doing. So at the moment, I'm pleased.

 

[BKDad]

Finder continues to behave. I did reboot once, but not because of anything Finder was doing. So at the moment, I'm pleased.

Thanks! I think I might wait the week or two until 14.2 comes along, just to save some time.

Great discovery by you. Thanks again for sharing.

 

[HDFan]

should I be updating to Sonoma?

Fixed a few things. Default Folder X now works without delays. Finder folder list slowness still exists.

 

[BKDad]

Fixed a few things. Default Folder X now works without delays. Finder folder list slowness still exists.

Downsides?