Why is my dock so slowwww?

March 12, 2010 10:22 AM

Slow snow leopard dock; why does it think I'm right clicking?

My dock slowed down a lot after installing slow leopard (13" C2D blackbook). For the past few months it hesitates while bringing up icon names & magnifying. Also, when I click on icons, it will not do anything for a few seconds, and then bring up expose like I right clicked on it.

Am I the only one with this problem? Any suggestions on what to do besides starting over w/ a clean install again?

P.S. my function keys are delayed in working too, but the dock problem bothers me more.

posted by senseigmg to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Have you done any of the basic troubleshooting to try to narrow down what might be causing this? For instance:

- Does the same behavior occur if you log into a newly-created "Test Account"?
- Have you tried rebuilding the Dock, or trashing the com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.dock.db files in ~/Library/Preferences/
- have you ruled out the potential trackpad software configurations that might be causing this behavior, such as the checkbox "For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button"
- does this happen both when you use the trackpad and when using an external mouse?
posted by mrbarrett.com at 10:40 AM on March 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

In addition to mrbarrett.com's very good suggestions, try running a system utility such as Onyx (free, available here), Disk Warrior, or Drive Genius. I won't guarantee that will fix the problem, but odd behavior like this is often resolved by running utilities.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:43 AM on March 12, 2010

I don't know what's causing the delay, but right-clicking should bring up a contextual menu, not Exposé. In Snow Leopard, Exposé opens when you left-click and hold an icon in the Dock. So I'd guess the computer is interpreting your click as a click-and-hold, possibly due to its running slowly. Do you see any incriminatingly unresponsive processes in Activity Monitor?
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 10:44 AM on March 12, 2010

Have you installed any keyboard remapping utilities? I had an issue with really slow keyboard and trackpad issues. It was related to an upgrade to a model that didn't have a key that was being mapped on the previous model, not an upgrade to Snow Leopard. But it's something to look into at least.
posted by 6550 at 10:55 AM on March 12, 2010

Its much more responsive now that I trashed the prefs.

I do have some key remappers: FunctionFlip & KeyRemap4MacBook

Which ones caused you issues?
posted by senseigmg at 11:21 AM on March 12, 2010

I think I had DoubleCommand, actually.

Is the problem fixed now?
posted by 6550 at 11:44 AM on March 12, 2010

It seems ok for now, even powerpoint seems to be moving faster. I'll update if it slows down again.

Thanks for all the help!
posted by senseigmg at 1:29 PM on March 12, 2010