MacOS – Mavericks Finder spins when opening folders

findermacos

Since upgrading to Mavericks, Finder sometimes hangs when I select a folder and am waiting for its contents to populate the window. This happens primarily in Open dialog boxes:

Finder spinning

It'll spin for about 15-30 seconds before showing the items in that folder. I can "Go to folder" and it'll usually show the contents immediately in that case. Why does it spin, and is there a way to make it faster? (It should be instant. I don't go to folders with thousands or even hundreds of items.)

Clarifications: These are just regular, local folders, usually in my home directory… not Remote Disc or network shares or anything fancy. It's an early 2013 Retina MBP, so it has a solid-state drive.

Best Answer

There are a number of Apple Support Communities discussions regarding this, and a number of possible fixes given. To summarise in case one works for you:

  • Disable Finder App Nap

    This seems to fix it for almost everyone on ASC who had Finder working fine in 10.8 but now is 'broken' in 10.9.

    sudo defaults write com.apple.Finder NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

    …then log out and back in with 'Reopen windows when logging back in' disabled.

  • Clear Finder Caches

    Empty ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder and restart Finder.

    rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder/ && killall -HUP Finder

  • Reset Finder Preferences

    Related to above — delete both preference files used by Finder:

    rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple/sidebarlists.plist

  • Reindex Spotlight

    sudo mdutil -E /

  • Change the 'Show Scroll Bars' setting

    It seems that it can be fixed by changing the scroll bar setting in System Preferences → General from When Scrolling to Always.

  • Repair Permissions

    Try repairing permissions in Disk Utility.

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