My Obsidian is slowing down to the point of being completely unusable (MacOS)

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1

Hi, I apologise if this problem has already occurred, but I couldn’t find a similar discussion.

For several months now, if Obsidian is open for several hours, it starts to run incredibly slow: response times range from a few seconds to infinity. I often can’t even get the application to shut down properly. If I force quit it and start it again, the problem goes away, but reappears a few hours later. I couldn’t see any particular cause, the problem seems to appear by itself over time.

I’m using Obsidian v1.4.16 on a MacBook M1, macOS 14.0 (but the problem started back on version 13.0)

I don’t have a very large vault of less than 340MB of storage.

I realise that this data is probably not enough to know what the problem is, but perhaps someone has encountered this before.

2

Can you paste your debug info in here? cmd/ctrl + p → Show debug info.

It’s really hard to know what the issue is at this point, but it may be a run away plugin. I’d try turning on Restricted mode (no plugins), restarting, and using it for a few hours to see what happens.

3

Do you have too many “Active Plugins” ?
I too have about 200 Plugins - but only about 15 are active which I use the most.
Also I use a very few programs and very few bare bone services needed to keep my debian running.

4

What is the context of your reply? Are you experiencing the same slow down issue?

If so, then the same answer to you: Please show your “Show Debug Info” and give more details.

1 Like
5

@rigmarole No, I don’t have any issue. I am trying to help.(If there are way too many plugins which original poster might want to look into)

6

Thanks! There is the output

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v1.4.16
	Installer version: v1.4.13
	Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 23.0.0: Thu Aug 17 21:24:14 PDT 2023; root:xnu-10002.1.11~3/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 23.0.0
	Login status: logged in
	Catalyst license: insider
	Insider build toggle: on
	Live preview: on
	Legacy editor: off
	Base theme: light
	Community theme: Things v2.1.4
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 29
	Plugins enabled: 22
		1: Settings Search v1.3.7
		2: Recent Files v1.3.6
		3: Calendar v1.5.10
		4: Dataview v0.5.56
		5: Obsidian42 - Strange New Worlds (SNW) v1.2.2
		6: Smart Random Note v0.2.1
		7: Readwise Official v2.0.1
		8: Templater v1.16.0
		9: floating toc v2.3.0
		10: Auto Link Title v1.4.1
		11: Journey v0.0.7
		12: Pending notes v0.6.2
		13: Note Linker v1.1.1
		14: Folder Index v1.0.20
		15: Text Generator v0.3.20
		16: Smart Connections v1.6.34
		17: Whisper v1.5.1
		18: AI Commander v1.3.2
		19: Outliner v4.7.1
		20: Vault Chat v1.3.1
		21: AI Notes Summary v1.0.3
		22: Paste image rename v1.6.1

RECOMMENDATIONS:
	Custom theme and snippets: for cosmetic issues, please first try updating your theme and disabling your snippets. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community theme and snippets.
	Community plugins: for bugs, please first try updating all your plugins to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community plugins.
7

Thanks, it was my first thought too. I have 29, 22 of them are active. I tried to deactivate the ones I use less often but I hadn’t notice any big difference.

8

Repeating what I said above:

You can’t just turn a few off, you need them all off. I’d start with the above.

Then you can slowly turn them on again. Folks will probably disagree with my groupings here, but I’ve used these with no issues:

1: Settings Search v1.3.7
2: Recent Files v1.3.6
3: Calendar v1.5.10
4: Dataview v0.5.56  *if you don't have too many queries in open notes
5: Obsidian42 - Strange New Worlds (SNW) v1.2.2
6: Smart Random Note v0.2.1

8: Templater v1.16.0 

22: Paste image rename v1.6.1

Unknown to me and some AI looking stuff that might be doing a lot in the background. I’d start my investigation with these if using the plugins in the first group seem fine:

7: Readwise Official v2.0.1
9: floating toc v2.3.0
10: Auto Link Title v1.4.1
11: Journey v0.0.7
12: Pending notes v0.6.2
13: Note Linker v1.1.1
14: Folder Index v1.0.20
15: Text Generator v0.3.20
16: Smart Connections v1.6.34
17: Whisper v1.5.1
18: AI Commander v1.3.2
19: Outliner v4.7.1
20: Vault Chat v1.3.1
21: AI Notes Summary v1.0.3

Good luck!

3 Likes
9

Try:
Disable or enable: Hardware acceleration
path: Settings → About → Hardware acceleration

10

(Please note that the information below is for your reference only to help solve the current problem; it is not indicative or suggestive in any manner to share data in any way.)

Checking for CPU and memory use is my best option.

If you are on Windows check which program/s are hogging CPU / Memory (Task Manager)

The Linux programme “top” can be used to monitor CPU utilisation, and the following command can be used to examine memory:

ps -o pid,user,%mem,command ax | sort -b -k3 -r

Though least suspect could be slow/failing hard drive - you might as well check disk

11

@looney.apache I know you are trying to be helpful, but copy/pasting (possible) AI generated advice is exactly the opposite of helpful here.

1 Like
12

Apparently - RESOURCE UTILIZATION appears to be a crucial factor in resolving the current problem.

13

Would be interesting to see how much of that is attachments. 340Mb of md-files is rather big. I have a vault of about 2136 files that is 130MB big but with 105MB is attachments. If most are notes in your case and you use the graph-view there has been some memory-leakage in the past. When it slows done how big is youre memory usage?

1 Like
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