After upgrade to Sonoma, opening of PAGES docs is VERY slow

Update: So Apple called me back and have confirmed that the engineers are aware from multiple people that this is an issue. It will be fixed in a Sonoma update, so I would suggest avoiding any workarounds or DIY solutions if you can wait. They say typically a fix for something like this would take around 10 days to implement and release an OS update for. That's not a guarantee, however. Hope this helps.

I have a very busy couple of days ahead, so will not be trying it until probably Tueday, but wanted to share this from a poster called 'FirstPost' on LogicProHelp.com as it may be the solution we have been waiting for.

Hello, this was the first match I found confirming I wasn't the only one who met with problems upgrading from 13.7..1 to 14.7.1. I'm not even a Logic Pro user, but I thought it might help to share the solution I've found out at last. If you can't or don't want to upgrade to Sequoia, you can fix the missing recent items (and several other weird issues) resetting your user keychain. I did and everything works now. I had only to re-enter Gmail accounts passwords. Of course you must have a backup...

A few references:

https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/764435

"Failed to retrieve app-scope key"… | Apple Developer Forums

https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/765433

As the Apple support article is a bit laconic IMHO, I followed this link to reset my keychain:

https://macpaw.com/how-to/reset-keychain-mac

The above article is sponsored but basically reliable. Just one caveat about toggling off iCloud Keychain. As Jeff Johnson (the developr of StopTheMadness) reports

By the way, toggling off "Sync this Mac" caused System Settings to hang and eventually crash the preference pane

That's what happened to me too, but following onscreen directions I could easily update my ID Apple settings (this process was not responding).

As a last step I had to restart into secure boot to have recent items back in place.

Hope it helps. I was on the verge of erasing and install from scratch...

Hello,

Same issue for me. Updated from Ventura to Sonoma (14.1.7) a few days ago and Pages and Numbers are slow to load and respond and save/rename. Takes about 30-60 seconds to load in a document. I am on a MacStudio M1Pro.

I went to the Genius Bar and they couldn't find any issues and the only solution they offered, was to take to computer for further testing. But all diagnostic they were able to run at my appointment showed no issues.

I have uninstalled and installed Pages/Numbers numerous times, etc..no change. I guess the last step will be to do a clean install.

Updated to Sonoma 14.7.2. Still no fix for pages or numbers slow loading of documents. I am MBP M1Pro. Unfortunately if I upgrade to Sequoia some of my DAW apps will no longer work as everything is not ported yet.

Sadly, no fix at all with 14.7.2 as far as I can see. All the same problems. Very disappointing.

One last straw… press and hold the shift key while launching Pages. Then open any document and observe the document opening time. The shift key approach prevents Pages from using its last execution state, and maybe a miracle will happen by sidestepping it.

Creating a new user is simple but migrating your existing user data to the new user is H*LL owing to specific current permissions and ownership. I would avoid that at all costs as it will be prohibitively expensive in time and profanity.

Another approach, assuming you have backed up any custom Pages templates from that com.apple.iWork.Pages container location, would be quit Pages, and then move the preceding Pages container folder to the Desktop, and let Pages recreate that container hierarchy the next time Pages is launched. I usually recommend this as the very last approach paying attention to ensuring you have a backup of any custom (My Templates) templates.

Great solution if you have compatible hardware and basic app requirements. Personally, I can't do that as I have huge numbers of third party Logic Pro plugins and an audio interface that are not yet Sequoia certififed by their delvelopers/manufactures. A lot of peple who had this problem were people jumping straight from the latest version of Ventura to the latest version of Sonoma to get access to Logic Pro 11.1 - the first upgrade that had Sonoma as its minimum OS requirement. So they are all in the same boat if they have plugins from Arturia, Native Intruments, Roland etc.

Pages v14.2 requires macOS Sonoma or later. Verify that the M2 Mac user has updated Pages to v14.2 as running an older version of Pages on a newer operating system may introduce issues including degraded application performance.

If that M2 Mac is slow to open Pages and is also running any anti-virus application, or the user has run any so-called "Mac Cleaning" application, both should be uninstalled entirely per the vendor's instruction followed by a reboot. Some cleaning applications remove valid files with collateral damage.

The M2 Mac should be booted into Safe Boot mode, then determine if the same Pages document load time changes for the better. If it does, then there is some third-party software that is not loaded during Safe Boot, that is interfering with Pages when one reboots that M2 Mac normally.

Last evening, I upgraded my 2021 16-in MBP M1 Pro 32 GB from Ventura 13.7.1 to Sonoma v14.7.1. It appeared to be a normal upgrade. Pages was updated from v14.1 to v14.2. Opening the same 179-page document now took about a minute when it used to open in a fraction of that time in Pages v14.1 on Ventura, or Pages v14.2 with Sonoma v14.7.1 on my older M2 Mini Pro.

Hopefully, there will be a Sonoma v14.7.2, and/or Pages update released this month that corrects this lethargy.

I never select Safari Settings > General > [ ] Open "safe" files after downloading, and yet my double click of the toolbar ↓⃝ downloaded items still opens a PDF in Preview.

With a last Time Machine backup completed, you might consider booting that M2 Mac into Recovery mode, and reinstalling the Sonoma v14.7.1 operating system.

Correction on my last post. Has anyone heard of Pages documents opening slowly on macOS 15.1 or macOS 15.1.1 ?

After a restart, it may take far longer than two minutes for all of the customary (initial) operating system processes to quiet down. Attempting to open a Pages document when competing with the related CPU and Storage demands by other processes certainly can delay opening a Pages document.

I am using an M4 Mac Mini Pro running Sequoia v15.1 and have Pages v14.2 installed. I have a four-page Pages document with two small images mixed in with the text. After 10 minutes from a boot/reboot, I can double-click on that Pages document and it is opened in under 2 seconds. The file is on my Desktop.

Pages is the only application that can open Pages documents in their original formatting, so no need to set any default application for that purpose. Alternatively, the current LibreOffice 24.8.3 can open Pages documents containing only text though it cannot edit them, so of limited usage.