Windows · Reviewed

File Explorer takes several seconds to open

Raised by 158 people over 17 years (2010–2026), in 16 of them.

What people report

2013-03
the metro apps all seem to take FOREVER to launch. You get this giant c64esque splash screen for 10-15 seconds
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2020-07
weird "explorer.exe" problems, weird nautilus problems
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2023-06
I've had folders on an SSD that took a minute (60 seconds!) to load.
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2025-11
It now takes multiple seconds to initialize, plus additional delay in actually selecting what you want to capture.
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2026-10
The obvious inefficiency and their sluggishness when doing anything on filesystem is driving me crazy but I gave up.
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Principle

Response time limits (Nielsen's 0.1/1/10 seconds)

People report that File Explorer, Calculator and similar basic tools take seconds or longer to open or respond, well beyond the roughly one second within which users keep their flow of thought.

A fix

Set launch-time budgets for core utilities, such as a window drawn in under 200 ms and interactive in under 1 s on slow hard drives, and track them in CI. Defer folder-type sniffing, previews and network lookups until after the window is usable.

Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?

All 189 source comments