Thanks — I’ll look into whether others have reported slow file dialog performance on M4 Max Macs running macOS Sequoia 15.6.1, particularly in Brave and similar apps. I’ll also check for possible fixes or workarounds, and let you know what I find.

Slow File Dialogs on macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 (M4 Max Macs) – Brave & Similar Apps

Reports of Sluggish or Frozen File Selection Dialogs

Users have widely reported that open/save file dialogs on Macs running macOS 15 “Sequoia” can become extremely slow or even completely unresponsive. This issue appears across various apps – notably web browsers like Brave, Chrome, Safari, and even productivity tools – especially on Apple Silicon Macs (including the latest M4 Max models). For example, one user described that after updating to Sequoia 15.2, every open/save dialog in any app started taking up to 5 seconds just to navigate foldersdiscussions.apple.com. Another Sequoia user later noted the lag could intermittently spike to 10 seconds or more, making basic file operations painfully slowdiscussions.apple.com.On the Brave Browser specifically, attempting to upload or save files can trigger noticeable delays or even a hang. In fact, Brave’s support forums have multiple threads about file dialogs misbehaving on macOS. Users have reported that clicking an “Upload” button in a webpage would freeze Brave for several seconds and never present the Finder file pickerdiscussions.apple.com. In one case, the dialog became completely unclickable – even the Cancel button didn’t respond – and the only way out was to restart the Brave appcommunity.brave.app. This isn’t unique to Brave: an Apple Community post from May 2025 indicates that no browser could open file dialogs on Sequoia 15.5; Safari, Chrome, Brave, and Firefox would all beachball for ~10 seconds and then fail to show the “Choose File” window entirelydiscussions.apple.com. The problem appears systemic to macOS 15 – one Redditor observed “every time I try to open a Finder window through any app…the app crashes immediately”, affecting everything from VS Code to web browserswww.reddit.comwww.reddit.com. Another frustrated user wrote that there’s a “50% chance” any app needing a Finder dialog will freeze with a spinning beachball for minutes or even crash, calling Sequoia “the most disruptive, buggy update I’ve ever seen”www.reddit.com. In short, file chooser dialogs on Sequoia have been a sore spot, severely impacting Brave and many other apps that rely on the macOS Finder UI for file selection.

