P: Taking forever in Reading Preferences

@rome2807 thank you so much for the extremely detailed and clear answer. I don't know why it didn't cross my mind to just delete ~/Library/Caches entirely, but I did just that (well, renamed it just in case), rebooted, and Photoshop is back to loading in literally less than 2 seconds.

I hope people that run into this issue find this thread and are able to get this resolved as swiftly as I did -- it was driving me crazy. Thank you again.

@Loopeon - It seems you carried out the same steps as I did but didn't resolve it. I performed all equivalent steps 1-7 except 4 initially. None did resolve the issue as it is in your case.

One difference could be step 4 - I just deleted the entire ~/Library/Caches directory, not just targeting Adobe-related files. This is of more course risky as it may cause side effects for other applications. None in my case but your mileage may vary. Looking at my (now working) installation, the following Adobe-related files/directories have been recreated in  ~/Library/Caches:

Adobe

Adobe Camera Raw 2

ARFileCache

com.adobe.acc.AdobeCreativeCloud

com.adobe.acc.AdobeDesktopService

com.adobe.bridge13

com.adobe.ccd.helper

com.adobe.headlights.LogTransport2App

com.adobe.lightroomCC

com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7

com.adobe.Photoshop

Possibilities: a) you may have overlooked some, b) there are others that cause the issues, but are no longer needed, c) we're observing the same effect, but there are different root causes.

I would recommend to perform the following steps with lead me to make the association with the ~Library/Caches content:

1) as an administrator, create a net new Mac user account (can be an ordinary user, not an administrator)

2) login as this user (everything at default)

3) Login into Creative Cloud with your existing Adobe credentials, perform all necessary steps to ready the activate the required version of Photoshop

4) Open Photoshop, obeserve the load time. It may take longer initially (prompts, environment setup, etc.). Exit

5) Reopen Photoshop, observe the load time. I measured ~5s. Your hardware should deliver equivalent, if not better results

a) if you can reproduce, we have validated that the issue is within your personal Mac user environment

b) if not, there must be a different root cause, not related to data within your Mac account

6) If it is indeed 5a), I would recommend to perform a "radical" cache cleanup

a) rename ~/Library/Caches to ~/Library/Caches.backup. Reboot.

b) Login with your credentials, start Photoshop and measure the load time

c) if resolved, check all other applications for side effects. If none are observed, you may want to delete the Cache copy taken in 6a) after a few days.

d) if not, you can either restore the Caches backup: from the command prompt: mv ~/Library/Caches ~/Library/Caches.new; mv ~/Library/Caches.backup ~/Library/Caches and reboot or just continue as is. In my experience, the caches are meant to  be transient. No application should depend on the old content except for performance improvement

I really hope the steps above will help you to track down the problem. If not, we have at least eliminated you personal account setup as the cause. 

Having this issue after updating from 24.2 to 24.4.1 on a Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 64GB RAM, running macOS Ventura 13.3.1

Tried everything suggested in this thread, and more:

1. Reset preferences from within Photoshop and reopened it
2. Reset preferences by moving "Adobe Photoshop 2023 Settings" out of ~/Library/Preferences
3. Cleared cache from within Photoshop by clicking on Edit>Purge>All and Edit>Purge>Video Cache
4. Cleared cache by deleting all Adobe related files in ~/Library/Caches
5. Downgraded back to 24.2, reset preferences and cleared cache as per points 1 to 4
6. Downgraded to 24.3 instead, reset preferences and cleared cache as points 1 to 4
7. Completely uninstalled Photoshop and chose not to keep any preferences or settings, then re-installed it

None of the above helped. Photoshop now gets stuck in "Reading Preferences" upon launch which then prompts the macOS spinning pinwheel to appear for about 32 seconds, at which point Photoshop finally loads.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I ran into the reported problem too. My environment - MacBook M1 Max, 64GB, MacOS 13.3.1. Photoshop 24.4.1

It took about 35s to start Photoshop. Tried all recommendations in this thread, but couldn't resolve it.Disabled all third-party plugins. UXP Plugins. Temporarily reset preferences to defaults. Tried an older version of Photoshop (23.5.1). All with comparable slow startup times.

I didn't see a reference to another potential source though, corrupt cache files. So I cleaned all Adobe related files in ~/Library/Caches. With all third-party plugins re-enabled, I measured <5s startup time. So while I can't say which exact cache file caused this, it was definite related to the cache content.

I don't know what that means. The tech savvy terminology may be what is hindering me from solving this issue like others have because I can't find any layman's terms anywhere.

Hi, can you look at where is the bottleneck in your system info?

So, just to be clear, there is still no solution to this?
I am encountering the same problem out of nowhere and not one solution has fixed it.

@alanb976665 were you able to totally disable the integrated GPU, as explained in?  https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-gpu-graphics-card.html#GPUandgraphicsdrivertroubleshootingsteps

When the intel uhd 630 drivers installed I get no report of incompatibility from PD. When gtx 1650 installed I get error message saying it's not compatible. Are you sure you have got your facts right?

From engineering: "The posted system info shows it's taking a ridiculous amount of time to get data from the GPU. I strongly suspect the drivers here - it's also a laptop which means that newer drivers straight from nvidia might not work properly. Their final message says that the old Dell laptop driver gets preferences loading in 9 seconds - not great, but not terrible either. That might be the best we can do if Dell isn't producing more up to date drivers."

Typically, newer drivers and using the discreet, high performance card is recommended. Given the above statement, you probably want to stick with the laptop vendor delivered drivers.

So not changed a thing and PS back to its usual useless self. Ages to load reading preferences.