Since I updated to MacOS Tahoe 26.1 the open/save dialog of Finder became unbearably slow, like five seconds for every navigation step. I found this thread on Reddit that suggested turning off iCloud Drive documents and desktop syncing but I've never had that turned on. It also suggested turning off iCloud drive all together but I was not about to do that.
Someone in that thread linked to this solution which is an easy one: delete the plist file that keeps track of recent folder locations.
I deleted
com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService.plistand restarted, now the Open/Save panel opens quickly.
To delete this file navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ in Finder (⌘ ⇧ + G or Go > Go to Folder) then delete com.apple.appkit.xpc.openAndSavePanelService.plist. I didn't even need to restart like the person on Reddit did and this immediately fixed it.
Why am I making a blog post with the same information as the Reddit thread? The reasons are twofold:
- I'll probably need to reference this in the future.
- I can't rely on a random Reddit thread (or two in this case) still existing in a months time, let alone a year or more.