Suspected Causes: iCloud, File Providers & OS Bugs

Community discussions point to macOS’s own file handling changes as the root cause, rather than a flaw in Brave itself. A common theory is that the delay happens when the system is trying to access cloud-synced or external locations in the dialog. On the MacPowerUsers forum, users noted that the lag often involves Apple’s cloud integration – for instance, the fileproviderd process (which manages iCloud Drive and other File Provider extensions) would spike to ~100% CPU whenever an Open/Save dialog was openedtalk.macpowerusers.com. This suggests the dialog might be hanging while waiting on cloud drive metadata or network volumes. Indeed, one commenter asked if the affected Mac had any network shares or cloud storage mounted, as those can cause delays if the system tries to enumerate themtalk.macpowerusers.comtalk.macpowerusers.com. Another user noted that heavy iCloud Drive activity or a glitch in its sync can produce exactly this behavior – the Finder’s open/save panel “lags hard” every time if iCloud Drive is crawling or unresponsivetalk.macpowerusers.com.Third-party cloud services have also been implicated. In one case, an M1 Max MacBook had terrible open/save slowness on both macOS 14 and 15, until the user discovered that Microsoft OneDrive was the culprit. Signing out of OneDrive instantly restored the file dialogs to normal speedtalk.macpowerusers.com. (Later, re-enabling OneDrive sometimes did not reintroduce the lag, making the exact mechanism a bit mysterioustalk.macpowerusers.comtalk.macpowerusers.com.) Similarly, older posts note that having a disconnected network SMB drive or a sleeping external disk can make the Finder stall while the dialog tries to reach those resourcesapple.stackexchange.comapple.stackexchange.com. All these findings point to file dialogs hanging on slow IO from “Places” in the Finder sidebar (e.g. cloud drives, network volumes, or even generating large file previews). A Hacker News discussion on Apple’s software quality gave a telling example: simply clicking certain large video files in an open dialog caused the system’s thumbnail generator to allocate 25+ GB of RAM and freeze the UI for a minutenews.ycombinator.comnews.ycombinator.com. In essence, any slow-to-respond source that the file dialog touches (cloud sync, network, or heavy preview) can stall the whole panel.Notably, this problem doesn’t appear to be about the raw performance of the Mac’s chip – even the powerful M4 Max cannot overcome an OS-level bottleneck or deadlock. The issue began with macOS Sequoia itself. Users emphasize that “the only thing that changed is that I updated to Sequoia”discussions.apple.com, implying a regression in macOS 15’s Finder or file-provider subsystem. (In fact, one Reddit post mentions the user’s IT department filed a bug with Apple during Sequoia’s beta, suggesting Apple was made aware early onwww.reddit.com.) Throughout Sequoia versions 15.0–15.5, numerous bugs were reported in Finder’s handling of dialogs. For example, adding a new Time Machine disk via Finder’s picker was “basically broken” in early 15.x releaseswww.reddit.com. By Sequoia 15.5, the bug peaked: “All file system dialogs don’t open anymore…any app freezes for a while…then unfreezes after 10 seconds, but the dialog never appears”, wrote one user after the 15.5 updatewww.reddit.com. In that case, even multiple reboots and safeboots didn’t helpwww.reddit.comwww.reddit.com. It ultimately turned out that something corrupted in the user’s profile was triggering the bug – migrating to a fresh macOS user account made the issue vanishwww.reddit.com. This hints that a certain user-level configuration (perhaps a bad Finder preference, a stuck file-provider cache, or an MDM profile setting) could be a factor. Indeed, on company-managed Macs (where security profiles and firewalls are enforced), the problem can be exacerbated. One Apple forum poster on 15.5 noted their corporate firewall was on and they couldn’t disable it; while the firewall itself “shouldn’t cause file dialogs to hang,” some speculated that managed settings might interfere with the Finderdiscussions.apple.comdiscussions.apple.com. (Apple had an unrelated but severe firewall bug in early Sequoia that broke networkingwww.reddit.comwww.reddit.com, so any connection between the firewall and Finder issues is not fully clear.)

Brave Browser Impact and Related Bugs

Because Brave is built on Chromium and relies on the system’s file chooser, it suffers like any other app when the OS misbehaves. Many Brave users first noticed the lag during everyday tasks like attaching files in Gmail or downloading images. In Brave’s own community forum, users complained that clicking a download or upload button would lock up Brave with no dialog appearing, forcing them to kill or restart the browsercommunity.brave.appcommunity.brave.app. Some found that Brave would work immediately after a fresh launch, but if the browser had been running for a long time (or if multiple file dialogs were invoked over time), it became more prone to hanging on the next file dialogcommunity.brave.com. In fact, one long-standing Brave bug caused exactly that: “Brave works great for a while, then it’ll stop accepting downloads and uploads… it can’t interact with the macOS file system. Click ‘Download’ – nothing. Click ‘Upload’ – nothing. Even Brave’s Settings > Downloads > ‘Change folder’ button does nothing.”community.brave.comcommunity.brave.com. The only cure in those cases was to fully quit Brave (and sometimes reboot the Mac) to restore functionality temporarilycommunity.brave.com. This hints that Brave might accumulate some state (perhaps related to the Chromium Finder connection) that triggers the Apple bug more reliably over time. Notably, Brave developers haven’t announced a specific fix on their side for this – it appears to be an upstream issue. Community moderators often advise general troubleshooting (clear cache, disable extensions, try Brave Beta builds, etc.), but those steps haven’t resolved the core file-dialog hangs for users when the OS is the culpritcommunity.brave.appcommunity.brave.app. Some Chromium-based alternatives like Opera attempt to bypass Apple’s picker by offering their own simplified file picker UI (e.g. Opera’s built-in dialog showing the Downloads folder). Interestingly, one user found Opera’s custom picker did work to select files, but the moment they clicked “Show all files” (invoking the standard Finder panel), Opera froze just like the othersdiscussions.apple.com. That further confirms it’s Apple’s standard file dialog at fault – the browser brand doesn’t matter.It’s worth noting that Brave had a few Mac-specific file dialog bugs even before Sequoia. For instance, back in 2022, Brave on macOS had an issue where file dialogs would not appear at all until you restarted the browsercommunity.brave.comcommunity.brave.com. In 2024, another Brave bug in macOS caused the file picker window to open but become completely unresponsive (no clicks registered) after certain web events, again requiring a Brave restartcommunity.brave.app. These were likely Brave/Chromium glitches that got fixed in subsequent updates. However, the sluggishness on Sequoia 15.6.1 seems squarely an Apple problem, since (a) it affects non-Chromium apps and even Apple’s own Safari, and (b) it coincided with the macOS 15 upgrade. In summary, Brave users on M4 Max MacBooks are experiencing the same frustration as many others: the hardware is cutting-edge, but the basic act of opening a file dialog is slowed by software bugs.

