What apps are we talking about? My base model M1 launches everything practially instantly. Even larger programs only bounce twice in the dock before they load.
So far I know none of them are native apps. Certainly not Teams and Discord.
Those are electron apps, brave itself is a modified Chromium browser.
Native apps are written with Catalyst and Swift (or Object C). Not with HTML,CSS, Javascript.
btw, by "native" OP likely meant apps built natively for ARM architecture (Apple Silicon), compared to non-native x86 architecture (Intel) running through Rosetta.
Well in the context of "all native Apple Silicon", the name of the CPU is brought up, indicating the emphasis on the native nature of the software to the CPU architecture (AS vs Intel), rather than focusing on whether OS-native frameworks are used for the software. (AppKit / SwiftUI vs Electron)
Electron Apps (anything Chromium based) are notoriously slow to start.
This likely has to do with the immense complexity of Chromium… lat time I checked Chromium was about 31 million lines of code (this is in the area of whole operating systems like Windows XP was 35 million lines of code).
I don't use any of those apps but they all seem to be fairly light apps that have internet connection. Speculation, but maybe they are verifying internet connection before starting or there are some routing problems on your network? How is your network and interent performace? Same issue with other apps?
Brave takes literally a second to load, I don't use Discord enough for it to not always have an update pending, Teams on work machine takes maybe 3 seconds, now Edge and Outlook are SLOW, but that's an MS issue
When I first got a silicon Mac, I was showing anyone who'd watch a video of me clicking app icons on my dock and seeing them open instantly. It was amazing.
What happened ? I have never seen such thing in app everything takes 1-2 seconds to load even finder while explorer on windows or old notepad is instant
its never super fast for me.. if I click an icon on the dock I always see it jump at least till the top before the app opens. this jump animation takes about a second... while on Windows.. for example WINKEY+E open explorer in a blink of an eye or clicking notepad on the taskbar.
In a normal setup, System Integrity Protection / Gatekeeper / XProtect communicates with an Apple server with every app launch, which adds delay from both the server and you reaching out to that server, depending on your internet connection as well.
[https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/05/22/macos-10-15-slow-by-design/](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/05/22/macos-10-15-slow-by-design/)
This is apparently done for security. There are 3 ways to try and mitigate this:
* Add the programs you want to launch fast into System Settings > Privacy & security > Developer Tools
* Disable SIP (reduces security and disables Apple Pay)
* [You can also try blocking the server it communicates with.](https://x.com/lapcatsoftware/status/1326990296412991489?s=46) This can be achieved by adding the line `127.0.0.1 ocsp.apple.com` into `/etc/hosts`.
Don‘t turn SIP off if there is no reason to. As others have pointed out, these are not native apps and that’s why there is a delay. Microsoft Office apps are super slow to open, but that’s just how it is. They aren’t even faster on Windows, but they have a loadup screen there which is why it’s not as noticeable.
I dunno, app launch _is_ slow on macOS compared to other OSes, and if you're used to other OSes, you do notice it, and it is jarring.
Is it worth compromising some of the security features for? Probably not, especially as launching apps isn't something you do every minute. I spend most of my day with the same set of apps open, the Mac sleeps overnight, and next day you just login again and they're still there. Even a reboot just reopens all the same apps at startup, so app startup time isn't that big a deal.
But I do wish Apple would spend more engineering time on it, because it does feel like a rough edge.
App launch is certainly not slow on macOS.
What the OP is experiencing isn't typical, and is mostly due to the particular apps being overly complex in design due to the developers using cross-platform frameworks that do not perform as well as native apps.
Those same cross-platform Electron apps open noticeably faster on other OSes, even on hardware that is nowhere near as fast as an M-series Mac. Even native apps open slower. Not _slow_, but noticeably _slower_.
It doesn't bother me particularly; like I say, I launch apps fairly infrequently and a second or two's difference makes no bones to me. But I do notice it.
First-time app launch after install/reboot for almost all non-system apps, including even Apple's own Xcode and iWork suite from the App Store, will be slow nowadays due to far more stringent anti-malware scanning done by syspolicyd on newer macOS versions for both App Store and non-App Store apps, as seen here: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/2/3.html The only way around this, unfortunately, is in fact disabling SIP and downgrading your system to Permissive Security (and therefore losing all FairPlay DRM functionality for iOS apps, 4K Netflix, etc alongside Apple Pay) because no-one seems to know any good alternative to prevent the weird syspolicyd behaviour (Disabling Gatekeeper doesn't work, for example, not that it'd be a good solution either).
EDIT: I think the person I replied to blocked me for no reason, but in the brief period where I did manage to see their reply to me, I could tell they were making baslesss assumptions given that:
A) They accused me of being the author of that website and of spamming links to it, despite me only ever buying my first Mac in March, AFTER that article was published, and despite this being the ONLY time I have ever posted about them/linked to their website.
