Why is Chrome getting so slow when file vault is enabled

filevaultgoogle-chrome

I recently enabled file vault to encrypt my disk but now Google Chrome is really slow and it seems to be related to the file vault. The slowness is in anything and everything I do in chrome: opening a new tab, opening a link or a bookmark, even switching to a different gmail inbox tab is slow. I've already changed my new tab page to be blank, which helped a little but it is still very slow.

My suspicion is that it is related to file vault encrypting Chrome cache. Is there a way to work around that?

Best Answer

I've solved this problem by moving my Chrome cache outside of my home folder as follows:

Closed chrome. Then in Terminal:

  1. cd Library/Application\ Support
  2. sudo mkdir -p /local/myusername/
  3. sudo chown myusername:_lpoperator /local/myusername/
  4. mv Google /local/myusername/
  5. ln -s /local/myusername/Google

Update: I'm not entirely clear why this speeds things up again, since, as was noted in the comments, File Vault 2 actually does encrypt the entire disk, not just the home folder. But it does seem to work nonetheless.

Related Question