Workarounds and Current Status

Workarounds: In the absence of a definitive patch, users have found a few partial workarounds:

• Disable Cloud Drives: If you use iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc., try pausing or signing out of those services. This has yielded immediate improvements in many cases. For example, signing out of OneDrive made open/save dialogs “blazing fast again” for one usertalk.macpowerusers.com. Likewise, turning off iCloud Drive (even temporarily) can help determine if the lag is related to syncing. Be sure to re-enable any needed service afterward, but in some cases you might choose to leave a problematic sync off until an update fixes the issue.
• Check for Slow Volumes: Eject any network shares or external drives (especially if a drive is asleep or an SMB share is disconnected). The file dialog might be waiting on those. One StackExchange answer noted that macOS file dialogs “have traditionally been slow if there's a disk that has to wake up or a network share taking time to connect”apple.stackexchange.com. Ensuring only active, accessible drives are mounted can remove delays.
• Use Drag-and-Drop: As a workaround to the dialog itself, you can often drag a file from Finder and drop it onto the app or upload field that wants a file. Many websites (and apps like Photoshop or VS Code) accept drag-and-drop for file opening. This bypasses the need to open the Finder chooser window. In the 15.5 fiasco, users confirmed that drag/drop still worked while the dialogs were deadwww.reddit.com, so it’s a good plan B.
• Safe Mode & Reboot: Apple Support recommends booting in Safe Mode to troubleshootdiscussions.apple.com. Safe Mode (which loads only essential macOS components) can sometimes flush caches or reveal if a third-party login item is contributing. Several affected users reported no improvement even in Safe Mode, implying the bug lies in Apple’s codediscussions.apple.comdiscussions.apple.com. However, performing a Safe Mode boot and then a normal reboot does clean some system caches, which might help in certain cases. At the very least, restarting the Mac regularly (or just before you know you’ll be doing a lot of file uploads) can temporarily clear the issue in Brave and other appscommunity.brave.com. Unfortunately, as one poster wryly noted, “9 times out of 10 a restart resolves wonkiness” in macOS – but this bug seems to be the 1/10 that persistswww.reddit.comwww.reddit.com.
• New User Account: As a last resort, creating a fresh user profile on the Mac has solved the issue for somewww.reddit.com. This suggests the problem might be related to something in ~/Library (user-specific settings or caches). If you go this route, you’d migrate your documents to the new account and set up your apps again. It’s not convenient, but one user reported that nothing else worked until they switched to a clean profile – after which “the problem was connected to [the old] user, [and] a fresh user didn’t have this issue”www.reddit.com. Official Responses: As of now (macOS 15.6.1), Apple has not explicitly published a support bulletin about slow file dialogs on Sequoia. However, the issue is widely acknowledged on forums, with multiple “Me too” confirmations on Apple’s site and Reddit. Apple’s own engineers likely know of it due to bug reports (one comment mentioned it was “improved in 15.0.1” for some firewall-related caseswww.reddit.com, though clearly the file dialog bug persisted through 15.5). The macOS 15.6 update notes highlight an “important bug fix” for Finder, but that fix was about restoring devices in DFU mode9to5mac.com – unrelated to the open/save panels. In fact, during the 15.6 beta, testers still observed Finder hangs when iCloud Drive syncing was activewww.reddit.com. It appears that macOS 15.6.1 (primarily a security update) also did not explicitly address the file-dialog lag in its release notesgithub.com. The good news is that such a widespread issue is likely high on Apple’s priority list. Many Mac users have called for Apple to deliver a stability-focused update (a “Snow Leopard moment”) to fix the bugs in Sequoianews.ycombinator.comnews.ycombinator.com. If Apple follows its usual schedule, macOS 16 (in late 2025) may not be far off – but we can expect additional 15.x patches in the meantime.On the Brave side, there hasn’t been a targeted Brave update to fix what is essentially an OS bug. Brave’s support community has been advising users to update macOS itself. In scenarios where Brave alone seemed affected (e.g. the older “uploads stop after a few days” bug), the Brave team did fix those in updates around version 1.42–1.43community.brave.comcommunity.brave.com. For the current Sequoia issue, Brave engineers are somewhat at the mercy of Apple’s Finder – there is little a browser can do if macOS doesn’t present a file dialog when requested. One possible mitigation until Apple fixes Finder is for Brave to implement a non-native file picker on macOS, but that’s uncommon and not trivial (it’s more likely to introduce its own bugs). Thus, the consensus in the community is to use the workarounds above and keep macOS up-to-date. Apple did resolve a similar file dialog crash issue for some users by macOS 15.5.1–15.6 (those who experienced outright app crashes saw improvement)www.reddit.comwww.reddit.com, so progress is being made. We anticipate that either a 15.7 update or a minor macOS 15.6.x patch will finally address the lingering lag.

