Constantly Freezing on Mac

cgallo6
I am using Zotero 6.0.30 on a newer MacBook Air. As of recently, I can't scroll through any of my papers without it constantly freezing for a couple seconds and giving me the Mac spinning pinwheel. Also occurs when switching papers. It then just totally froze as my computer says Zotero is taking up 19 GB of application memory. Most of the papers I am reading are only about 20 pages and this happens with and without images in the paper. No idea if this is a genuine memory problem from my computer (and what to do about that) or if something is wrong with my application. It has the papers for my classes and thesis saved so I really don't want to lose them. Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    any add-ons installed? First thing would be to try if this happens with all 3rd party add-ons disabled
  • cgallo6
    I've been using the application. Would the website version freeze less?
  • adamsmith
    There are add-ons for the application. I was asking if you have any installed (I don't think what you're seeing is normal in the app, no)
  • Annebritingholm
    Hi:)
    This applies to us as well. We (the library) had an introductory course in Zotero this fall, and several students in each class who uses a Mac experienced it freezing. We had to follow up the next day, and then most managed to use Zotero in Word, but afterwards, there are still reports of Macs freezing frequently - with the Mac spinning pinwheel and need for total restart of the machine. Any idea what causes this? Then, most of the students had brand new devices and were totally new to Zotero, but now the freezing seems to affect students at all levels (only mac though)

    Best regards
    Anne Brit
  • dstillman
    @Annebritingholm: What exactly are they doing when it's freezing?

    Integration with Word for Mac can be relatively slow, so in a large document with many citations there might be delays while waiting for it to refresh citations in a document. In that case, disabling "Automatically update citations" in the plugin's Document Preferences window can help.

    They certainly shouldn't see freezing in normal usage of Zotero. Zotero is largely developed on Macs, and we've never seen anything like that. Third-party plugins have been known to cause problems at times, which is why @adamsmith asked above if @cgallo6 had any installed. Opening large PDFs with huge scanned images could potentially also cause performance problems.

    @cgallo6 above notes that their Zotero was using a huge amount of memory, and that would definitely be a sign of a problem. You could check that in Activity Monitor. That would likely be a bug, but restarting Zotero would fix it.

    Zotero 7, currently in beta, will be much faster, particularly on Apple Silicon Macs, but this definitely isn't normal in Zotero 6.
  • Annebritingholm
    edited March 15, 2024
    The students are simply trying to insert a citation in Word when it freezez. No large documents and no zotero plugins. Just citing a normal website or book. These students are 16-18 years old with rather small assignments to turn in @dstillman
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