Desktop slow to refresh

[MatthewW30]

Thanks so much. I've been having issue with desktop lag for about a year, and finally decided to see if anything could be done to stop it (without reformatting the entire drive).

With the advice here, I turned off one of the Finder Extensions, "MBG Copy," (which is an extension for "Duplicate" which is a free directory cloner from Macdaddy.io that I use sometimes) and instantly the desktop lag disappeared.
I didn't even have to disable the Dropbox and Creative Cloud finder Extensions.

Specs: Late 2012 27-in iMac, with a 3TB fusion drive, running OSX 10.13.6

 

[bombardier.v2]

As of the time of writing this (11th Feb 2020), I confirm that the SugarSync Finder Extension installed with 3.11.2.3.0.20191023 causes this issue with 10.13.6.

 

[Rejean]

I have had the same frustrating problem. After some searching, it seems this is due to a macOS bug in the Finder Extension API in High Sierra. To fix this behavior, you should disable Finder Extensions in System Preferences (see below image). This immediately fixed the problem for me. This bug is supposedly fixed on Mojave 10.14, but I have not been able to upgrade to be sure.

View attachment 820231

Same story for me and I found this post from "pruppert". I tried the same thing as explained above except that, for me, the culprit finder extension was: "Open Terminal Finder Extension". As soon as I disabled it, the finder worked fine and fast. So IMHO this is a point to start with: check the finder extensions.

A thousand thanks to "pruppert" for his finding to solve this annoying finder bug. You saved me a lot of frustrations😈

 

[truthsmiles]

Very, very late to the party here, but to share my own experience....

Unlike many others here, I am a simple man and don't really have much "special" software installed...no third-party syncing software of any kind, no antivirus, nothing. My computer is pretty new (to me) and I'm running 10.15.7 Catalina. For the last year or so I've had the slow screenshot issue and it's driven me nuts - until today!

Much like @pruppert and @Rejean above noted, the solution is in Extensions, but there are (slightly different) extension settings for Finder now... note one is called "Finder Extensions" and the other is called simply "Finder".

Here's what solved my problem:

1) System Preferences > Extensions > Finder Extensions > Uncheck all (in my case it was only "iCloud Drive")
2) Restart computer

For me, step 2 was critical. I saw no difference until I restarted and then it was pure bliss! It's probably been more than a year I've been mentally counting to 30 before I even look for my screenshots (which I use ALL the time), and now it's snap-instant! It's like having a new computer again

Thanks again to everyone in this thread - you changed my life!