Conclusion

In summary, yes – there have been extensive reports of slow or unresponsive file selection dialogs on Macs with M-series chips (M4 Max included) running macOS Sequoia. The Brave browser is heavily affected, as are similar apps that rely on macOS’s open/save panels. Evidence from Apple’s forums, Reddit, and Brave’s own community points to an underlying bug in macOS 15’s Finder (likely related to cloud drive integration or Finder’s UI state) as the culpritdiscussions.apple.comwww.reddit.com. Users have identified that disabling cloud sync services, removing hung network mounts, or simply using drag-and-drop can circumvent the delay in many casestalk.macpowerusers.comapple.stackexchange.com. Both Apple and Brave are aware of the pain point: Apple has received feedback through support channels (and appears to be gradually fixing Finder issues in each point release), while Brave’s team has fielded many user reports but must rely on an OS fix for a permanent solution. As of 15.6.1, there isn’t a perfect fix yet – Apple has not formally announced a patch addressing file-dialog slowness, and Brave alone cannot resolve it. The best course for now is to keep your system updated (in case a fix is quietly included) and use the above workarounds to minimize disruption. Given the outcry, we expect that an upcoming update of either macOS Sequoia or Brave will include improvements. Until then, even the fastest Mac hardware has to wait on that spinning beachball – but at least you’re not alone, and relief is likely on the horizon.Sources: User reports on Apple Support Communitiesdiscussions.apple.comdiscussions.apple.com; Brave Community forum threadscommunity.brave.comcommunity.brave.app; MacPowerUsers discussion identifying OneDrive/iCloud causestalk.macpowerusers.comtalk.macpowerusers.com; Reddit r/MacOS bug threads (Sequoia 15.3.1 and 15.5)www.reddit.comwww.reddit.com; and related analysis of macOS Finder behaviornews.ycombinator.comapple.stackexchange.com.