macOS Sierra Finder extremely slow

[desertman]

Finder on my Mac mini has become extremely slow. When I i. e. want to move some icons on the desktop it can take easily 30 seconds or even longer before that happens (and in-between I have the beach ball spinning). The same is true when moving files i. e. from a folder onto the desktop (but not when moving files from a folder into a sub-folder). The same is true when wanting to open or save or print any document from within any application.

I have several times run Disk Utility, Onyx, Sierra Cache Cleaner; I have deleted the Finder plist files; I have killed the cloudd processes - nothing helps.

In the past it was possible to run the latest combo updater again and that often eliminated problems. However, this is now not anymore possible (it seems that Apple in its infinite wisdom decided to disable this possibility).

What else can I do to get Finder back to normal?

 

[jbarley]

Have you tried starting in "safe mode", press and hold the shift key when starting.
If not then give it a try and once booted try some of the actions that have caused you problems and report back with the results.
Might just help isolate your problem.

 

[desertman]

Safe mode did not make a difference at all.

What made a difference was to turn off iCloud Drive. The very moment I did this the speed of Finder and all its functions went back to normal. (And this certainly has nothing to do with my Internet connection - I get pretty reliably 50 MB/s down and 5 MB/s up.)

However, I'm now not really sure where my data are. I had used iCloud Drive to synchronize Desktop and Documents between Mac mini and MacBook Pro - and it always felt weird. I was never really sure how synchronized the data were and whether what I saw on my computers was really on my computers or not.

I still have an iCloud Drive folder on my Mac, and it says at the bottom of the folder window something about "uploading 37,908 [and counting up] items (10.14 GB of 47.80 GB" - I have no idea what that means. I could understand that data gets downloaded to my computer in order to bring all data back from iCloud Drive to my computer - but UPLOADING?

I think that iCloud Drive created a huge mess for me. And unfortunately, as usual by now with Apple, there is no proper documentation explaning what is happening here. The amount of time I have already spent on this and will further on have to spend on it is maddening.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I still have an iCloud Drive folder on my Mac, and it says at the bottom of the folder window something about "uploading 37,908 [and counting up] items (10.14 GB of 47.80 GB" - I have no idea what that means. I could understand that data gets downloaded to my computer in order to bring all data back from iCloud Drive to my computer - but UPLOADING?"

I'm sure this has something to do with it.

I can only speak for myself, but I DO NOT USE iCLOUD.

I would not recommend using it's "disk management" features, either.
I want my files ON MY DRIVE, not "in the cloud".

I realize that folks may still need iCloud for synching their phones and iPads.

But what I would try first is to TURN OFF the options (accessible in the "storage" pane of "about this Mac") to
- store in iCloud
- optimize storage.

See what that does for you.

 

[desertman]

I use iCloud - but I do not use iCloud Drive anymore and it makes a huge (HUGE!) positive difference in the speed of everything Finder-related. It's kind of strange because I know people who do use iCloud Drive and have no problems.

 

[Eithanius]

OT: I just do not understand Apple. They rewritten Finder in SL fast and sleek, but they screwed it up so badly with every iteration of MacOS after that...