Editor input lag in 0.8.1

Bug graveyard
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1

Today I got 0.8.1 and in my experience, the app is slightly less quicker than earlier (0.8.0).

To make that more concrete:

  • It feels like there’s more typing lag (keystrokes aren’t recorded as quickly when typing text).
  • Sometimes scrolling small notes (< 250 words) isn’t smooth, like Obsidian didn’t load the full content yet. It of course did, but there’s a small pause in scrolling, like its “loading” or something.

Compared to 0.8.0, these things remained the same for me:

  • Start up time.
  • File opening time.
  • File creation time.

To me it seems that the input response is a bit worse on 0.8.1 compared to 0.8.0. It seems that other aspects of performance remained the same.

But this is of course hard to measure! :slight_smile: So I was wondering:

  • Do other people also have the idea the app is a little less snappy than before?

Environment

  • Operating system: Windows 7 64-bit.
  • Obsidian version: 0.8.1.

Additional information

  • I restarted Obsidian several times today to see if that made a difference, but it didn’t.
  • My computer is the same as yesterday when I was still on 0.8.0. :slight_smile:
  • I only added 3 new notes so far today, so my Vault hasn’t exploded in size today.
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2

The report is a bit vague. It would be more helpful if you could pinpoint where the problems is.
You can try to remove .obsidian/cache and open obsidian. See if it helps.
We have made some other changes in 0.8.2.

3

5 posts were split to a new topic: Lag in opening\switching to Note Preview

7

The report is a bit vague. It would be more helpful if you could pinpoint where the problems is.

Yes I agree. What can I do to pinpoint the problem? There are no error messages in the Console tab of the Developer Tools if that’s relevant.

To try and make it more concrete, this is what I see in one of the Obsidian processes when simply typing:

obsidian-input-lag
obsidian-input-lag631×670 39 KB

I really cannot figure out what Obsidian does in the background that makes the used memory grow with 60mb. But this does suggest that Obsidian does “something”.

I think this shows that my impression of typing lag has a valid cause, since the CPU usage grows relatively high for typing plain text (I don’t use latex, mermaid, or other ‘visual text’). That very probably is what makes typing feel slower because Obsidian “thinks al lot” during typing.

I don’t think the app should be doing this much during typing, also because I have grammar disabled.

This didn’t make a difference, unfortunately.

9

Can you do the same type of analysis with 0.8.0 or. Because I don’t think we changed anything special in 0.8.1. Maybe the html sanitizer. but that is faster than before.

https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases/download/v0.8.0/Obsidian.0.8.0.exe

10

maybe, we are also conflicting several issues in one report. Maybe I’ll splt this thread in the future.

@JkNMLwhen you say input lag, did you have only the editor pane open and you were typing or did you have an editor and a preview open?

11

Thanks for getting back to me.

This is the setup that I use 90% of the time:

Obsidian-setup
Obsidian-setup1920×1080 164 KB

The other 10% of the time I have a third typing editor window open, aligned vertically. I don’t use the HTML preview feature at all.

I’ll test how version 0.8.0 goes. :slight_smile:

12

Hmm one thing I would like to test if it makes a difference: Collapse the left sidebar.

See if that makes things faster - if it does I’ll need to investigate what’s going on with that.

13

@JkNML when you try to downgrade to 0.8.0 also delete
%username\Rodja\AppData\Roaming\obsidian

14

TL;DR

Thanks for all the input but I cannot reliably point to something and say, “look that became slower”. I typed on 0.7.6, 0.8.0, and 0.8.1 on the same day, and the input seems very close to each other.

Because there are performance improvements planned for 0.8.3, and since no one else mentioned typing lag, I think it’s a good idea to move this topic to ‘Resolved help’. :slight_smile:

Now for my lengthier response. :slight_smile:

On 0.8.0 I get the same CPU spikes and memory “mountains and valleys”:

obsidian-0.8.0
obsidian-0.8.0535×670 12.6 KB

The same thing also happens with 0.7.6:

obsidian-0.7.6
obsidian-0.7.6601×670 14 KB

So this behaviour, even though it looks a bit odd, cannot be attributed to a sense that input lag increased.

Because I was curious I also experimented to see what caused those CPU spikes and memory increases/decreases.

So I set out to experiment with each plugin disabled (successively) to find the problem:

Plugin name Does disabling plugin solve CPU/memory pattern
Random note No
Daily notes No
Command palette No
Custom CSS No
Starred No
Tag pane No
Backlinks No
Graph view No
Quick switcher No
Search No
File explorer No

This is the process that I followed:

  • Disable plugin.
  • Close Obsidian.
  • Wait 20 seconds for proper closing.
  • Start Obsidian.
  • Wait 20 seconds for proper start up.
  • Type plain text (3 paragraphs) in the editor and monitor utilisation of computer resources.

At the end of my test, I used Obsidian with all plugins disabled (and the left sidebar was gone, as Licat suggested). Because the CPU/memory pattern still happened then, it seems it doesn’t happen because of a plugin.

I also tried the typometer that was mentioned earlier in an attempt to measure the input lag of 0.7.6, 0.8.0, and 0.8.1, but I ran into a known issue. So unfortunately this objective way of measuring input lag didn’t work on my pc. :disappointed:

(I also searched for other software to measure input lag but didn’t find any, sadly.)

15

Thank you very much for the effort you put into it.

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