Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Most of the time its 20 seconds now, but for some unknown reason and without doing anything different, the time to shutdown will be 3 seconds and only once than back to 20 seconds again. This happens a few times now and cannot understand why this is. Goofy OS X

I have this exact same behaviour under the latest version of ML.Around 20 seconds on average with maybe every fifth shut down being around 1 second. Was always around 1 second a couple of months back on Lion - the slow shut downs happened after the last update to Lion and have been there every since in some form or another.
 
I'm assuming that there are some periodic background system checks or low level maintenance going on at shutdown that are hard to spot and somewhat random. At least it doesn't behave that way on startup.
 
I'm assuming that there are some periodic background system checks or low level maintenance going on at shutdown that are hard to spot and somewhat random. At least it doesn't behave that way on startup.
If you're referring to the maintenance scripts that run daily, weekly and monthly, those are scheduled to run at specific times, or, if a Mac is sleeping at the scheduled time, they run the next time it's running. They don't run at shutdown. My guess would be a process that is hung up or busy.
 
Deleting Google Chrome did the trick, thanks! I hope it is not just temporary.
Others have reported this as well, but it ends up being temporary. Do you still have a fast shutdown time, or did it revert back to the longer shutdown time?
 
Others have reported this as well, but it ends up being temporary. Do you still have a fast shutdown time, or did it revert back to the longer shutdown time?

Unfortunately, it was only a temporary fix.
 
I wouldn't say definitive. I have been clearing caches for a while and next shut down is always rapid but the problem soon comes back.
 
I wouldn't say definitive. I have been clearing caches for a while and next shut down is always rapid but the problem soon comes back.

Agree. Tried same, but it just came back again. Still seeing a fast shutdown ever so often and confused as to why not always.
 
getting rid of chrome worked for me too :) getting closer and closer to an air as quick as my old SL one!
 
so its for sure been a recent update software issue that all of a sudden caused slow shut downs??

all i know s my rMBP was 1-2 sec shutdown, after a recent update, it is 20-30 seconds.
 
Here's what I found that helps: before shutting down I quit all my opening apps instead of leaving them open. The shutdown time reduced to only 5-6 secs. Try it!
 
Here's what I found that helps: before shutting down I quit all my opening apps instead of leaving them open. The shutdown time reduced to only 5-6 secs. Try it!

I have no open apps and still same issue. What have you shut down that have helped ?

Safari is the only one that I have not shut down in dock.

Edit: Shut down "Pages" that I forgot to shut, and shutdown took 5 seconds. Second time it went up to 15 seconds for shut down, and third time back up to 20 seconds. So this did not work for me. Shut down Pages again along with Safari from dock and still 20 second shut down.

Edit 2: OK, I have now removed from the Dock "Mission Control" and my shut down twice has been 3 seconds. Will try again.

Edit 3 & last time: Shut down 3 seconds again for the third time with Mission Control removed from the Dock, but the fourth time it took 10 seconds. All over the map again after a few start ups and shut downs. Not going to bother anymore until Apple comes up with a fix. Software glitch is the likely issue with OS X 10.8.2
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2012-10-16 at 9.01.19 AM.png
    Screen Shot 2012-10-16 at 9.01.19 AM.png
    24.8 KB · Views: 4,078
Last edited:
Sometimes if you frequently restart mac it will restart faster, but a after couple of days it seems it's back to 20 seconds. I would say there is nothing we can do about it. Maybe it's a feature where it writes RAM to HDD/SSD but I still don't get it why it's so slow.
 
Hi all,

I have found a "not-too-dirty" workaround for the slow shutdown issue that seems to be persistent for me and is not bound to the removal/cleanup of any specific cache, application, or service.
If interested, you can find the details in this post.
 
I was having the same issue running 10.8.2 on the 2011 MacBook Air. I think the culprit is having location services and the Find My Mac service enabled. I did a clean install and unchecked those options and I have not had any shutdown issues since even after restoring all the applications I use - thus I have a good feeling it's not due to any third party software as suggested in this thread.
 
I was having the same issue running 10.8.2 on the 2011 MacBook Air. I think the culprit is having location services and the Find My Mac service enabled. I did a clean install and unchecked those options and I have not had any shutdown issues since even after restoring all the applications I use - thus I have a good feeling it's not due to any third party software as suggested in this thread.

Worked first time with 4 second shut down...

Second time, and back to 20 second shutdown time. :(
 
As I said above, you may want to try the workaround posted here and further refined here.
Not guaranteed whether it applies to your case as well but, if it does, it should work around the problem (hopefully) permanently.
 
As I said above, you may want to try the workaround posted here and further refined here.
Not guaranteed whether it applies to your case as well but, if it does, it should work around the problem (hopefully) permanently.

I followed this from the Apple Discussions forum in your first link and it worked fine for me - set the timeout to 1 second for that plist and now back to pretty much instant shut downs!
 
Last edited:
Slow shutdown

It took me a while to fix it, but believe it or not this worked for me:
1. Shut down your computer with "Reopen windows when logging..." CHECKED. (The shut down will be slow this time ~ 20 seconds)
2. Turn your computer on
3. Shut down with "Reopen windows when logging..." UNCHECKED. It now shuts down in 2 seconds.

Good Luck!

Certainly worked for me. Shutdown was 25-30 secs after installing ML. Now it's pretty well instantaneous. Thanks for a great tip.
 
Deleted the java file, and guess what...instant shut down. Great work! Was previously taking about 25-30 seconds to do so
Page 1 for the tip. .
Mac Mini late 2012, i7 2.6, 256GB SSD
 
Deleted the java file, and guess what...instant shut down. Great work! Was previously taking about 25-30 seconds to do so
Page 1 for the tip. .
Mac Mini late 2012, i7 2.6, 256GB SSD

I tried this, didn't really do anything to shorten the slow shut down time.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.