Why is Quicken for Mac so very slow (especially since the most recent update)?

epjohn

I've been a Quicken for Mac user for many, many years. The extremely slow loading and updating experienced with the latest version of Quicken, however, are making me question whether to continue with this program. I'm very tired of watching the beachball spin and for Clean My Mac asking me if I want to Force Quit. I am using a MacBook Pro with 64 GB of memory and a 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 processor, so I don't think the fault lies at this end. The ongoing difficulties downloading American Express transactions don't endear Quicken to me either.

jacobs

@epjohn I'm not sure what the issue is, but I can say that what you're experiencing is abnormal. First, I'd note that there shouldn't;t have been any speed change with the 6.9 release; it was mostly cosmetic/user interface tweaks, with no significant new functionality which would have affected speed to loading or use. So let's try to dig into this a bit…

First, can you quantify how slow it is? How long does Quicken take to launch and open your data file? I have an older and slower MacBook Pro with only 8 GB of RAM, and I see the "opening" screen in about 3 seconds and the full Quicken screen with my data in about 7 seconds. My data file has just under 70,000 transactions and is about 77 GB in size. How does that compare to your situation?

Next, can you share where your Quicken data file is located? Is it in the default location in the User/Library/Application Support folder, or somewhere else? I've seen slow launch speeds resulting from people who have their data file stored on Dropbox or iCloud, which is not advised nor supported. 

Have you tried restarting your Mac in safe mode? To do so, restart your Mac and hold down the Shift key until it asks if you want to continue in safe mode. Then launch Quicken… doe you see any difference in speed? Safe Mode bypasses system extensions and utilities (like Clean My Mac), so this can help isolate if some third-party software might be causing a problem. 

jacobs

@epjohn I'm not sure what the issue is, but I can say that what you're experiencing is abnormal. First, I'd note that there shouldn't;t have been any speed change with the 6.9 release; it was mostly cosmetic/user interface tweaks, with no significant new functionality which would have affected speed to loading or use. So let's try to dig into this a bit…

First, can you quantify how slow it is? How long does Quicken take to launch and open your data file? I have an older and slower MacBook Pro with only 8 GB of RAM, and I see the "opening" screen in about 3 seconds and the full Quicken screen with my data in about 7 seconds. My data file has just under 70,000 transactions and is about 77 GB in size. How does that compare to your situation?

Next, can you share where your Quicken data file is located? Is it in the default location in the User/Library/Application Support folder, or somewhere else? I've seen slow launch speeds resulting from people who have their data file stored on Dropbox or iCloud, which is not advised nor supported. 

Have you tried restarting your Mac in safe mode? To do so, restart your Mac and hold down the Shift key until it asks if you want to continue in safe mode. Then launch Quicken… doe you see any difference in speed? Safe Mode bypasses system extensions and utilities (like Clean My Mac), so this can help isolate if some third-party software might be causing a problem. 

Blastphemy

@epjohn – I've never been happy with the speed of Quicken Mac. QMac2007 opens in less than a second; QMac2022 can take up to 15 seconds to be ready. Even giving it some slack for downloading security prices and other such data, it's still a long time for a modern program to launch before the user can do anything. I've just learned to launch Quicken and then go finish up something on a different application while it slowly loads. Mind you, I have one of the fastest M1 Macs available, and it's still this slow. Can't imagine what it's like to load this on an older computer. At least the data entry speed isn't horrible. It's still sluggish (especially when switching accounts or selecting Bills & Income), but for me I can live with it as long as it doesn't get any worse.

UKR

I recall some prior speed-related discussions here in the Community where the problem appeared to have been caused by numerous open views, reports, etc. hidden behind the main view. At start of Quicken or every time you make a change, all these open views have to be recalculated.
Could this be what's slowing down your Quicken?

johnestey730

I agree that the new version of Quicken for Mac is dramatically slower downloading transactions. I have a fast M1 Mac and before the new version it did the download in a minute or so. Now it takes over 10 minutes. I have no idea why it is taking so long but it goes several minutes before the horizontal thermometer even appears. I hope there is a cure as this is unacceptably slow.

dfullerton

same problem with us. spinning ball of 30 seconds or more between entry. Reconcile takes forever... Also, previously reconciled months are now showing as un-reconciled. Start up takes anywhere from 45 sec to 1 minute. Has been going on since the latest update.

epjohn

My thanks to jacobs for his answer; I found that my data file was in fact incorrectly in iCloud. I moved it to the Application Support folder and it did improve performance. It now opens in about 12 seconds, compared with 24 seconds before. Closing the file still takes about 35 seconds, however. My data file size and transactions total are substantially smaller than yours. Opening in Safe Mode did not seem to make a difference.

As johnestey730's post suggests, a problem with the latest release is the time it takes to download transactions. For me, it's about four minutes now. The new update progress bar seems to have further slowed things down.

ajaytr

This is happening to me as well. It takes minutes for Quicken to load since the last update. it's extremely frustrating.

ajaytr

Files are in the Application Support folder, and only 133MB in size, so waiting minutes for this to open isn't great.

MikeYep

Files are in App Support folder, makes no difference for me. Downloading transactions takes significantly longer than before recent updates (might be an understatement). Quicken sticks on "Updating Transactions" even when there are no new transactions to download (after running account update multiple times). Also, updated one account, received an error that bank did not authenticate me (when I changed the connection type) yet Quicken MAC continues to process for 10 minutes even though it failed authentication. Opened an incident with quicken and sent data so hoping resolution is identified quickly as clearly this is something many others are experiencing.