“After upgrading to OS X 10.10.3, you may find that navigating the Finder can be arduously slow at times, where the contents of folders you open may take a while to display, and otherwise scrolling and navigating may be overall sluggish,” Topher Kessler reports for MacIssues. ” If this occurs, then you can likely fix it by clearing some Finder-related cache information from your Mac.”
“Caches are small databases of frequently accessed resources that a program can access far quicker than having to locate and parse this information directly from locations on disk, or which store specific URLs and other Web resources that a program may use for accessing an online account or other data,” Kessler reports. “While they usually enhance performance, if damaged then caches may do the exact opposite.”
Read more in the full article here.
Already been doing this.
Seems to help.
This kind of stuff is the BS that we used to make fun of Windows users for doing. Get it together, Apple!!!!
OS X has always had caches, so your comment is rather ignorant.
Howie, how often did you empty you cashes in OS X 10.2 through 10.6? Now it’s a maintenance task that you have to do reqularly. This is not the progress I expect from Apple. Mike has a point!
I do so as a troubleshooting step. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t. I’ve done this with EVERY version of OS X since 10.0 shipped in March 2001. You’re making way too much of this. You might as well start bitching about having to trash preferences, or perform OS X reinstalls.
“I do so as a troubleshooting step. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t.”
So you find this unpredictable behavior acceptable in the 10th major update of a software product? Why?
Troubleshooting is not an exact science. When I have no idea what is causing a problem, I start looking at cache files, preferences, configuration files, etc. For me, OS X has been rock solid with very few problems. No operating system is perfect. I’ve been working in I.T. supporting Apple products for over 15 years. Ask any I.T. pro, and they will tell you that they do the same things that I do.
It’s nowhere near being “a maintenance task that you have to do reqularly” with Mavericks. About as common as it was in earlier versions of OS X, in my experience.
I did have to worry about caches more often with earlier versions of OS X. Font caches were the worst. Since Lion, I’ve only had to clear out font caches one time, and that was actually because of a problem that the user caused, not because of anything wrong with OS X.
I’ve recently been experiencing occasional spontaneous Finder aborts/Restarts when copying large video files around, very unsettling when it happens; hope this fixes it.
Very helpful! I haven’t had this problem, but I’ve held onto this for my customers who might be affected.
Im my experience Apple and Cache don’t mix well! They need to get rid of all cache, instead they are adding more and creating more problems!
I’ll take some of Apple’s cache. They seem to have billions.
This trick became critical with buggy OS X 10.7.x Lion. I’ve been using it ever since.
Does dumping cache to speed up the Finder make sense? You’d think not. But it does! Naughty Finder! 😛
Does Apple actually still make computers? With all the breathless pants wetting over its new watch one wonders.