Just a quick tip to you Apple Aperture 3 users out there, who are experiencing a (very) slow running Aperture 3 – like I did. Mine was so bad, I was about to go crazy. It could easily take 5-10 seconds to make adjustments, and that’s just not good enough. I figured Aperture 3 was buggy, since performance did improve a bit when version 3.0.1 was released.
Then when 3.0.2 came and nothing was changed, I decided that something must be done. Luckily, I found a tip that solved my issues.
Thanks to Matthew Bergsma at the Apple Discussions board, my Aperture 3 is now running fantastic and fast!! He suggests that you first make sure to have done all necessary software updates, then delete all files in the following three folders:
Hard Drive/Library/Caches
Hard Drive/System/Library/Caches
Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Caches
Also delete this file:
Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.aperture.plist
You might want to create a backup first, just in case. But there shouldn’t be any danger here, since we’re dealing with cache folders and a “settings”-file for Aperture 3 (you’ll have to modify settings again, if you’ve changed them in the first place).
Doing the things above and restarting my Mac, solved my Aperture 3 issues. I don’t know why I was suffering in the first place, it’s possible that it was because I imported my iPhoto library into Aperture 3, but I can’t say for sure.
If you’re not yet an Aperture 3 user, I suggest you check out the demo from Apple – you can also buy Aperture 3 from Amazon for less than $180.
Also read: Aperture 3 Brushes – A Quick Demonstration
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Just a quick heads-up. The following sentence…
Also delete this file: Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Preferences/com.apple.aperture.plist
…should read:
Also delete this file: Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.aperture.plist
…at least on my Snow Leopard MacBook.
You’re right – thanks
You might want to add to this that you’ll los all of your faces, maps, and album data if you take these steps.
Actually strike that.. (or moderate that!) it doesn’t.. you just have to open your exiting library because your preference for opening the last one is gone, so everything is there, you just have to open the library file.
Hi Joe,
Yeah I wouldn’t expect Places and Faces to get nuked when clearing cache files – that wouldn’t make any sense
Not sure about the settings (.plist) file though, I can’t remember if I lost any of my Faces or Places after doing this. Well, I’d rather go through my Faces again at high-speed rather than living with a “10-second per adjustment” Aperture from now on 
Thanks for your comment!
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will this work in aperture 2 as well?
I don’t know, sorry. I wasn’t aware there were any performance issues like this, with Aperture 2 as well.
I seemed to have lost all of my photo’s I already had saved in Aperture when I did this. Can anyone give me instructions on how to get them back?
Thanks!
Sorry to hear that, Lissa. That’s why I encourage people to have a backup first. Actually, everybody who values their photo should ALWAYS have a backup that’s not too old (max 1 week, I’d say, but the shorter the better).
Your photos should still be in the “Aperture Library” folder though, located in your Pictures folder. You can right click it to view package contents.
Haha thanks, I do have a backup but it’s about a week out and I did a bunch of work yesterday (of course!). Didn’t want to have to go there if I didn’t have to.
Got the ol’library back – thanks so much for your help – this worked very well for me!
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I’m glad it worked for you
It would have been terrible if you had lost your photos in the attempt.
Aperture is damn slow even after doing these steps. I have some 5000 photos and it takes ome 10 mins to load the thumbnails. Its just a shame to apple to realease such product. My mac book pro finder loads thumbnails faster then this shitty aperture. I think i will shift back to Lightroom.
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I started to follow the instructions, but balked when I got to:
Delete Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Caches
That folder contained preference info on just about every application on my machine! So, I scanned the folder and deleted folder “com.apple.Aperture” (after creating a back-up of course!!)
I followed the remainder of the instructions, and amazing difference.
Aperture 3.0.3 has still hung up occasionally on one thing, creating a duplicate version.
Hi Alphonse. The /caches folder only contains cache files but of course there could be some cache files based on preferences too, but nothing will happen if you empty *that* cache folder. The actual preference files are stored elsewhere so if necessary, the apps will just make a new cache file based on the stored preferences.
But I’m glad you managed to speed up your Aperture 3 anyway
Hey, hope this helps others … I made the jump from iPhoto to Aperture, and did the import. It brought all my pictures (of course) and all the data, like faces and places. But within a few minutes Aperture came to a crawl, it was ridiculous. We’re talking 15+ seconds when adding a name to a face. I googled and found this fix, and it has restored the speed, its like turbo-boosted.
I’m new to Mac, I was a bit skeptical because I was going through the caches and the files I was deleting weren’t big, they were like 8kb.
Seriously, so happy its back up to speed. thanks.
I’m glad it worked for you Jeffrey – and thank you for your comment
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Nice one sir. Aperture now behaving like it should. Can’t believe the difference although damn near soiled the pants when my old library didn’t appear until I added it manually.
Excellent
Before I attempt this solution, could someone please clarify exactly what settings will be lost/reset from deleting these files?
Thanks,
Edward
I don’t remember, sorry. The cache libraries are just caches, they will be rebuilt. The preference file, I can’t remember about – but just drag it to your desktop first, then you have a backup – and it’s deleted from its location as well.
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Nice fix. It run a bit faster afterwards. But it still is relatively slow. Its funny how the powerful processors & dedicated graphics on my Mac can’t help. Apple should take a serious look at this issues.
