Launching apps always have a 3 second beachball wait

[farewelwilliams]

This is something I've been experiencing for the past several years.

Is this normal? When I launch Safari, I see the window immediately, but beachball icon appears for 3 seconds while the app is unresponsive. Seems to happen with every app. Any fix? Or is this just life?

 

[Goatllama]

Need more info to come to any kind of diagnosis.

OS? RAM? Free space on hard drive? When did it start exactly i.e. did any particular even precede this change?

 

[farewelwilliams]

Need more info to come to any kind of diagnosis.

OS? RAM? Free space on hard drive? When did it start exactly i.e. did any particular even precede this change?

10.11.4
Happens on both rMBP 2012 and 2014 both with nvidia gfx
300GB out of 512GB free
16gb ram

i don't recall what caused it to change. i just know that if i were to install a fresh OS X, Safari won't be beachballing when I launch.

 

[Goatllama]

Wait, is it just Safari? And on two computers? Title of thread is a bit misleading, if so. Have you cleared history and website data?

 

[NoBoMac]

Also, in the case of Safari, it could be a misbehaving extension.

 

[Goatllama]

Also, in the case of Safari, it could be a misbehaving extension.

^ an even better idea than mine ^

 

[NoBoMac]

History and website data is a great idea too. I've had beach balling Safari in the past when the history file had become unwieldy. Hence, I have my Safari set to keep only 30 days worth of info (as I really care about a web site I might have visited once a year ago?).

 

[Gregg2]

Happens to me too. Not a big deal. New computer, fresh install of El Cap over Yosemite, and one update since purchase.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Wait, is it just Safari? And on two computers? Title of thread is a bit misleading, if so. Have you cleared history and website data?

Also, in the case of Safari, it could be a misbehaving extension.

History and website data is a great idea too. I've had beach balling Safari in the past when the history file had become unwieldy. Hence, I have my Safari set to keep only 30 days worth of info (as I really care about a web site I might have visited once a year ago?).

Happens to me too. Not a big deal. New computer, fresh install of El Cap over Yosemite, and one update since purchase.

Not just Safari. I mentioned "Seems to happen with every app"

Example, it also happens in: Remote Desktop, Slack, Skype, Tweetbot, Messages, Terminal.

 

[simonsi]

Also, in the case of Safari, it could be a misbehaving extension.

Or just syncing bookmarks, or reading cloud data or...

 

[farewelwilliams]

Figured it out. Unplug all external usb drives and disconnect from all network shares. Annoying, it shouldn't be like this.

 

[Goatllama]

Figured it out. Unplug all external usb drives and disconnect from all network shares. Annoying, it shouldn't be like this.

Wow. How many things are we talking about that had to be disconnected? Your specs seem to indicate the computer shouldn't have trouble with these sort of things, or at least I wouldn't expect it.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Wow. How many things are we talking about that had to be disconnected? Your specs seem to indicate the computer shouldn't have trouble with these sort of things, or at least I wouldn't expect it.

2 usb external drives and one NAS share.

 

[rnbwd]

download onyx and change settings to reduce transparency / animations.
Or use terminal and change settings so it's more compatible with your mac - a long list can be found here: awesome-osx-command-line

Only use what you need - everything should be reversible (eg. replace false with true if you want to revert the setting or just replace 'write' with 'delete' and don't include the '-bool' or '-string' at the end

# Avoid creating .DS_Store files on network volumes
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

# Avoid creating .DS_Store files on usb volumes
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteUSBStores -bool true



# Disable disk image verification
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify -bool true
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify-locked -bool true
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify-remote -bool true


# Change minimize/maximize window effect
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string "scale"

# Don’t animate opening applications from the Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false

# Speed up Mission Control animations
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1

#############################################################################
# Time Machine                                                                #
###############################################################################

# Prevent Time Machine from prompting to use new hard drives as backup volume
defaults write com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool true

# Disable local Time Machine backups
hash tmutil &> /dev/null && sudo tmutil disablelocal

###############################################################################
# Activity Monitor                                                            #
###############################################################################

# Show the main window when launching Activity Monitor
defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor OpenMainWindow -bool true

# Visualize CPU usage in the Activity Monitor Dock icon
defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor IconType -int 5

# Show all processes in Activity Monitor
defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor ShowCategory -int 0

# Sort Activity Monitor results by CPU usage
defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor SortColumn -string "CPUUsage"
defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor SortDirection -int 0

# Always show scrollbars
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowScrollBars -string "Always"
# Possible values: `WhenScrolling`, `Automatic` and `Always`

# Disable the over-the-top focus ring animation
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseAnimatedFocusRing -bool false

# Disable smooth scrolling
# (Uif you’re on an older Mac that messes up the animation)
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool false

# Disable hibernation (speeds up entering sleep mode)
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

##########################################################################

# Finder: allow quitting via ⌘ + Q; doing so will also hide desktop icons
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool true

# Finder: disable window animations and Get Info animations
defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool true