M1 Max Finder instability?

[kingtj1971]

I've been noticing an issue that I haven't seen specifically discussed... On my Macbook Pro 16" M1 Max (64GB RAM model with 2TB drive), I typically leave it booted up and running while attached to my external display, Mac keyboard and mouse. That's usually ok, but after enough time (maybe as little as a week or so?), I sometimes come back to it having Finder issues that make it unusable. (Basically, it will appear to still be running fine except the entire Finder top toolbar is gone. The mouse right-click functionality will appear to be gone as well -- although I've seen it work inside an app that's still running on my desktop. Just won't work any longer outside of that, on the desktop itself.)

I'm sure this is some kind of memory leak, and maybe one of the applications I use is the culprit. (I do have a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner which leaves its driver running in the background, among other things.) But the fact the problem always seems to involve the Finder losing its drop-down menu makes it feel more like a core Mac OS problem.

 

[satcomer]

Option button+click the Dock to click the relaunch Finder button to restart the Finder! This might help!

 

[solouki]

Just another option ...

Since installing 12.3 Beta 5 I've been experiencing some sporadic Finder problems, mostly with scrollbars, that did not occur in 12.3 Beta 4. In general, I clear these minor issues also by restarting the Finder, but I use the Terminal command:

$ killall Finder

to restart the Finder.

Solouki

 

[kingtj1971]

Option button+click the Dock to click the relaunch Finder button to restart the Finder! This might help!

I was able to CMD-ALT-ESC to pull up the list of tasks and relaunch Finder that way, but both times I gave that a try, it still had the problems when Finder relaunched? So it seemed like whatever went wrong got things corrupted enough in memory so only a reboot would clear it.