Slow Shutdown in Mavericks 10.9

I remember reading some problems regarding Google Chrome, which caused slow shutdowns on OS X.

Do you happen to have it installed?

How can chrome not running slow shutdown?

I had an issue with Keychain Access storing my Game Center login details. Shutdown time went up to 15 seconds.

Logging out of Game Center removed my login from Keychain and shutdown time went down to 3 seconds.

I have a brand new 15" rMBP and the shutdown time is insanely slow. It's even slower at shutting down then my old 2010 MBP which doesn't even have a SSD. The startup time is really, really good, I'd just like to speed up my shutdowns.

Is what the OP posted safe to do? I'm curious, what does it actually do? I've seen it posted around, but I've never tried it. Anyone have any other good tips?

simon48 said:

I have a brand new 15" rMBP and the shutdown time is insanely slow. It's even slower at shutting down then my old 2010 MBP which doesn't even have a SSD. The startup time is really, really good, I'd just like to speed up my shutdowns.

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The shutdown time on my brand-new 13" rMBP is very slow, too. It's not a big deal to me as I hardly ever shut it down, but when I do, i gets annoying.

If you leave the Mail app open during shutdown it can delay or, in some cases, cancel shutdown. Other apps that can interfere with shutdown if they need to complete a process first, but Mail is the worse of the worse. Otherwise shutdown is normally very fast on both my Mini and Mac Pro, both with SSD and 10.9.

I also have this.

I shut all open apps before shutting down. 1 in 5 times it will shut down within seconds, no problems the rest of the time I get one of 2 problems:

1: I'll hit shut down and the menu bar will disappear but it won't actually shut down. I then have to open another app so the menu bar reappears, I then hit shut down again and it normally shuts down as normal.

2: It will freeze on the grey screen, I then have to hold the power button to switch off.

Is it just a mavericks problem that will hopefully get patched up?

I'm running a late 2013 rMBP btw.

Gochugogi said:

If you leave the Mail app open during shutdown it can delay or, in some cases, cancel shutdown. Other apps that can interfere with shutdown if they need to complete a process first, but Mail is the worse of the worse. Otherwise shutdown is normally very fast on both my Mini and Mac Pro, both with SSD and 10.9.

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Mail, I'll have to test this because I always leave Mail running. Thanks.

I have to agree that Mail seems to be the largest culprit of the slow shutdown on my early 2013 MBPr. Even when it's not open when shutting down I still get some slowness. I believe Mavericks needs some tweaking on how it handles the apps in the menu bar during shut down.

To the original poster - what's the make and model of your computer?

These slow shutdown issues were fixed with Mountain Lion 10.8.5 and Mav's shuts down as quickly (or faster) than M.L.

If you're having problems, I would suspect 3rd party apps or another misconfiguration in your case. Have you recently repaired disk permissions? Can't hurt....

Again, slow shutdown in your case (With Mavericks) is not an inherent defect in the operating system itself, but rather your particular configuration.

Do a search and you will find slow shutdowns for a long time now, not just Mavericks but Lion and Mountain Lion as well. Some have a work around and many hope the next OS version will fix it, but it has not thus far. Again, just do a search above for find many posts on this matter

Clean install or upgrade?With clean install some report this problem that for magically reason only apple know disappear with upgrade.

I've noticed that if its been a while since I last shutdown my iMac (which it normally is as I sleep it mostly). The shutdown time is longer. Now if it's only been a day or so, the shutdown time is much quicker.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a slow shutdown though.

Don't mean to take this thread off-track, but what is the best way (extending the life of my mid-2012 rMBP) to not use it during off hours: closing the lid to sleep, or shutting it down completely? I'm a pretty new convert from Windows and I always used to shut down my PC every night until I got home from work the next evening.

In my experience, it can take anywhere from 2 to 30 seconds for my Mac to shutdown completely. This has been the case since ML and now in 10.9.1. I don't use the Mail.app that often, but will try the Terminal commands given by the OP now.

82asmdf203 said:

what is the best way (extending the life of my mid-2012 rMBP) to not use it during off hours

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I just close the lid. I've gone with my MBA (and before, my MBP) like that for months on end. I don't think there's an actually measurable difference in lifetime between either way you mentioned.

Personally I'm not going to run those commands just yet. Not sure where OP got them, or whether they have any side effects that might pop up in a later update/upgrade.

I have a late 2013 rMBP and my wife has a mid 2013 MBA. Both have Mavericks installed. My rMBP logs out and shuts down pretty slow, even though login is very snappy. It's just as slow when I boot in Safe Mode, too, so I'm pretty sure it's not something I've installed (I am a nut about keeping my computer very clean, and I do it by hand, NOT using any crapware like MacKeeper).

Interestingly, my wife's MBA doesn't have this issue (though it does have a couple of other issues that mine doesn't have).

I think the slow shutdown/log out is a Mavericks issue. Has anyone out there encountered this with a MBA? If not, maybe we could narrow it down to an rMBP/Mavericks issue.

Quitting Mail doesn't help my shutdown time at all.

Try this, it fixed it for me.

Turn off wifi

Open keychain

Locate your WiFi keychain entry and delete it from keychain. Delete all occurrences you can find for it in keychain.

Restart your mac

Reconnect to your wifi network you will need to enter your wifi pass code. Let it connect and then try and restart. And see if it has improved the slow shutdown. It fixed mine and now takes around 1-2 second to switch off.

knguyench said:

I think issue of 10.9. Because 10.7 shutdown time is fast -5 s

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Oh my… that is fast! Didn't know negative shutdown times existed! OK enough joking around.

I have the same problem but it doesn't bother me. I press shut down, shut the lid, and go off to work. When I open lid again, computer is shut down and ready to be awakened. It is a diff. story that I barely shut down as sleep takes care of my needs.

what i'v learn is that, there's nothing you can do to help, EXCEPT 1 thing.

that 1 thing is to re-formatted. and this is still by chance, just keep re-formatting til you get fast shut down.

I have fallen into this situation too many times.

kensic said:

what i'v learn is that, there's nothing you can do to help, EXCEPT 1 thing.

that 1 thing is to re-formatted. and this is still by chance, just keep re-formatting til you get fast shut down.

I have fallen into this situation too many times.

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reformatting never helped me....... Did it loads of times and still the same.

My keychain suggestion is the only think that has proved successful and has been over the past month or so....