Slow application launch

[bryankbrown]

Running Alfred 2.5.1 on OS X 10.10.

 

When I use Alfred to launch applications, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time for the application to fire up.

 

This wasn't true under Mavericks, only since Yosemite. This is true for many/all applications, not just one or two apps.

 

I haven't done an official stopwatch comparison, but it seems to take 4–5 times longer to launch an app with Alfred than it does from the Finder.

 

Any thoughts?

[Vero]

Running Alfred 2.5.1 on OS X 10.10.

 

When I use Alfred to launch applications, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time for the application to fire up.

 

This wasn't true under Mavericks, only since Yosemite. This is true for many/all applications, not just one or two apps.

 

I haven't done an official stopwatch comparison, but it seems to take 4–5 times longer to launch an app with Alfred than it does from the Finder.

 

Any thoughts?

 

When you choose an app in Alfred's results, Alfred just passes the command to open the app to OS X - After that, it's out of his hands.

 

If you want to test how quickly Alfred passes that command, launch Safari, then close the Safari window (leaving the app still running). Type "safari" into Alfred and hit return. The speed at which a new window is opened is how quickly the command is given to OS X, so if there's a longer delay than this, it's caused by OS X in some way.

[Andrew]

Any thoughts?

 

Do you have any other apps installed which could be affecting this interaction with OS X? (things which replace Finder's default functionality for example).

 

Also, how much memory do you have on your Mac, as Yosemite may be more memory intensive meaning your Mac is having to work harder.

 

Finally, If you have launched an app once from Alfred, quit it fully and launch it again, is it fast the second time?

[bryankbrown]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I figured what you said about Alfred simply passing the command to the Finder might be the case, but I thought there might be was some kind of indexing issue. I seem to remember that, at least in times past, Spotlight and apps like Alfred kept separate indexes of items on the drive. I thought maybe index corruption could account for slowness or bad behavior.

 

Anyway, I'm running an iMac with 8 gigs of RAM and a 1 TB Fusion drive. Memory pressure doesn't seem to be a problem as iStat Mini is saying I'm only using about 21% memory during this testing.

 

I'm not running Pathfinder or any other Finder replacements—just a few things like Default Folder and Moom.

 

Any other thoughts?

 

I did your test, and launching an app the second time, after launching it once and then quitting, is indeed faster.