Hi, I have updated the installer from 1.8.10 to 1.9.10 (obsidian version is 1.9.10) and noticed a big degradation of the performance of the search feature.
Weirdly, looking at the dev tools and doing a profiling, it seems that all the CPU is spend in the rendering part.
I have also tried in restricted mode with a plain copy of my original vault and no synch enabled, on both Windows and Mac OS X versions.
Reverting the installer to 1.8.10 removes the issue, so I guess something related to Electron version?
Could you please add the bug report template including the debug info output when using the 1.8.10 installer as well as when using the 1.9.10 installer? Thanks!
I’ve encountered a similar issue with Obsidian 1.9.10 Installer on Windows 10 (64-bit) and found a temporary workaround.
Issue:
After a fresh install, the app becomes extremely laggy and almost unresponsive immediately upon launch.
The rest of the system remains fully responsive with no CPU/RAM spikes – only Obsidian doesn’t react to clicks or typing.
Installing 1.8 first and updating to 1.9.x via auto-update works fine without lag.
This also occurs with a Sandbox vault.
Steps to reproduce:
Completely uninstall Obsidian.
Download and install version 1.9.10 from the official Installer.
Launch the app → the UI is heavily laggy and almost unusable.
Temporary workaround (personal experience):
Go to Settings → Appearance → Hardware Acceleration.
Turn it off and relaunch Obsidian.
Then turn it on again and relaunch once more.
After this two-step toggle, the app runs smoothly.
Notes:
The bug seems related to GPU initialization during a fresh install. By “GPU initialization”, I mean the process where Obsidian sets up and activates the graphics card for rendering the UI when launched for the first time after a fresh install.
This does not happen when updating from 1.8 → 1.9.x inside the app.
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.9.11
Installer version: v1.9.10
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 24.6.0: Mon Jul 14 11:30:29 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.140.69~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 24.6.0
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: supporter
Insider build toggle: on
Live preview: on
Base theme: light
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on
RECOMMENDATIONS:
none
Additional
What are the best steps for creating a performance profile?
Performance tab → CPU/Network: no throttling → Record → perform a few search actions → stop recording → “save profile”. Something like that?
I see the repro tag, so assume one of the team reproduced the issue. Would a performance profile still be helpful?
I see the same on both my Win11 and Linux Mint.
I reinstalled 1.8.10 for now to double-check. Yes, the 1.9.10 version is about 300 percent slower, which is huge.
My own search modal standalone .ts was as fast on the new version as the old one, from what I’ve seen, so it’s only the core modal, if my opinion is worth anything.
So we believe there are two separate problems. One specifically related to search, which will be fixed 1.9.12. Another is related to gpu acceleration on mac. I am going to split this thread.
Just updated to 1.9.12 in hope it was addressing the slow search issue I had.
It did not.
I think the search input field is lacking one important optimization that causes it to hang itself for several seconds in a large vault.
It starts to search the moment I type the first letter. In needs to have some debounce - a small pause to wait until the next input to avoid doing unnecessary and broad search while I’m typing.
My bad for not checking extensions. Now I believe it is a combination of “Better Search Views” plugin and the fact that the search result updates are not throttled by Obsidian.
I will try to raise the issue in the plugin repo, but I wonder whether I should as well rise a feature request (not a bug report) for Obsidian itself.
While the search is responsive in restricted mode, it seems even unnecessarily so, just flashing updates until the results settle. And it rises the chances for it to align with other things to cause issues in real world.