Just wanted to say how grateful I am for this tip. I’d just upgraded from Aperture 2 to 3 yesterday, using a dodgy serial (so I could properly test), put was seriously put off a purchase by the fact that Aperture was taking, what felt like, a couple of minutes to start. Cleared out those caches, deleted the preference file, and startup time dropped to a couple of seconds. It’s now running faster that Aperture 2 ever did, so an upgrade purchase, I think, is imminent!
Very well! It worked for me, and now the program runs faster. Thanks a lot!
Worked for me, too. Actually, my whole Mac is running faster. Thanks so much! I had been afraid to mess with anything, but the sluggish performance got me so frustrated I did a Time Machine backup, held my breath and went for it. I did have to reset my custom Command set, and tell it not to look for Faces (too slow). But it kept my custom presets and some other tweaks I’d made. Anyway, thanks for sharing this!
LOL, I just came across this post on google while looking for information on why it seems my 9400m is running aperture better than the 9600 in my 08 macbook pro.
Well, I’m glad this simple “user-land” fix to an oversight by the QA team is still helping people who are upgrading from aperture 2 now.
Hey, I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for writing up this article. Your instructions literally turned Aperture from a burden to a blessing.
I’m glad it helped you out, David
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Wow, I’m genuinely impressed. This actually worked! I can finally make adjustments without ripping my hair out. Not only did it speed up Aperture, but it’s helped a few of my other programs as well.
Thanks a bunch for this tip!
Awesome, Caitlyn, I’m glad you can stop ripping your hair out now
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You just made my day! Thank you very much… i was just thinking about splitting my library or moving back to iphoto or whatelse…
Now I’m just happy! =)
can’t wait to try this when i get home today. Aperture 3 has been driving me crazy. at least 15 seconds for adjustments to finish… i hope this helps.
Thank you for posting this. Aperture 3 was running like a snail on my MBP. Now it is exponentially faster.
Wonderful. So glad my search turned up your post! Aperture is now back to normal for me. Not speedy but then again neither is Photoshop on my system. No idea why after using for a couple of years it decided to crawl, but this took care of the problem. Thank you!
Whaay! Great!! Have been trying everything, but this seems to work, at least for smaller libraries (max 5000 photos per library).
Still have to check our biggest library (50.000+ photo’s). I am a bit afraid that this won’t perform, but I’ll keep you posted
Hmmm. It appears I don’t have/can’t find this library: Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Caches
Anyone know where I can find it?
Hi scott, are you using Snow Leopard or Lion?
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Hi Klaus, I’m using Lion. Sorry for not including it in my original post!
Scott,
Just open up a Finder window, then hit shift+cmd+G (“go to folder”) and enter:
~/Library
This will take you to your user library (which is hidden by default in Lion – a smart move by Apple, most users never need to go there anyway). Then navigate to the “Caches” folder and delete the folder or the content.
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…and there it is! Thanks, Klaus!
You don’t need to delete all chaches if you’re running OS X Lion. Just delete:
1) “com.apple.Aperture” folder in “User/Library/Caches”
2) “com.apple.Aperture.plist” file in “User/Library/Preferences”
3) “com.apple.Aperture.plist.lockfile” file in “User/Library/Preferences”
This tip is amazing! I was ready to throw Aperture out and get lightroom in because I couldn’t stand waiting for my photo’s to show any longer. Aperture was using 1,5 GIGAbytes of memory before and 760 mB now.
If all these people experience the samen problem, I don’t get why Apple didn’t send out a quick update yet that gets rid of those cached files that block up Aperture.
Great stuff!
I too have been facing the performance issue, and have also performed the ‘fix’ above. It feel more than a little disappointed though, this kind of work-around is not what I have come to expect from Apple …. Have they been employing Microsoft layoffs ???
Thanks so much – seems to be working a treat.
thank you for your tip… my aperture is running much faster!
I will surely follow your article! Thanks for a great blog..
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I have to say I was very sceptical about this, but lots of positive comments convinced me to give it a try. And it works!
It does run faster. Thanks mate, great tip!
Just a bit of warning… if you customised your upper toolbar, it will come back to default, together with any other settings. But better to spend 2 mins setting up my toolbar back to way I like it than watching the spinning ball all evening.
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Thank you , thank you, thank you. I’ve been using Aperture 3 since it’s release and I’ve been so frustrated with slow speed. It took forever to do anything. You have made my day.
Thanks.
Thanks a bunch for this tip!So glad my search turned up your post! Aperture is now back to normal for me. This is a great tips!
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Going to try this out. Aperture just slowed down for god knows what reason. So annoying.
Hi, all — First, thank you for trying to help with these slow Aperture issues! Second, I followed the instructions as mentioned and upon restarting my Mac and Aperture, though I can find all of my Aperture libraries (several I’ve collected over the years for one reinstall reason or another), they all open empty. I will say all of my images live in referenced files, nothing is stored directly in Aperture, so for the time being (fingers crossed) all of my original files are safe on external harddrives. I guess my question is, has anyone had any experience with needing to fully re-import all files after following the above steps? Or if they’ve had the same issue, was there another way to resolve? I’d rather not have to re-import 7 + years of photos and make sure they’re all arranged as I’d like! Any help would be welcome — thank you!
Just works! thanks Klaus!
Hi,
just wanted to let you know: I just deleted the caches and left the settings alone. Amazing difference already. So you might want to try that out first. Thanks for this page though. Saved my day.
Regards,
JP