Since adopting macOS into my computing world five years ago, and having a Synology NAS in the mix for even longer, one thing I’ve consistently noticed is how much slower it was to browser NAS folders via macOS compared to Windows. Every folder loads so slowly on my Macs, but immediately on my Windows laptop. It’s not about server load either. After five years of wondering why it was so slow, I finally found a solution right on Apple’s tech support pages:
To speed up SMB file browsing, you can prevent macOS from reading .DS_Store files on SMB shares. This makes the Finder use only basic information to immediately display each folder’s contents in alphanumeric order. Use this Terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool TRUE
To complete this change, you log out of your Mac and log back in. Boom! You’ll be able to browse network folders as fast as you can on Windows. The negative to this method is that the DS_Store files aren’t scanned, so Finder won’t remember custom file sorting views, etc. No big loss from my perspective, but something to be aware of.
For anyone like me who’s constantly accessing network shares on a NAS, this tweak is a game-changer!