P: Taking too long to start

At the risk of speaking too soon, the HalideBottlenecks plugin, even though included with Photoshop 2020, does not appear to cause a slowdown upon opening. Photoshop 2020 opens in about 4 seconds for me, even though the plugin is included.

You need to look in the Photoshop application itself. Navigate to Adobe Photoshop CC [year] in Finder. Select the application, then right-click or control-click on it and choose Show Package Contents. 

Once you've revealed the Package Contents, you can navigate to the Extensions folder.

Hi Daniel - wondering if you can help - also on a Mac and cannot even find the folder you suggested nor the plugin. I have done a spotlight search for the file and the only one that comes up is in the InDesign folder. Any clues?

Wow, works like charm! Thanks a lot.

The HalideBottlenecks plugin is located in Adobe Photoshop > Contents > Required > Plug-ins > Extensions. I renamed it with a ~ at the beginning and Photoshop loads within 2 to 3 seconds. At least on a Mac.

I agree

I have reverted to CC 2018 until the PS guys can get 2019 to function as well as 2018. Its unfathomable that a program as fast and responsive was "upgraded" to the laggy mess that is CC2019. The load times alone are an annoyance and don't get me started on painting complex illustrations or smoothing line work, basically a waiting game where brushes can sometimes have a mind of their own. Illustrator suffers some of the same traits, but at least it is a bit better in terms of workflow (CC 2018 was still smoother). For professionals who use these tools every single day, these types of "upgrades" are unacceptable. I should not need to go tooling around with presets, and editing folders to get something that was running like a dream to now perform bare minimum tasks amicably. 

I have decreased the number of my group of forms and it charges faster .... I only keep about 60 shapes. It is true that I do not use all the brushes during each session!

Exactly, I'm stuck with 2018 as well

2018 v19.1.8: https://streamable.com/yj9ts
2019 v20.0.4: https://streamable.com/i67rs

Hopefully one day 2019 will get up to speed! Until then it's back to 2018 for me 😉