It appears as if a Google program is interfering with the Apple Finder on Mac OS High Sierra, as many users report lag issues using the feature.
There are many reports around the web of Mac OS High Sierra users having difficulties using the Finder functionality on their Apple computer. A lot of users have complained about screenshots appearing after a gap of several seconds, making this feature from Apple’s operating system more of a frustration than a convenience. It appears as if the culprit behind this Mac OS High Sierra problem is the Google Drive/Photos client Backup and Sync functionality. Many people that were having these Finder issues were able to fix the annoyance by quitting and disabling Backup and Sync.
User experiences collected by Piunikaweb from around the web seem to have reached the consensus that the issue is with the Google software’s functionality.
“If I have Backup and Sync on, my finder slows down tremendously. I take a screenshot and it only appears on the desktop literally 5 seconds later. That’s a long time. When I’m saving/exporting files from apps, the files show up in my Finder much later which makes me question if they were saved or not.”
“After a restart the screenshot delay issue hasn’t really changed. However I’ve quite Google’s Sync & Backup (previously Google Drive) just to see what happens, and there you go: instant screenshots again!”
“Wow good find! I can confirm that after quitting Google backup & sync files appear instantly on the desktop as they originally did.”
The issues with Finder do appear to be originating from the Google application, but Google has a different opinion when it comes to these Mac OS High Sierra issues, saying that Apple is to blame for the slowdown. The Google rep suggested that users disable Finder until the Apple is able to work out the problems and gave an outline of how to fix the problem temporarily.
“You can disable the Finder Extension. Unfortunately this seems to be a bug on Apple’s end (afaict) and all applications that use the Finder Extension API are affected.
You can disable it by:
1. Going to System Preferences -> Extensions
2. Unchecking the Backup and Sync Finder extension.
You will need to do this for all extensions there for your screenshotting to work again.
Alternatively you can go to Preferences -> Settings and uncheck “Show file sync status icons and right click menu” to specify the application to never load the Finder integration again.”
While Google may say that it’s an Apple problem, the fact remains that the majority of people are finding that disabling the Backup and Sync functionality fixes the issue. Having a large amount of lag when trying to use such an important feature of Mac OS High Sierra is incredibly frustrating, and all we have right now is a bandage for the problem. We’ll have to see if there’s a fix in the works from either company, but until then it looks like your best bet is to either disable Finder or disable Backup and Sync.
