Is there still a problem with Massive amount of Icons on Desktop?

Question

Hello Foks;I know it used to be a problem with older version of Mac OS, that if you had a massive amount of icons on the desktop, it could actually slow your computer down. I have a person who is having random beach balls, and her desktop is littered with icons. I would like to discount this as a problem. This machine is a Macbook pro, with 16gb of ram 256gb SSD. She is not syncing desktop to icloud.Any ideas?Brian

datafornothinandbitsforfree · Answer

They cured the icons on the desktop issue years ago (a lot of years ago).

More likely 3rd party launch agents or launch daemons that are interfering with the normal operations.

Suggest booting into Safe mode. If life is better, it is almost assured it is 3rd party stuff running in the background. Possibly adware or anti-virus package(s).

Try booting into Safe mode

< http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564 >

This will not load any 3rd party additions, it will load some more conservative Apple drivers (may cause screen flicker), and it will clear some kernel caches (a cache is saved data in a form that can speed up a program, but is totally redundant to the original source, and thus can be safely cleared). Booting into Safe mode is just an experiment, but can frequently eliminate any 3rd party interference, or a cached item out-of-sync with the world. (Verify Safe mode via Applications -> Utilities -> System Information -> Software -> Boot Mode -> Safe vs Normal)

brianw1234 · Answer

Thats what I thought. Appreciate the input.