Upgrade StorageBug: slow switching between library and PDF views when right panel open
I've had this big issue with Zotero for a long time now: switching between the PDF and library view lags for several (~5 or more) seconds.
But the other day I noticed that my Zotero was very snappy, and would instantly switch between the library and PDF views.
How is this possible, I thought? This was such an anomaly. I started to wonder what was going on.
I tried disabling all extensions, but it didn't change anything, which was quite surprising. I tried poking through my zotero memory logs (with no idea what to look for). I tried restarting the computer and only opening zotero, I tried launching it while disconnected from the internet, but it didn't change anything, I made sure there was more than enough available RAM (I have 16GB DDR4 so this should not be a problem).
The one thing I thought might be to blame was the fact of having hundreds of PDF tabs open in zotero. But as I understood it, only a few PDFs are loaded into RAM at a time in zotero.
At this point I read something about closing the tags pane. That might make sense, I thought, since the lag loading the PDF is natural on any computer, so the solution might work to load the library pane faster. But why was it sometimes snappy to switch between the PDF and library and sometimes extremely slow? But nothing happened. But that got me interested in the UI. I started clicking around, closing panels.
Lo and behold, the right side panel open on the PDF viewer was the culprit. Clicking to open this panel takes several seconds. Once I close the panel, switching between PDF and library view becomes instantaneous.
The one question I have now is: is there a way to solve this? That panel is extremely useful. But it's not like it's displaying a huge amount of information. I can only imagine the metatada is a few KB at most.
Is this an issue for other people or just for me? Could it still be related to the fact that I have a lot of PDF tabs open? (I'm afraid to close them all because they are all the most relevant PDFs to my work over the years and I'd rather not have to go through them one by one to add them to a collection. There are probably over a hundred).
How is the information for that panel retrieved, and why is it behaving so slow for me? Again, I have disabled all extensions and am running Zotero 6.0.26 on Windows 11.
But the other day I noticed that my Zotero was very snappy, and would instantly switch between the library and PDF views.
How is this possible, I thought? This was such an anomaly. I started to wonder what was going on.
I tried disabling all extensions, but it didn't change anything, which was quite surprising. I tried poking through my zotero memory logs (with no idea what to look for). I tried restarting the computer and only opening zotero, I tried launching it while disconnected from the internet, but it didn't change anything, I made sure there was more than enough available RAM (I have 16GB DDR4 so this should not be a problem).
The one thing I thought might be to blame was the fact of having hundreds of PDF tabs open in zotero. But as I understood it, only a few PDFs are loaded into RAM at a time in zotero.
At this point I read something about closing the tags pane. That might make sense, I thought, since the lag loading the PDF is natural on any computer, so the solution might work to load the library pane faster. But why was it sometimes snappy to switch between the PDF and library and sometimes extremely slow? But nothing happened. But that got me interested in the UI. I started clicking around, closing panels.
Lo and behold, the right side panel open on the PDF viewer was the culprit. Clicking to open this panel takes several seconds. Once I close the panel, switching between PDF and library view becomes instantaneous.
The one question I have now is: is there a way to solve this? That panel is extremely useful. But it's not like it's displaying a huge amount of information. I can only imagine the metatada is a few KB at most.
Is this an issue for other people or just for me? Could it still be related to the fact that I have a lot of PDF tabs open? (I'm afraid to close them all because they are all the most relevant PDFs to my work over the years and I'd rather not have to go through them one by one to add them to a collection. There are probably over a hundred).
How is the information for that panel retrieved, and why is it behaving so slow for me? Again, I have disabled all extensions and am running Zotero 6.0.26 on Windows 11.
I made an AHK script to go through each one, copy the bibliography and close the tab.
Here's that script in case anyone's wondering:
#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%
WinActivate, ahk_exe zotero.exe
Sleep, 100
Loop, 50
{
Send, ^+c
Sleep, 100
Send, ^w
Sleep, 3000 ; wait for 3 seconds before the next iteration
}
If you have any third-party plugins installed, have you tried with them disabled?
If so, can you provide a Debug ID for reproducing this?