For a few weeks now Local (9.2.4+6788) has been very, very slow on Mac (Sequoia 15.4.1). Simple tasks like Local/About takes about 15s to open, or even scrolling the sites list. After reading similar stories in the forums I’ve tried a few things (wifi off/on, AirPlay off) with no change.
It is operable, but most tasks seem to have a considerable latency to them.
I have the same issue ever since the last Local update (Version 9.2.4+6788), starting up takes 10-15 seconds, once I click a site name in the sidebar it takes 5-10 seconds to open the dashboard.
Thanks for the reports of this. I’ve been unable to repro so far under macOS 15.4.1 with Local 9.2.4. Please could you share Local’s logs? It might help point to what’s causing the slow-down for you both.
Just checking here have either of you tried running through our Performance Help Guide here?
There might be a few things, at least double-checking in there, to help narrow down the source of conflict. We’ll continue to try and help you dig in however if nothing proves fruitful.
I’ll check these out, but almost certainly not related. The app itself is sluggish, even just scrolling, before any environment is running. I would guess there’s an issue with Local and Mac’s latest builds.
Edit: Decided to just start fresh, as the slowness was pretty bad. Turns out a fresh install works super fast. Cons are that it’s requiring a lot of work to set everything up again.
Thanks for the follow-up, @jjohns. Glad that reinstalling solved this for you, and sorry for the extra work.
I didn’t see anything unusual in your log file. There are some repeated network timeouts for Local’s update server, suggesting either a slow or missing network connection or blocked access to the update server. I wouldn’t expect that to cause general application slowness, though.
We sometimes see people running Local with the wrong architecture on macOS. For example, if you’re on Apple Silicon but were running the Intel version of Local, it would still run but be slower. It sounds like this is not the case if you suddenly noticed it when upgrading Local, so I mention it for others reading to be sure they install the correct version.
I’m also experiencing this. It’s cripplingly slow. It’s the app responding to actions, even hover states, which are super slow. I can’t start afresh, do you have another option? Can I clean library files, cache, or anything like that?
Local Version 9.2.4+6788
Apple M3 Pro
36GB RAM
macOS 15.3.2 (24D81)
B. Save and restart Local’s router
In the Local app menu: Help → Restart Local Machine (or just quit & relaunch).
Remove the existing App (just drag to trash, don’t uninstall). Then download and install the latest version from Releases - Local. The sites and settings are stored outside the APP itself, so you can safely do this without losing your sites.
I used Local to build 2 sites. It has been about a month since I had time log on to finish up one of them. When I opened it up today, it is so slow I can’t do anything. I start the site in Local and then click to open the wordpress admin and it takes at least 2 minutes to open. Then once it is open, I can’t do anything because every click takes a minute or two to respond and open anything. I tried opening my other site in Local and get the same exact issue. A month ago, Local worked great. Now its unusable. I tried updating to the newest version but it still didn’t work. So then I downgraded back down to the previous version, still doesn’t work. I’ve seen some othe people post recently about speed issues and freezes. Is there a fix to this or do I need to start over with something else? Its killed my production this month.
I’m having trouble replicating this and would love some more details.
That’s an interesting piece of info. I’m sorry for the hassle, but I’m glad you’re unblocked!
@jjohns – To help me try and replicate – do you remember some details about how you initially upgraded? For example:
What version of Local did you have originally?
How did you upgrade – was from the updater window that opens at startup, or did you manually download the latest version from Releases - Local ?
When starting the upgrade, was Local running and were you “doing stuff” on a site? For example, editing content in the wp-admin, or pulling from Flywheel or WP Engine?
You don’t explicitly say if you are on an Intel Mac or a newer, arm64 Mac, but I’m on an M1 Mac, and as a test, I went back and installed the regular MacOS version of Local v9.0.5 and it’s slow like many of you describe.
I’ve recorded this screencast, which seems to mimic what others are reporting. While the Intel version of 9.0.5 has some slowness, the 9.2.4 version is reeeeaally slow (about the 2:40 mark in the video):
My guess is that the newer versions of Electron, coupled with the newer versions of Macos are getting more incompatible with running through the Rosetta compatibility layer.
So, one thing to do is to verify is that if you are on a newer, Arm64 Mac, be sure that you have the “Apple Silicon” version of Local installed. As you can see from the above screencast, there are a couple of prompts and warnings, but Local should be able to download the correct supporting services for the correct architecture once the main application is using the correct architecture. Once you do that, Local seems to be pretty snappy.
Can others in this thread take a look and let us know if that helps? If there is still slowness after verifying the above, can provide a Zip of the Local Logs by clicking the “Download Local Log” button from the “Support” tab of Local. See this help doc for more information:
Interesting! I always just use the auto-update popup. I’ve had this M3 MacBook Pro for about a year, but I used the Mac migration assistant when I set it up, so it’s possible the non-Silicon version came over with that (even though I was migrating from an M1).
I also have a M1 Mac mini and I just manually downloaded the latest Silicon version from Releases - Local and it seems to work just fine on my M1. Now to test it on my M3…
Can confirm manually downloading the Silicon version on my M3 also seems to fix the slowness. I’m curious now if the auto-update link was bugged at some point to install the non-Silicon version, or if I’ve truly just had the non-Silicon version installed the entire time.
Side note: another way to check version is to go to the Applications folder (in Finder), right click on Local > Get Info and it will tell you there too.