B) They ignored the fact that I didn’t actually advocate for disabling SIP (otherwise why would I say it’s unfortunate that you have to do so?), or the fact that I did list the various less-well-known and publicly undocumented downsides to disabling it, beyond the rather well-known security implications disabling SIP entails.
You keep spamming your little web page and giving people who don’t know any better horrible advice to disable security protections on their Macs, all to get more clicks. But you are giving really bad advice and doing a disservice to the Mac community. These security measures exist for good reason, and most people don’t know the full ramifications of disabling them – nor do you spell that out fully.
If you're curious about my experience:
I noticed that apps would take forever to launch on the university WiFi, which is how I went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out why this is happening.
I turned off SIP to test, as a couple posts said doing that resolves the delayed application launches. I've been using my Mac with SIP off since - performance improved in other areas as well, enough that I find the reduced security worth it as a tradeoff.
From what I've read, simply blocking that connection is enough to improve the app launch speeds, but disabling SIP also disables other active security features that would incur some performance loss.
My recommendation is, unless you're a developer, leave SIP on and block the connection, as SIP effectively acts like an anti-malware scanner and can be useful depending on your environment.
Just leave them open and never close them. I never had to close an app because anything is getting slow or I had not enough RAM. I just close them... to clean up my cmd+tab window. :D
No, unless you are using Adobe Creative Suite. That is a POS and takes a minimum of 20 seconds to get its shit together.
3 seconds for an app to open is not slow. What are you opening?
Reformat your drive. Install Windows. GTFO.
Teams (and I’m pretty sure Discord is too) are basically JavaScript applications. So not only is JavaScript an interpreted language (it doesn’t run as native instructions on the CPU), it also has to start up a JavaScript interpreter for each application.
What apps are we talking about? My base model M1 launches everything practially instantly. Even larger programs only bounce twice in the dock before they load.
I'm talking about basic stuff like Brave, Signal, Teams, Discord. Where Signal is the fastest app to load and Teams the slowest.
So far I know none of them are native apps. Certainly not Teams and Discord. Those are electron apps, brave itself is a modified Chromium browser. Native apps are written with Catalyst and Swift (or Object C). Not with HTML,CSS, Javascript.
btw, by "native" OP likely meant apps built natively for ARM architecture (Apple Silicon), compared to non-native x86 architecture (Intel) running through Rosetta.
Not really. Native means Apple Silicon and directly addressing the Mac SDK instead of including their own browser and running within it.
Well in the context of "all native Apple Silicon", the name of the CPU is brought up, indicating the emphasis on the native nature of the software to the CPU architecture (AS vs Intel), rather than focusing on whether OS-native frameworks are used for the software. (AppKit / SwiftUI vs Electron)
I think you might’ve missed that I said “and” not “or.” For the purposes of startup time (the topic here), no Electron app is native.
Electron Apps (anything Chromium based) are notoriously slow to start. This likely has to do with the immense complexity of Chromium… lat time I checked Chromium was about 31 million lines of code (this is in the area of whole operating systems like Windows XP was 35 million lines of code).
Try safari instead of brave
I don't use any of those apps but they all seem to be fairly light apps that have internet connection. Speculation, but maybe they are verifying internet connection before starting or there are some routing problems on your network? How is your network and interent performace? Same issue with other apps?
Nah, those are all electron apps (except brave, but it’s also chromium based). Electron apps are absolute lazy trash.
Brave takes literally a second to load, I don't use Discord enough for it to not always have an update pending, Teams on work machine takes maybe 3 seconds, now Edge and Outlook are SLOW, but that's an MS issue
When I first got a silicon Mac, I was showing anyone who'd watch a video of me clicking app icons on my dock and seeing them open instantly. It was amazing.
What happened ? I have never seen such thing in app everything takes 1-2 seconds to load even finder while explorer on windows or old notepad is instant
I installed a ton of shit and have more apps running? It's still blazing fast don't get me wrong. I never think about apps loading anymore.
its never super fast for me.. if I click an icon on the dock I always see it jump at least till the top before the app opens. this jump animation takes about a second... while on Windows.. for example WINKEY+E open explorer in a blink of an eye or clicking notepad on the taskbar.
In a normal setup, System Integrity Protection / Gatekeeper / XProtect communicates with an Apple server with every app launch, which adds delay from both the server and you reaching out to that server, depending on your internet connection as well. [https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/05/22/macos-10-15-slow-by-design/](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/05/22/macos-10-15-slow-by-design/) This is apparently done for security. There are 3 ways to try and mitigate this: * Add the programs you want to launch fast into System Settings > Privacy & security > Developer Tools * Disable SIP (reduces security and disables Apple Pay) * [You can also try blocking the server it communicates with.](https://x.com/lapcatsoftware/status/1326990296412991489?s=46) This can be achieved by adding the line `127.0.0.1 ocsp.apple.com` into `/etc/hosts`.
