Photo folder processing unbelievably slow M4 Max Studio

Question

Level 1

4 points

Photo folder processing unbelievably slow M4 Max Studio

I recently purchased a Mac thinking it would be an upgrade over my 12year old PC and for some things it is. But for photos it’s an utter nightmare.

My entire family synchronizes their phone’s Photos to my Mac Studio and I also keep Ancestry stuff on it. My problem is any library over 500~ images or more or RAW 200-400MB images brings my Mac to a halt.

its not even using a lot of CPU (about 5%) I figured the problem was the Photos app so I tried a few others including paid apps and still the same lag.

Our Ancestry folder has 840k files in it and it takes about 3 hours to open and 15-45 minutes to scroll the mouse wheel.

My old 8th gen i7 with 16GB RAM takes less than 5 minutes to load the same folder and zero lag when scrolling.

In Ubuntu, Debian, and Windows my x86 runs circles around my new Mac Studio.

Please someone help me fix this. Mac is supposed to be extremely good at editing, that’s why I bought it. But I can’t use it for what I purchased it for. 😖

Mac Studio, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jun 29, 2025 10:07 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

214,404 points

Jun 29, 2025 10:28 AM in response to t_JM

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

How much memory do you have?

How much free space do you have on the boot drive?

Have your tried launching your library with the Option+Command keys held down to restore/repair the library?

Please download and run Etrecheck. The free version is sufficient.

Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and after clicking on the Reply button use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Check Etrecheck's Privacy settings and make sure the checkbox for full disk access before running:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

Reply

Answer 2

t_JM Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 29, 2025 10:25 AM in response to t_JM

I wanted to add a note.

This problem occurs even when I try to offload the files to a NAS.

The NAS has a 25Gbps stream, so it can fully saturate the Macs 10Gbps connection but it only uses between 10-130Mbps. Never comes close to saturation.

Reply

Answer 3

t_JM Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 30, 2025 12:23 PM in response to Old Toad

I just bought it. It’s new out the box.

I tried some apps from Apple Store and didn’t get any improvements.

memory is 36GB

CPU M4 Max

Free Space 412GB

when processing thumbnails it seems to be the problem. The Mac doesn’t create a local cache file that I can find like Windows and most versions of Linux have.

Mac seems to have a volatile or dynamic cache folder that only buffers, but isn’t persistent.

It never exceeds available memory and clears when you change activities. So going between ancestry, photos, and photoshop back to the directory, it needs to recache each time causing Photo’s to become (Not Responsive) while parsing files and takes between 3 to 8 hours to complete rendering thumbnails. Scrolling the mouse or selecting an image starts the parsing all over again. It’s highly annoying, I literally went to bed and woke up and made breakfast before it finished the first time I tried to load the master folder.

I’m hoping my Mac Studio was just defective. I returned it and I’ll have a new one in a few days.

I’ll post an update when it comes in.

on a side quest here.

how does file caching work on a Mac between file systems?

Would performance be increased using a USB device with an Apple only FileSystem like APFS or HFS+?

Atm my USB backup is ext4. Over USB it caps out at 10-120~MBps even though it’s a 10Gbps drive that on my Linux machine hits a transfer speed between 300 to 1200MBps.

interoperation compatibility is super important. I run Windows, Linux, Unix based systems/Mac in my office.

Mac I only got recently to add to my arsenal or workstations.

Maybe Mac just has limited performance on ext4?

Reply