**HORRIFYINGLY SLOW BRIDGE AFTER GETTING M1**

@Anisha GuptaI'm providing another repeatable test with more informaiton on the issue. As you get to the bottom of the post, I think you'll find the problem and have a good idea about how the team can investigate it further.

As a reminder: my setup is the 64 GB RAM Mac Studio. The files are on the internal SSD. There are hundreds of gigabytes of free disk space and Bridge can be the only app running. I don't believe that the hardware matters at all. The problem is software-based, as I've detailed below.

Recently I exported 2000 images into a single folder, directly from the Apple Photos app. As opposed to my earlier tests, Bridge handles this directory like a champ. I can change a keyword on all 2000 files and it completes in about 5 seconds. Meanwhile keyword changes on any file in the original, problematic directory of 156 images is always slow as molasses, taking 3–4 seconds for each file.

I moved the slow directory to reside as a sibling for the fast directory. No change in keyword processing speed for either. I moved 10 of the slow JPGs to the fast folder. Now updating the keywords on the 2010 JPGs takes about 40 seconds longer than before.

Here's the latest info that I think the Bridge team will find most interesting: I realized that even though all the 156 slow files also came from the Photos app, unlike the 2000, they were not exported using the "Unmodified Original" option. They were exported after having their color settings edited from within Photos. They also were exported from iCloud, not from the Photos local cache.

So my best guess became that the file data format in an edited version is not the same exact file data format in an unmodified original, when exported from Apple Photos. But it turns out we can prove the difference. Here's how:

An experiment was set up by grabbing 10 photos in the Photos app that were already locally stored, and not sitting on iCloud. I exported them twice. The first time used the Export > Unmodified Originals option, the second was the standard Export > 10 Photos option. These were exported to the same folder, so the name clashes were resolved by the system to append a "1" to the end of the second set of files. No big deal.

Now I opened Bridge and located the new folder with the 20 freshly exported JPGs. I did a Select All and clicked to set a single keyword. Then I quickly switched to the Finder to watch the Date Modified column inside this folder, to see what happens as Bridge processed the keyword edit.

All the unmodified originals update instantly. All the modified JPGs take 3–4 seconds apiece.

This should be enough information to help Adobe investigate and find a final fix for the issue. No doubt the Apple Photos app has been around long enough and has a large enough user population to warrant it.

I can't wait to see what they find and then enjoy being able to use Bridge after they fix it. @Flexigav Thanks for the thoughts. As you can see, it definitely is an issue for the Adobe Bridge engineering team.