Enable the ‘Translucent window’ plugin. (The ‘Translucent window’ plugin is now a setting in the Appearance tab.)
Set your mouse polling frequency to any value above 100 Hz (100 Hz may still introduce lag, but it isn’t perceptible to my eye on a 144 Hz display). (However, as others have pointed out in the comments, the polling frequency of your mouse may have no impact at all on the presence or perceptibility of the issue.)
Drag the window around the screen.
Expected result
After carrying out the steps listed above, I expect to be able to move, or drag the window around the display area without any lag, however this is currently not the case.
Actual result
Instead of being able to move the window around the display surface without any lag, the translucent window moves very slowly along a path defined by the drag event.
Once a drag event has been started, the window will follow the position of the mouse from the origin of the drag event (the position where the left mouse button was first clicked) to the end of the event (the position where the left mouse button was let up). During this time, the mouse becomes free to use normally as the window completes the drag event, meaning other areas of the screen can be selected. Text input is also available while the drag event completes, meaning it’s possible to continue editing a note within Obsidian while the Obsidian window moves around the screen.
Decreasing the mouse polling frequency seems to remedy the issue in a linear fashion. When the mouse polling frequency is set to 100 Hz, the lag is imperceptible, and drag events appear as they do with an opaque window. As the frequency is increased, so does the lag.
The issue isn’t apparent with other applications that feature a similar translucency effect, such as Windows Terminal.
Environment
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 2004 19041.508
Obsidian version: 0.9.2
Additional information
A video of the laggy dragging:
Edit
For clarity: the issue is happening (for me) on an RTX 2080, driver version 460.79 and below.
Update - 9th Feb 2021
The issue is still occuring in Obsidian 0.10.13 on the latest NVIDIA drivers.
I am having the same problem: with Radeon RX5500 and intel -i5-10500 on Windows 10, Home.
So far I have been using Obsidian only with Linux Machines, and have never had an issue. even now, when I don’t have a similar issue with my laptops with Nvidia GPU and an old laptop with Intel HD graphics.
in fact, I am getting the tearing/lagging when resizing not only when the transparent mode is on, but also when it is off (but in a lesser extent).
As a side note, I am having similar problems with other electron apps, such as Notion or ClicUp
Disabling the native transparency in Windows resolved the lag for me (without actually removing translucency from Obsidian). Having to choose one or the other is obviously not ideal, but it’s at least a workaround and is indicative of what the cause might be. (probably some buggy interaction between native transparency and whatever Obsidian/Electron is doing)
Adjusting the polling rate (1000->125hz) had some effect, but remained very laggy for me. (on a 60 hz monitor) I did some benchmarking and found that a 5 second move took approximately 60s at 1000hz, 40s at 500hz, 20s at 250hz and 10s at 125hz respectively.
