Speed up iPhoto '09 by turning off item counts

May 01, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: babbage

Following on the heels of the confirm/reject/name and not a face hints, here's one last iPhoto '09 trick, courtesy of bhagemann's comment to the 'not a face' hint.

If iPhoto '09 is unbearably slow for you, showing the spinning beachball at the slightest provocation, try this solution. Go into iPhoto's preferences, and on the General tab, uncheck the box next to Show item counts. That's it. On my dual core 2.3ghz G5 with 8GB of RAM and a 45,000 image iPhoto library, this made an immediate and dramatic improvement. On the other hand, another commenter with a octo-core 2.8ghz Mac Pro with 6gb RAM and a 80k photo library says it made no difference for him.

So this may not be a remedy that works in all cases, or above a certain threshold of computing power. But at least in some cases, such as mine, it can make an enormous difference.

Comments (6)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090430161208802