1. Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Working
2. Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Cooker
3. Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Motion

Oct 04, 2016  Read on to learn why macOS Sierra may be running slow (some MacBook users notice their Mac is hot and fans are blasting away too), and what you can do about it. 5 Ways to Speed Up MacOS Sierra OK so let’s assume your Mac with macOS Sierra is running slow.

It's a common complaint that in recent versions of Mac OS 10.x, browsing Windows-hosted SMB shares is incredibly slow. Not every solution works, but here are 3 simple fixes that completely solved the issue for me (Using Windows Server 2012 & 2012R2 with Mac OS X 10.9 & 10.10).

3 Steps total

Step 1: Disable writing .DS_Store files to network shares

On the Mac, open up Terminal and enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

Step 2: Make sure NetBIOS over TCP/IP is enabled on the file server's network adapter

Adapter Properties -> IPv4 properties -> Advanced -> WINS tab -> Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP

Make sure this setting is enabled.

Step 3: Use Powershell to edit the server's SMB configuration.

On the Windows server, open Powershell as an administrator and run:

get-smbserverconfiguration

Look for the values for smb2creditsmin and smb2creditsmax. On my server, the defaults were 128 and 2048 respectively. To change these settings, run

set-smbserverconfiguration -smb2creditsmin 512 -smb2creditsmax 8192

and respond Y to the confirmation prompt.

Following these three steps instantly fixed the issue for me and others, and my Macs are now browsing the file shares just as fast as their Windows counterparts.

References

Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Working

• Relevant Spiceworks community discussion

Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Cooker

15 Comments

Mac Sierra Switching Between Apps Is Extremely Slow Motion

• Pimiento
  OSXuser Feb 18, 2015 at 09:35am

  Hey Chris, could you confirm that read and write speeds over SMB 3 on OSX 10.10 are the same as read and write speeds over SMB 3 on windows 8.1? Are you using 10gbe or 1gbe?

  We are using 10gbe and are seeing great read speeds (850MB/s) but not so great write speeds (400MB/s) even though our RAID can easily go up to 3,500MB/s.

  Thanks,

  Philipp

• Poblano
  Chris1474 Feb 19, 2015 at 06:22pm

  Hi OSXUser, most (all?) RAID setups have inherently better read speeds compared to write speeds, and this has to do with the mechanics of RAID itself (see: http://www.raid-calculator.com/raid-types-reference.aspx). I suspect that if you benchmarked your Windows machines, you'd see a similar result to your Macs.

• Pimiento
  OSXuser Feb 23, 2015 at 05:40pm

  Hi Chris,

  No the RAID actually gets 3,000 MB/s write. I can also hit it with multiple Macs each at 400MB/s write. The Windows server also has a PCI SSD with 2000MB/s read and write. The throttle seems to be on the LAN side.

  When connection one Mac Pro to another Mac Pro we get 800 MB/s read and write. But when connecting from Mac Pro to Windows Server the write is much slower than tge read.

  Any ideas?

• Jalapeno
  Oscar3097 Mar 1, 2015 at 10:14pm

  This solved the issue for me too. However, if use Hamachi to access the file shares from another country, I have to wait 2 or 3 minutes for the folders to show up. Then when the folders do show up and I open another folder, I have to wait again for those folders to show up.
  However, using Hamachi from a windows computer, there is no wait time for folders to show up.
  Any resolution for this?

• Poblano
  Chris1474 Mar 2, 2015 at 06:36am

  OSXUser, that's strange- but you're right, sounds like it's LAN stuff. And it sounds like you're not the only guy noticing this. I googled and found this- might have some ideas: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/windowsserver/en-US/46898c7f-92e0-4c99-98d2-18a7458a7d2d/slow-network-write-speeds-via-smb-cifs

  Oscar3097, have you poked around to see if other Hamachi users have experienced the same issues? Sounds like a Hamachi issue to me.

• Jalapeno
  Oscar3097 Mar 2, 2015 at 01:07pm

  Chris, I thought this was a Hamachi issue but I discarded that idea because I can browse without a problem from windows computers. I have this problem when browsing from macs in Argentina, Puerto Rico, Panama, Brazil Mexico but not if they use windows. I had the same problem in the local lan, but using your fix we can now browse fast from all macs in the office.

• Pimiento
  kimcassidy Oct 16, 2015 at 07:41pm

  Hi Chris,

  I know this is an older thread but it is something I need to fix for two clients. I followed your excellent instructions and was successful for my Windows 2012 client, but when I run the set-smb... on a Windows 2008 R2 it says it isn't a recognized cmdlet. Any help that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

• Poblano
  Chris1474 Dec 2, 2015 at 08:32pm

  Hi kimcassidy, just saw this now- sorry for the late reply. I know that the ability to manipulate SMB through PowerShell was added with Server 2012; I'm not sure if you can upgrade your version of PowerShell or import the SMB module into 2008. Others might have more experience with this...

• Tabasco
  AskJaiCom Apr 18, 2016 at 09:34am

  I don't think this this is possible on Server 2008 R2. is it??

• Pimiento
  markelliott5 Sep 25, 2016 at 04:29am

  I just made an account to praise you for writing this little article. It made my home theater set up go from struggling w/ 720p to streaming remux 1080p bluray with only occasional hiccups..

  It's still slower than I would think it would be given the pipes it's coming through, but at least it can handle the 2.77MB/s required to stream this big video.

• Sonora
  Richard Poole Oct 18, 2016 at 12:34pm

  This seemed to do the trick here too.
  OSX users instantly noticing improved browse and file transfer speeds after applying the 3 steps above.

• Anaheim
  blacklab3l Jan 11, 2017 at 03:09pm

  This worked for me....Took my searches from 3-5 minutes down to about 16 seconds. I'll take it!

• Pimiento
  dylanevans May 22, 2017 at 08:59am

  This worked for me, but then it didnt :/

  I was trying out a direct connection between my MBP and consumer Win10 machine connected direct via thunderbolt.

  They connected up nice and easily, and when running a test of disk speed from the MBP (with Blackmagic disk speed test) the internal drives on the Win machine tested at their full speed for around 500MB/s.

  However, external drives did not work - I was getting write speeds of around 5MB/s

  I ran across this page and when I enabled NetBIOS over TCP/IP this seemed to fix the issue - external drives mounted on the Win side would test at their capacity of 320MB/s when testing from the MBP.

  However, I have connected again a couple of weeks later and the network speeds have dropped back down to 5-6MB/s.

  I cannot for the life of me fathom what has changed, everything is still enabled on the windows side, and crucially this is only for externally mounted drives. The internal drives on the Windows machine still test at their full speed.

  Do you have any ideas?

• Poblano
  Sam Thackeray Dec 6, 2017 at 11:44am

  Hi,
  Any chance someone could provide some details on what each of these commands do.

  We are an office of some 100 users and i am hesitant to make changes to fix the issues for our 1 mac user if there is any negative effect for the 99 windows users.

  Thanks,

• Sonora
  OnWireIT Jan 22, 2018 at 06:40pm

  Could someone confirm that this is still an issue with the newest Mac OSx?