As per the title, Pages and Numbers are slow to open. This has been going on for the past few weeks. I can't pinpoint it to the recent software update, but I do remember both apps being updated in the past month or two.
Anyone experiencing this?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.4
Personally, I run no anti-virus or security software, no cleaning apps, never install third-party drive vendor software (e.g. WD), and only run malwarebytes once, and then from its help menu, uninstall it. I do so, because its real-time RTDaemon sets a nice value of -20, the highest priority of all processes, and that has to take a bite out of responsiveness. You may find that ClamXav and Little Snitch may also tamper with the nice value and are having adverse impact on your interactive (e.g. application launch) performance.
Considering how resource hungry Monterey, and Pages are, that 3 - 4 second lag on a 2015 Mac running Monterey on an Apple SSD of that era is not unreasonable. You just don't want to launch Pages immediately after boot and run into the normal System housekeeping headwinds of Spotlight, Software Update, etc.
I am running Monterey 12.4 and Pages 12.1 on the following hardware:
On the iMac, with no other user applications running Pages alone reaches the Template chooser in about 1s. Opening a 180-page text document takes about 3s. On the M1 MBP, Pages reaches the Template chooser in 1s, and opening that same 180-page document about 2s.
From the Terminal, you can review your current pid, priority, nice, and associated command values using:
ps -h -c -e -o pid,pri,nice,command | awk '!/PID|^$/ {print | "sort -nrk3"}' | more
where a reverse numeric sort is happening on the nice column of numbers. I am removing the n-tuple occurrences of process status headings and blank lines.
I trust my own system security to common sense, my router settings, and Monterey's built-in security. I have no issues for those reasons. I have been using Macs since the Mac Classic was introduced in 1984, in corporate and personal usage, and have only encountered 1 virus on a Powerbook 540C when a colleague shared an infected Word document.
Boot your MacBook Pro into Safe Boot mode, then reboot normally. Now, boot into Recovery (⌘+R) and run Disk Utility First Aid on your startup drive. Then, reboot normally.
Now, without any other applications running, launch Pages, wait for it to open, and then launch Numbers. Notice any change in their startup times? If not, are you also running any anti-virus product which would interfere with normal system and application performance? If so, remove it.
If after two paragraphs of remedy, nothing has changed, I recommend that you download/install EtreCheckPro, give it full disk access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, and run it. Place the output on your clipboard, and paste it here using the following additional text editor tool:
Etrecheck Pro is designed to conceal all privacy information in its output, and will help identify any other product installations that may be contributing to the slow Pages and Numbers launch.
Hello VikingOSX
Thank you for the instructions. I followed the steps mentioned. There was not improvement after running First Aid on my startup drive.
Below is the report from EtreCheckPro.
Update: on my previous post. I thought it was the apps were slow to launch. In fact, Pages and Numbers launch fine. It's the opening of files where the lag occurs, and it is an abnormal lag of 3 - 4 seconds a file to open. I created new test files for both apps and opening these files still lagged.
I deleted Malwarebites and AppCleaner. I need the WD for my external drive and HP for my printer. I keep Little Snitch and Cookies because I don't like companies tracking me, etc.
It looks like Pages and Numbers were updated last month. That's about the same time when the delay in opening files began. Before that, the same files would open almost instantaneously. Most likely it has to do with the update?
Thanks for your help.
Note that the version of Pages that I referenced was the current version at 12.1. It isn't slow for me and I don't use Little Snitch.
Almost every website that you visit will attempt to track you, whether by cookies, or more nefarious JavaScript means. I am particular about the sites that I visit, even more particular about what I download and from where, and after every use of the browser, I clear the browser cache and all cookies. Safari Preferences > Websites allows you more optional controls.
Thanks again. I don't believe Little Snitch is the issue. The problem persists when I turn the app off.
Pages and Numbers are slow to launch.