Very slow Zotero Standalone while running several operations

es3w
Hello,
I`m experiencing a lot of slowdown while running Zotero Standalone. The program slows down a lot. I had to stop from using Zotero for firefox (even if I do all my work on Firefox) because it was also slowing down Firefox.

I wonder if there`s any checklist on possible causes of this? It has happened for a while. Some of the operations it gets slow include: adding new items, adding new tags to items, adding new items from firefox toolbar buttons, It does not seem to affect notes though.
  • adamsmith
    There's not a lot of things to check. You could try collapsing the tag selector at the left.
    If that doesn't help, what's the size of your Zotero database
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_count
  • es3w
    Hi,
    There are 4205 items on my database. I guess it`s not that large as others posted here -- tens of thousands. I guess something is interfering with Zotero`s database. How can we troubleshoot that?
  • adamsmith
    Did you try collapsing the tag selector? Beyond that, submit debug output covering a simple process that you find takes too long and post the debug ID here(and let us know what that process is here):
    https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
  • es3w
    Hello,
    Collapsing the tag selector indeed does help. Why's that?

    In any case I submitted a report to the Zotero server. The debug ID is D1466461300. It simply applies a tag via shortcut key (numpad 1).
  • adamsmith
    There's a weird interaction between the tag selector and touch screens on Windows that, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been something that Zotero devs have been able to fully understand let alone fix (it's very likely a problem not of Zotero's own code, but of software it relies on, be it the Firefox framework or possibly even Windows' touchscreen integration).
  • dstillman
    I'm not sure if the touchscreen problem still exists — I don't recall seeing any reports that specifically mentioned a touchscreen in quite a while. But there can be general slowness when the tag selector is open, which is why we recommend closing it as a temporary workaround, so that may very well be what es3w is seeing.

    I'm hoping things have gotten better in 5.0, though I can't remember if I specifically did any work to speed up the tag selector there. If not, we'll work on speeding things up there so the tag selector remains usable even in heavily tagged libraries.
  • smteinturs
    Hi,
    Just to let you know I had exactly the same experience :
    - a very, very slow Zotero Standalone (4.0.29.10 / Chromium connector / Ubuntu16.10) for several operations ;
    - collapsing the tag selector resolved the problem.

    Thanks for the trick.
Sign In or Register to comment.