Upgrade StorageApplication PDF Reader Unusably Slow
I am on an M1 Macbook Air running the 7.0 beta, and recently when I open a larger PDF (usually a full book), the app slows down to an absolute crawl. It can take minutes for new pages of a book to load, and the whole application UI becomes unresponsive. Just closing a PDF often takes a long time because of lag—and even after I manage to close all open PDFs, the app often continues to be slow/unresponsive until I force quit and restart.
These PDFs open just fine in other PDF viewers—but because I use the Zotero iPad app to read/annotate these PDFs (which also displays them without trouble!), I can't simply open them in Preview or another viewer because my annotations won't be visible. For now I am making do with the web-based Zotero library, which is also able to load/display the PDFs reasonably well—but it's making the application itself nearly unusable.
Is there a fix for this on the horizon? Is there anything I can do in the meantime?
These PDFs open just fine in other PDF viewers—but because I use the Zotero iPad app to read/annotate these PDFs (which also displays them without trouble!), I can't simply open them in Preview or another viewer because my annotations won't be visible. For now I am making do with the web-based Zotero library, which is also able to load/display the PDFs reasonably well—but it's making the application itself nearly unusable.
Is there a fix for this on the horizon? Is there anything I can do in the meantime?
2) How much memory Zotero uses when it starts to "crawl"?
3) Is there a difference if you keep only one tab open?
1) I have Zotfile installed but currently disabled. No other plugins/extensions.
2) Zotero is using 828 MB memory when my library is open without opening any PDFs; immediately upon opening the first PDF I emailed to support, it jumps to 1.47 GB used, and climbed to 1.56 after trying to scroll.
3) This 'crawl' happens already with just one tab open—enough that it would take several minutes to even open a second tab.
Let me know if I can provide any other information here!
I like to annotate on the Zotero app on my iPad. Then, once I'm done, I usually pull up the document on my desktop for review. The PDF performs beautifully on iPad but not on desktop. Zotero becomes super laggy and completely unusable. I usually have to force quit Zotero after opening a document containing too many annotations.
I don't experience this issue if I use the sticky note annotation instead of writing directly onto the PDF. It's only when I use the pen tool to scribble on the pages.
The simple solution would be to stop using this handwritten annotation workflow, but I'm hoping for a potential fix because I prefer this method.
I could use Goodnotes as an alternative and then export/flatten the PDF into Zotero afterward, but I like having my highlights link back to the PDF in Zotero.
1) Approximately how many annotations are we talking about?
2) Does this occur with all PDF files, or is this only with scanned ones?
I will try experimenting with leaving the document open in Zotero for an extended period of time.
1) This particular document has approx. 300 annotations (including highlights and ink annotations)
2) This occurs with all PDF files. This particular one I’m annotating is a normal PDF of a book. The file is only about 3mb.
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/107830/tip-for-slow-pdf-view-render-in-zotero-6-and-7#latest
I have not had a chance to try with the latest beta, but worked on 7Beta .39
1) Do you have any plugins installed?
2) Could you send an example PDF file to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
For now I'm just exporting PDFs each time I need to view them, but obviously this is a far from ideal solution and undermines the point of using the Zotero annotation system in the first place.
I haven't tried the PDF/A solution—but it doesn't seem viable to re-save all of my already annotated documents. And it seems like a new imported version of a PDF wouldn't have the annotations anyhow?