When Norton Is Enabled It Forces Download Of All Files On iCould Or Google Docs in Finder on the Mac. Previews become terribly slow as all files are downloaded. it stops when Norton is suspended.
I have Norton 360 and I have not experienced this issue on my Mac. Maybe it’s specific to your machine? What happens if you try to uninstall Norton completely and install it again?
Same thing happens after a reinstall. Seems it may have started with latest OS upgrade. Makes system pretty much unusable with Norton as viewing any folder that is cloud based not local becomes painfully slow. The folder has to be setup to show previews of the files, each file’s preview triggers a download. No issue at all when Norton is uninstalled. MS Copilot gave me the info below when is asked about this problem, would be good if someone could validate if this is actually the issue or not.
On modern macOS versions (Monterey → Sonoma and newer):
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iCloud Drive and Google Drive for Desktop (streaming mode) use Apple’s File Providerframework
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Files that are “cloud‑only”:
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Can normally be previewed in Finder (Quick Look) without downloading
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Only download when you open them
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Why Norton causes downloads
Norton 360:
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Hooks deeply into the filesystem for real‑time scanning
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Treats a Finder preview or metadata access as a file open
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This forces macOS to download the entire file locally
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Happens for:
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Finder previews
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Icon thumbnails
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Spotlight indexing
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Any background scan Norton performs
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