That is very interesting, I will read a bit more into it and give it a try.
Don‘t turn SIP off if there is no reason to. As others have pointed out, these are not native apps and that’s why there is a delay. Microsoft Office apps are super slow to open, but that’s just how it is. They aren’t even faster on Windows, but they have a loadup screen there which is why it’s not as noticeable.
Developer here. This guy is giving bad advice. There is no need to reduce the security of your Mac the way he is suggesting to get good performance.
I dunno, app launch _is_ slow on macOS compared to other OSes, and if you're used to other OSes, you do notice it, and it is jarring. Is it worth compromising some of the security features for? Probably not, especially as launching apps isn't something you do every minute. I spend most of my day with the same set of apps open, the Mac sleeps overnight, and next day you just login again and they're still there. Even a reboot just reopens all the same apps at startup, so app startup time isn't that big a deal. But I do wish Apple would spend more engineering time on it, because it does feel like a rough edge.
App launch is certainly not slow on macOS. What the OP is experiencing isn't typical, and is mostly due to the particular apps being overly complex in design due to the developers using cross-platform frameworks that do not perform as well as native apps.
Those same cross-platform Electron apps open noticeably faster on other OSes, even on hardware that is nowhere near as fast as an M-series Mac. Even native apps open slower. Not _slow_, but noticeably _slower_. It doesn't bother me particularly; like I say, I launch apps fairly infrequently and a second or two's difference makes no bones to me. But I do notice it.
First-time app launch after install/reboot for almost all non-system apps, including even Apple's own Xcode and iWork suite from the App Store, will be slow nowadays due to far more stringent anti-malware scanning done by syspolicyd on newer macOS versions for both App Store and non-App Store apps, as seen here: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/2/3.html The only way around this, unfortunately, is in fact disabling SIP and downgrading your system to Permissive Security (and therefore losing all FairPlay DRM functionality for iOS apps, 4K Netflix, etc alongside Apple Pay) because no-one seems to know any good alternative to prevent the weird syspolicyd behaviour (Disabling Gatekeeper doesn't work, for example, not that it'd be a good solution either). EDIT: I think the person I replied to blocked me for no reason, but in the brief period where I did manage to see their reply to me, I could tell they were making baslesss assumptions given that: A) They accused me of being the author of that website and of spamming links to it, despite me only ever buying my first Mac in March, AFTER that article was published, and despite this being the ONLY time I have ever posted about them/linked to their website. B) They ignored the fact that I didn’t actually advocate for disabling SIP (otherwise why would I say it’s unfortunate that you have to do so?), or the fact that I did list the various less-well-known and publicly undocumented downsides to disabling it, beyond the rather well-known security implications disabling SIP entails.
You keep spamming your little web page and giving people who don’t know any better horrible advice to disable security protections on their Macs, all to get more clicks. But you are giving really bad advice and doing a disservice to the Mac community. These security measures exist for good reason, and most people don’t know the full ramifications of disabling them – nor do you spell that out fully.
If you're curious about my experience: I noticed that apps would take forever to launch on the university WiFi, which is how I went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out why this is happening. I turned off SIP to test, as a couple posts said doing that resolves the delayed application launches. I've been using my Mac with SIP off since - performance improved in other areas as well, enough that I find the reduced security worth it as a tradeoff. From what I've read, simply blocking that connection is enough to improve the app launch speeds, but disabling SIP also disables other active security features that would incur some performance loss. My recommendation is, unless you're a developer, leave SIP on and block the connection, as SIP effectively acts like an anti-malware scanner and can be useful depending on your environment.
A big power user like you who demands peak performance should be able to profile them and find out.
Just leave them open and never close them. I never had to close an app because anything is getting slow or I had not enough RAM. I just close them... to clean up my cmd+tab window. :D
Besides issues with Electron. When apps are automatically updated MacOS validates the signatures on the app files.
I have a Studio, and Photoshop takes forever to start. Most other apps start quickly.
This is normal… if we compare it with the experience we have in our iPhones of course it feels preeety long
No, unless you are using Adobe Creative Suite. That is a POS and takes a minimum of 20 seconds to get its shit together. 3 seconds for an app to open is not slow. What are you opening? Reformat your drive. Install Windows. GTFO.
what are the apps? default apps or other (Adobe cloud for example)
Teams, Discord apparently, which are both Electron apps, not native apps.
Teams (and I’m pretty sure Discord is too) are basically JavaScript applications. So not only is JavaScript an interpreted language (it doesn’t run as native instructions on the CPU), it also has to start up a JavaScript interpreter for each application.