Open and Save dialogs are very, very, very slow

Tech Support
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I’m at my wit’s end. Open and Save operations using the File dropdown menu are insanely slow on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. This goes for the “Duplicate” button as well. Opening and saving files in all other ways (e.g. command-S to save, double-clicking a file icon to open, etc.) are just as fast as they ever were. I go out of my way to use these alternatives, but sometimes (e.g. when I want to “save as” there is no other easy option, and I just need to wait and wait and wait while the Finder does… what? This started on Sonoma, and I hoped that updating to Sequoia would help, but it didn’t. The computer works perfectly in every other way. What could possibly be going on?

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There can be any number of causes, but the these come to mind right way:

  • machine is looking for network shares that don’t exist or are not responding? Turn off network and see if it makes a difference.

  • hardware issue on local disk?

  • look at the Console app to see if there are any clues. Also look at the system logs. in Applications/utility folder.

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@rms’ suggestions are very good. Starting there may be a good idea. Does it happen with all users? Or only with “your” user?

One cause for this problem can be issues with iCloud. Are you using iCloud Drive? If there is something wrong with the iCloud Drive thing/sync/metadata, this can be a typical behavior. Does it go away if you turn off iCloud Drive? As always: before doing anything, having a backup available is important.

Sometimes turning iCloud Drive off and on again does help, sometimes clearing caches does help. Sometimes the issue may come back which can be an indication for data corruption on Apple’s iCloud servers which means that you may have to contact Apple to sort this out. iCloud is a pain to debug if there are issues.

Some years old, but still happening sometimes (problems with iCloud Metadata):

There are many potential causes for this issue. New to me - if you make heavy use of tags:

Troubleshooting : Slow Open and Save Dialogs in the Finder.

Useful and not so useful results:

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Thanks to both of you for the quick and good answers. So far, nothing helps :frowning: fileproviderd hovers close to 100% CPU and goes over when opening and saving, so maybe there is a clue there. I will report back if I figure it out.

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That’s a clue. Search internet for “fileproviderd” for some information/suggestion by many others. In particular, the top hit seems a good start:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254243610?sortBy=rank

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Problem solved! Both of you were on the right track with network shares. In my particular case, the sinner turned out to be OneDrive, which my work had “enabled” on my computer. As soon as I signed out of OneDrive on my MacBook, open/save dialogs were blazing fast again. Now my blood pressure has begun to lower, and I can get back to actually doing my work. Thank you for your help!

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For others stopping by this thread, I had a similar issue and it was due to a local hard drive which was failing. Once that drive was removed (and eventually replaced) the issue was resolved.

@ethanweed I’m glad you got it sorted.

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Computers, man. My problem is “solved” in the sense that my computer has been returned to normal operating speeds. But it remains unsolved in the sense that I no longer know why, which indicates to me that I probably never did fully the understand the solution to begin with. The “fix” for me was to sign out of OneDrive. This ended my problems immediately. But weeks later, I needed to sign back in, to download some documents from the cloud. I figured I would download what I needed, and then sign out again. But the computer continued to function perfectly. Now I am not only still signed into OneDrive, but I have even signed into a second OneDrive account on the same computer, and there are no problems with speed. I did used to have a Hazel rule that monitored a local folder and copied files to OneDrive every time something changed. Was that the problem? I have since disabled the rule. Or maybe Microsoft has updated something on OneDrive, so whatever was causing me problems before has been fixed? Or maybe it was some third thing entirely, that has nothing to do with OneDrive or Hazel, or maybe even nothing to do with MacOS, but which happened to be altered when I signed out of OneDrive. Perhaps it was something our IT security or network management department changed. I will probably never know. The complexity of modern computing makes trouble-shooting a real headache! Anyway, I’m just happy my computer works again :slight_smile:

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It sounds like a stuck syncing process. You stopped the syncing and started fresh. Problem solved.

IT Crowd to the rescue - the old question: “Have you turned it off and on again?”

While this really is funny, this also is the sad truth. :slight_smile:

My guess was iCloud. But yes, OneDrive is another process.

If it happens again (watch the video or read on):

  1. Reboot your Mac. If the problem persists: continue.
  2. Make a Backup
  3. Sign out of OneDrive.
  4. Sign in again. If the problem persists, continue.
  5. Sign out of OneDrive.
  6. Uninstall OneDrive and delete the OneDrive folder.
  7. Reboot your Mac
  8. Install OneDrive again.
  9. Sign in again.
  10. If the problem persists: continue troubleshooting with other processes that tamper with fileproviderd (one of them being iCloud).

IT, the gift that keeps on giving…

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